MySource:Samples 59/The Bayou Sara Settlement

The Bayou Sara Settlement

Founded by John Mills in 1790 as a trading post and cotton port. Bayou Sara was the river port for the Felicianas and was one of the largest shipping ports between Natchez and New Orleans before 1860.

John Mills had been a brother-in-law to Moses Samples wife Ann by her first marriage to his brother Gilbert Mills

Below St. Francisville's bluffs, another early settlement called Bayou Sara had been established in the early 1790s, and was at one time the largest antebellum Mississippi River port between New Orleans and Memphis. Destroyed by repeated flooding and fires, nothing exists of Bayou Sara today, but a few of its structures were hauled up the hill into St. Francisville in the 1920s.

Moses Semple (Sample)

• Moses Sample served as a Private from Bayou Sara, LA in Captain Jedediah Smith's Feliciana Troop of Horse (September 28, 1814 - March 24, 1815). As part of Hind's Battalion of Cavalry, Mississippi.^S4

In 1810 when West Florida sought to gain its independence from Spain, the men of the Felicianas played an important part. Captain Jedediah Smith and Captain Llewellyn Griffith organized two companies of men from the Bayou Sara area. Captain Griffith's recruits were called "The Mounted Rangers" or "Volunteer Company of Mounted Riflemen" Captain Smith's company was called "Troop of Horse". Mr. Stanley Arthur refers to them together as "The Bayou Sara Horse"

Source: BAYOU SARA - THE TOWN AWD STREAM West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana

• Mississippi Dragoons (Hind's Battalion of Cavalry, Mississippi Militia), this cavalry battalion was organized at Liberty, Natchez District in September, 1813, Lt. Colonel THOMAS HINDS commanding.

Adams Troop, formed 1803, Captain James Kempe.

Amite Troop, Captain Dunn

Jefferson Troop (this was Captain THOMAS HINDS Troops until he was promoted to Major)

Madison (Ala.) Troop, Captain J. G. Richardson,

Captain John Doherty's Company

Captain Samuel Gerald's Company

Captain John J. W. Ross' Company

Captain Jedediah Smith's Company "Troop of Horse", of Bayou Sara, LA.

Captain Llewellyn Griffith's "Mounted Riflemen" "Mounted Rangers", of Bayou Sara, LA.

Warned of the British advance, General Andrew Jackson then mustered his army consisting of the Bayou Sara Mounted Riflemen, Beale's Rifles, the Bataillon d'Orleans, Major Thomas Hinds' Mississippi Dragoons and Colonel John Coffee's Tennessee Calvary. They were joined too by Jean Laffite's Baratarians, free Negro militia, and a band of Choctaw Indians. The two armies met shortly afterwards near Chalmette, Louisiana, on the Chalmette and Rodriguez plantations, where both suffered heavy casualties.

James Williams

• Lowrie, Walter (editor). American State Papers Public Lands: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States, in relation to The Public Lands, From The First Session of the First Congress To the First Session of the Twenty-Third Congress. (Washington, District of Columbia, United States: Duff Green (Printer)), Vol. 1, Page 561, 794, 795, March 4th, 1789, To February 27th, 1809.

Register’s No. | Claiments name | Name of the Original claimant | Situation | Quantity | Title: Whence derived and date | Remarks

577 | James Williams | Henry Willis | Bayou Sara | 800 acres | Spanish | May 23, 1791

578 | James Williams | James Sanders | Bayou Sara | 500 acres | Spanish | July 5, 1789

The land was sold by Sanders to Henry Willis in 1791; and Willis, on the 24th September, 1794, devised these two tracts, with others, to his wife, now Sarah F. Chotard, and his son , Lewis Willis, who died; whereupon, his mother became possessed of his part of the property, who together with her husband, John Chotard LaPlace, conveyed, by deed, to the claimant, 1st September, 1803. William McIntosh says, “that Henry Willis, in the year 1792, was an actual settler in the Mississippi Territory, who left the country, with the permission of the Spanish Government, on necessary business, with the intention of returning; that Willis and Sanders (the original warrantees) were heads of families at the date of the warrants.” Mary Conner says “that Henry Willis, when he went to the State of Georgia, about the year 1791, left papers of considerable value, and also horses and cattle, his right to which has not been disputed by any person, in the possession of Mrs. Ann Savage, who also paid several debts for the said Willis during his absence; and further saith, that when she was in Georgia, in the year 1796, and in the neighborhood in which Willis resided after he left this country, she understood that he had prepared to return to this country as soon as he could go to Charleston in South Carolina, and return; at which place, she understood, he died in the year 1794.” Abram Ellis says, “that shortly before Henry Willis left this country to go to Georgia, having a note of said Willis’s, applied to him for payment, and was informed by him that Mrs. Savage would pay it for him, and that she was to attend to his business during his absence; and also, that the said Willis informed him that he intended to return to this country.” William Conner says, “that all the patents of the lands in the Mississippi Territory, of Henry Willis, deceased, now claimed by James Williams, as purchaser under the said Henry Willis, were among the papers of Mrs. Savage when her papers came into the hands of the witness, in the year 1798; also several other papers of the said Henry Willis, which showed that Mrs. Savage paid large sums of money towards the consideration money of the said lands during the absences of the said Henry Willis from this territory.”

