Giles County, Tennessee
1809 Elk River Intruders
The Cherokee Land Session of 1806 resulted in a rash of new settlements in the newly-ceded territory, which included much of present-day Giles County, but continued to exclude most of the southwest quadrant still untreated with the Chickasaw. Nevertheless, many of the settlers were westward of the Congressional Reservation Line, resulting in a number of clashes between soldiers and settlers, the latter known as Intruders. (1)
Although the following is a compiled list and does not specify the settlement, a variety of records document that at least some of these men had settled in what would become Giles county rather than Alabama. Other sources (2) indicate that the first round-up by soldiers in 1809 netted 166 settlers, of whom 93 were from the Simms Settlement. As can be seen from the list that follows, a number of Giles countians were among those corraled by Meigs' soldiers, although many other intruders were not rounded up (estimated at 2,250 by Simms' Settlemeent petitioners in 1810). By September of the following year, at least 49 of the original Simms settlers, including five widows, had returned when 466 men and women petitioned the President to permit them to remain on their improvements pending the signing of a treaty with the Chickasaws (See 1810 Simms'es Settlement Petition)
Many of these names and those on the 1810 Elk River Intruder Petition are also on the 1812 Giles county tax list, and a sampling has been indicated by the use of the symbol † after the name.
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