Austills in Alabama

As can be seen from the census records, Austills appeared in Alabama in early years, before the territory achieved statehood in 1819. History tells us the city of Mobile was established by the first settlers in the area, who were French and Spanish; during the Revolutionary years many British sympathizers living in Georgia moved into Alabama. After the War of 1812 settlers thronged into Alabama.

We read in an old history of the area that Austills were very active in developing the region.*

*"A Glance Into the Great South-East, or Clarke County, Alabama, from 1540 to 1877"
by The Reverend T. H. Ball. Grove Hill, Alabama, publisher.
Available in Salt Lake City Genealogical Library and also on microfilm.
Library number G. S. 416,771.

Among the names which have for many years been historic, connected with this region, is the name of Austill. Evan Austill of South Carolina went with his family in 1798 to the Cherokee agency in Georgia, where he was engaged in efforts tending to spread among the Cherokees the arts of civilization. This agency was established by the U. S. Govt.

The location was on a river about twenty miles north of the present town of Rome. Mrs. E. Austill is said to have been the first white woman who ventured to live among the Cherokees. Five children were born during the residence of the family in this agency, one, J. Austill, having been born in South Carolina in 1794. Mrs. Austill was evidently not a timid woman. Sometimes when alone with her little children, in the absence of her husband, the Indians would come and tell her that they had seen a man without a head near her home. She would reply, "I am not afraid of men without heads; those having heads are much more dangerous."

A school was commenced among these Cherokees and E. Austill employed an Englishman to teach. One of the boys, called John Ridge, was quite talented, at length graduated, and married in the North. He became a well-known leader of his people.

After residing about fourteen years among the Cherokees E. Austill concluded to remove. The Indians said "Do not leave us. You have been a father and a guide to us." But in 1812 his family concluded to remove to the frontier settlements in Washington county. They came to the Hickory Ground. The Creeks here had already met to declare war. The party was permitted to proceed and the family settled South of Suggsville, and were soon called out, by the eventful times, the father and son, to take prominent parts in the war with the Creeks.

E. Austill died Oct. 18, 1818, at the age of forth-nine, from exposure in Florida in the Indian strife. A marble slab with a plain inscription near the roadside, and near the site of Fort Madison, reveals to the passing traveller his lone resting-place.

He had two sons and five daughters. Of the daughters, one only is living, Mrs. Drane of Lowndes County.

Major Jeremiah Austill, the only other survivor of those seven children, has passed through a long, varied and eventful career. Born, as already mentioned, in South Carolina in 1794, when four years of age taken among the Cherokees in Georgia, when six years of age sent back to South Carolina to attend school, and again returning to the agency, when eighteen years of age he became a resident in that part of Washington county which in a few months became Clarke.