The Tombigbee District, also known as the Tombigbee, was one of two areas, the other being the Natchez District, that were the first in what was West Florida to be colonized by British subjects from the Thirteen Colonies and elsewhere. This later became the Mississippi Territory as part of the United States. The district was also the first area to be opened to white settlement in what would become the state of Alabama, outside of the French colonial outpost of Mobile on the Gulf Coast.[1] The Tombigbee and Natchez districts (also originally a French settlement) were the only areas populated by whites in the Mississippi Territory when it was formed by the United States in 1798.[2]
The Tombigbee District was an area mostly on the west side of the Tombigbee River in Alabama; it was first opened to settlement by British colonists under the Treaty of Mobile, negotiated between the British government of West Florida and the Choctaw at a Native American congress held in Mobile in March–April 1765. The British had "acquired" this territory from France in 1763 through the Treaty of Paris, after they defeated France in the Seven Years' War. They also acquired other French territories in North America east of the Mississippi River.[3]
The boundaries of the district were roughly limited to the area within a few miles of the Tombigbee River and included portions of modern extreme southern Clarke County, northernmost Mobile County, and most of Washington County.[2][4]
- ^ "Historical Marker Program: Washington County". Alabama Historical Association. Alabama Department of Archives and History. Archived from the original on August 22, 2011. Retrieved July 30, 2011.
- ^ a b Clark, Thomas D.; John D. W. Guice (1989). The Old Southwest 1795–1830: Frontiers in Conflict. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. pp. 44–65, 210–257. ISBN 0-8061-2836-4.
- ^ Marston, Daniel (2002). The French-Indian War 1754-1760. Osprey Publishing. pp. 84. ISBN 0-415-96838-0. The French-Indian War 1754-1760.
- ^ Hamilton, Peter Joseph (1910). Colonial Mobile: An Historical Study of the Alabama-Tombigbee Basin and the Old South West from the Discovery of the Spiritu Sancto in 1519 until the Demolition of Fort Charlotte in 1821. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 241–244. ISBN 9780598639547. OCLC 49073155.