Archaeological Survey of the Old Federal Road in Alabama

morning salute, then turning our canoes to Fort Deposit we reached it on the morning ofthe 26th on our arrival at that place we got the wagon refitted up & prepared for thejourney.” 2According to official correspondence, Fort Deposit was built on December 20-22 and the army vacatedthe place on December 27. 3 This is essentially the extent of documentation on Fort Deposit. It existed as amilitary post for just eight days. Yet the location remained a landmark for years and served as a nucleusof American settlement after the war, as ceded Creek lands were made available to settlers. We are notaware of any physical descriptions of the fort dating to the war or later. No archaeological testing hasbeen conducted at Fort Deposit. Perhaps after more extensive research of the exact location of the fort, thesite area can be surveyed.Weatherford’s Stand. Weatherford’s Stand appears on both Maxfield Ludlow’s 1816 map andJohn Melish’s 1818 map, and its location probably corresponds to a small circle drawn on AbrahamBradley’s 1812 postal route map. Bradley noted good locations for stage stops or stands, although onlyone is known to have existed in the vicinity at that time, Manack’s near Pintlala. Bradley’s suggestedstand location was situated near a branch of Big Swamp Creek – labeled “First” on his map – at a spot 12miles southwest of the stop at “Laula C.” – referring to Pintlala Creek, presumably meaning Manack’sStore (actually near Pinchona Creek). The location identified on the post-war Ludlow and Melish maps asWeatherford’s Stand is approximately 12 miles southwest of Manack’s Store. Since there is noindependent historical evidence for Weatherford’s stand prior to the Creek War, while nearby Manack’sStore is extensively documented, we suspect Bradley identified this location and others on his 1812 mapas suitable places for stands, but that this one was established after the war. The stand was probablyoperated by John Weatherford, a wealthy Creek Indian who cooperated closely with the Americansduring the war and was rewarded for his assistance with land grants and other privileges. That the standmight have been run by his brother William, a prominent Redstick leader, is unlikely in the extreme. Wehave found no written descriptions of this stand apart from these two map references. Weatherford’s standapparently did not operate very long. Its disappearance from maps after 1818 suggests that JohnWeatherford, like the Bailey and McGirth families and other pro-American Creeks with property in cededlands, fled to the Creek Nation in 1819 when anti-Indian violence swept the Alabama frontier (asdescribed in the discussion of Fort Dale in Chapter 6). Archaeological survey has not been attemptedbecause of the vague locational data on this site. Perhaps if more information becomes available in thefuture, the stand’s location can be explored.165