Abstract of Certificates entered with the Register of the Land Office west of Pearl river, during the month of October, 1805, grounded on British and Spanish patents.

Mississippi Territory

Commissioners’ certificates | Claim | Title

When Entered: 8 Oct 1805

No. 652

Date: October 3, 1805

Recorded: Vol. 3, Page 177

To whom granted: James Williams

Name of original grantee: Toussaint Chabot

Quantity allowed: 1, 600 acres

Situation: On Buffalo Creek

Whence derived: Spanish Land Patent

Date of Patent: July 7th, 1789

When entered: 20 Oct 1805

No. 678

Date: October 19th, 1805

Recorded: Vol. 3, Page 231

To whom granted: James Williams

Name of original grantee: Jason Lawrence

Quantity allowed: 1,000 acres

Situation: On the River Homochitto

Whence derived: Spanish Land Patent

Date of patent: March 15, 1789

Note: Waterways - Bayou Sara can be located in Wilkinson County, Mississippi and West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. Buffalo Creek can be located in Wilkinson County, Mississippi. Homochitto River can be found in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, where it empties into the Mississippi River at Woodville, Mississippi and Natchez, Mississippi.

Before 1793, Henry Willis, a native of Virginia, and a Revolutionary veteran married his 2nd wife Sarah F. Williams. Henry Willis traveled to the Natchez District in the spring of 1791 to try his fortune in the Louisiana Territory, then under Spanish authority. He was granted a warrant of survey, signed by the Spanish governor, for 672 acres of land on Bayou Sara, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. He purchased from Jason Lawrence an adjoining tract of 432 acres, totaling 1,100 acres. Then, he returned to his native South Carolina and passed away sometime in 1794. His widow, Sarah F. Williams inherited. She married a second time to John Chotard LaPlace. He belonged to a French family that came to New Orleans, Louisiana from San Domingo, between (1791-1804).  :Sarah F. Williams and her husband attempted to sell the land on Bayou Sara, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana but failed due to the law that her 1st husband Henry Willis failed to maintain and cultivate the land, nor did anyone else upon his death.

Claim No. 576, Spanish grant to Capt. Jason Lawrrence of 1000 acres in Natchez District on Homochitto River, all sides vacant. New Orleans, Louisiana 15 Mar 1789, by Miro. Jason Lawrence to Henry Willis the above land, 1000 acres, gr. as per plat, for 500 pesos, to be paid during four years, 2 May 1791. Both signed. Witnesses: Miguel Gomez, Antonio Fromentin, James Lemain, before Pedro Padesclaux, notary.

File: James Williams, claimant, 13 Mar 1804. Witness: William McIntosh, 8 Jun 1804.

Certificat, A-678, Oct. 19, 1805. James Williams claims the above grant to Jason Lawrence who sold to Henry Willis, and devised by said Henry Willis as related in preceding claim and sold to James Williams.

Sarah F. Williams (Centreville, Alabama)

• Sarah F. (Williams) Willis - Chotard - LaPlace

Sarah F. Williams and John Chotard LaPlace spent some time searching for land in Monroe County, Alabama. In the town of Claiborne, Alabama. In 1820, the Federal Government allowed her any land she wanted, either in Alabama, or Mississippi. She chose Alabama. She recieved 105 acres west of the Cahaba River, and 55 acres east of the Cahaba River near Centreville, Bibb County, Alabama.

SOURCES:

1. McBee, May Wilson. The Natchez Court Records: Abstracts of Early Records, 1767-1805. (Greenwood, Mississippi: The Author, 1953).

2. Ellison, Rhoda Coleman. Bibb County, Alabama : the first hundred years, 1818-1918. (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, c1984).

3. Online Source

Henry Willis

• Glenn, Justin. The Washingtons: A Family History: Seven Generations of the Presidential Branch . (El Dorado Hills, California: Savas Publishing, 11 Jun 2014), Vol. 1, 11 Jun 2014.

118. Henry Willis (born ca. 1758; commissioned 2nd Lt., 1st Continental Artillery, March 1, 1778, he resigned Nov. 18, 1778. He married [1st, ca 1787-1791] Anne “Nancy” Savage [d.s.p.]. He married [2nd, ca 1792] Sarah Williams [born Jan. 1, 1777; died Dec. 8, 1825]. The narrative written by his brother, Byrd Charles Willis, records:

“He was a very handsome man, without the superfluous flesh of the rest of us. He spent his estate in Virginia, and came early to the South. I have heard that in passing through Georgia and Mississippi, he was taken by the Indians, tied to a stake, and his life only saved by a squaw.

He died Sept. 25, 1794, near Charleston, S.C.

Children:

405. Lewis Willis (born ca. 1793; died ca. 1797)

+406. Anna Savage Willis. [Quotation from L. PecQuet du Bellet, Some Prominent Va. Fam., 2:284 (cf. also B. C. Willis, R. H. Willis, Willis, 44). See also: obit. Of Henry Willis in (Charleston) City Gazette, 9/27/1794; F. Heitman, Officers of the Continental Army, 598; L. G. Tyler, “Willis,” WMCQ, 6 (1898) 209; J. A. W., Outline, 11543]

Bayou Sara, West Feliciana, Louisiana, United States