Wakefield is a ghost town in Washington County, Alabama, United States, most famous as the place where former vice president Aaron Burr was arrested in 1807. [1]
Wakefield was in a bend of the Tombigbee River near present-day McIntosh Bluff. The settlement was named by territorial judge Harry Toulmin after Oliver Goldsmith's novel The Vicar of Wakefield . Wakefield was the county seat of Washington County from 1805 to 1809. [2]
The arrest of Aaron Burr took place in February 1807. Fleeing from an arrest order issued by President Thomas Jefferson after being found innocent four times, on his way to Spanish West Florida, Burr was spotted by federal land agent Major Nicholas Perkins III [3] who reported the sighting to U.S. Army Lieutenant Edmund P. Gaines. Gaines arrested Burr on February 19 near Wakefield, two miles below Colonel Henson's, [4] and detained him at Fort Stoddert. Gaines and Perkins later testified at Burr's trial, which ended in acquittal. [5] [6]
A marker placed by the Alabama Historical Association commemorates the Burr capture. [7]
Aaron Burr Jr. was an American politician and lawyer who served as the third vice president of the United States from 1801 to 1805. His legacy is defined by his famous personal conflict with Alexander Hamilton that culminated with Burr killing Hamilton in a duel in 1804, while Burr was vice president.
Washington County is a county located in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 15,388. The county seat is Chatom. The county was named in honor of George Washington, the first President of the United States. It is a dry county, with the exception of Chatom. In September 2018 The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) added Washington County to the Mobile, Alabama Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is also part of the larger Mobile-Daphne-Fairhope, AL Combined Statistical Area.
Harman Blennerhassett was an Anglo-Irish lawyer, a member of the Society of United Irishmen who emigrated in advance of their rebellion in 1798 to become a socially and politically distinguished plantation owner in then-western Virginia. Implicated in the Burr conspiracy, an alleged military plot with Britain to separate the Louisiana Territory from the American Union, he was twice arrested and financially ruined. His last years were spent in England.
McIntosh is a town located in Washington County, Alabama, United States along U.S. Route 43. It is 12+1⁄2 miles (20.1 km) south of Wagarville and 44 miles (71 km) north of Mobile. It was named for William McIntosh, a prominent Creek chief of the nineteenth century. The town was incorporated on April 7, 1970. The population as of the 2020 U.S. Census was 206, down from 238 in 2010.
Burr is a 1973 historical novel by Gore Vidal that challenges the traditional Founding Fathers iconography of United States history, by means of a narrative that includes a fictional memoir by Aaron Burr, in representing the people, politics, and events of the U.S. in the early 19th century. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1974.
James Wilkinson was an American soldier, politician, and double agent who was associated with several scandals and controversies.
William Eaton was a United States Army officer and the diplomatic officer Consul General to Tunis (1797–1803). He played an important diplomatic and military role in the First Barbary War between the United States and Tripoli (1801–1805). He led the first foreign United States military victory at the Battle of Derne by capturing the Tripoli subject city of Derne in support of the restoration of the pasha, Hamet Caramelli. He also gave testimony at the treason trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr. Eaton served one term in the General Court of Massachusetts, which served as the state legislature during the colonia era. Eaton died on June 1, 1811, at the age of 47.
John Smith was one of the first two U.S. senators from the state of Ohio. He reluctantly resigned from the Senate under charges of alleged complicity in the Burr conspiracy.
"The Man Without a Country" is a short story by American writer Edward Everett Hale, first published in The Atlantic in December 1863. It is the story of American Army lieutenant Philip Nolan, who renounces his country during a trial for treason, and is consequently sentenced to spend the rest of his days at sea without so much as a word of news about the United States.
Edmund Pendleton Gaines was a career United States Army officer who served for nearly fifty years, and attained the rank of major general by brevet. He was one of the Army's senior commanders during its formative years in the early to mid-1800s, and was a veteran of the War of 1812, Seminole Wars, Black Hawk War, and Mexican–American War.
Fort Stoddert, also known as Fort Stoddard, was a stockade fort in the U.S. Mississippi Territory, in what is today Alabama. It was located on a bluff of the Mobile River, near modern Mount Vernon, close to the confluence of the Tombigbee and Alabama Rivers. It served as the western terminus of the Federal Road which ran through Creek lands to Fort Wilkinson in Georgia. The fort, built in 1799, was named for Benjamin Stoddert, the secretary to the Continental Board of War during the American Revolution and Secretary of the Navy during the Quasi War. Fort Stoddert was built by the United States to keep the peace by preventing its own settlers in the Tombigbee District from attacking the Spanish in the Mobile District. It also served as a port of entry and was the site of a Court of Admiralty. While under the command of Captain Edmund P. Gaines, Aaron Burr was held as a prisoner at the fort after his arrest at McIntosh in 1807 for treason against the United States. In July 1813, General Ferdinand Claiborne brought the Mississippi Militia to Fort Stoddert as part of the Creek War. The 3rd Infantry Regiment was commanded by General Thomas Flournoy to Fort Stoddert following the Fort Mims massacre. The site declined rapidly in importance after the capture of Mobile by the United States in 1813 and the establishment of the Mount Vernon Arsenal in 1828.
The Burr conspiracy was a plot alleged to have been planned by Aaron Burr in the years during and after his term as Vice President of the United States under US President Thomas Jefferson. According to the accusations against Burr, he attempted to use his international connections and support from a cabal of US planters, politicians, and army officers to establish an independent country in the Southwestern United States and parts of Mexico. Burr's version was that he intended to farm 40,000 acres (160 km2) in the Texas Territory which had been leased to him by the Spanish Crown.
The Burr–Hamilton duel took place in Weehawken, New Jersey, between Aaron Burr, the third Vice President of the United States, and Alexander Hamilton, the first and former Secretary of the Treasury, at dawn on July 11, 1804. The duel was the culmination of a bitter rivalry that had developed between both men, who had become high-profile politicians in post-colonial America. In the duel, Burr fatally shot Hamilton in the abdomen, while Hamilton fired into a tree branch above and behind Burr's head. Hamilton was taken back across the Hudson River, and he died the following day in New York.
Major Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, a Virginia-born lawyer, received a mortal wound while commanding the Dragoons of the Kentucky Militia at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Five years earlier, Daveiss had tried to warn President Thomas Jefferson about Aaron Burr's plans to provoke rebellion in Spanish-held territories southwest of his Kentucky district. Several places in the United States are named for Daveiss, but though he spelled his name "Daveiss", these places all have the spelling "Daviess".
The Hermitage, located in Ho-Ho-Kus, Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, is a fourteen-room Gothic Revival house museum built in 1847–48 from designs by William H. Ranlett for Elijah Rosencrantz, Jr. Members of the Rosencrantz family owned The Hermitage estate from 1807 to 1970. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark for the excellence of its architecture and added to National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and was added to the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1971.
Davis Floyd was an Indiana Jeffersonian Republican politician who was convicted of aiding American Vice President Aaron Burr in the Burr conspiracy. Floyd was not convicted of treason however and returned to public life after several years working to redeem his reputation. He lost his wealth in the Panic of 1819 and died in obscurity in Florida 1834.
Events from the year 1807 in the United States.
Montpier, also known as Nicholas Perkins House, is a two-and-a-half-story brick house built on a stone foundation during 1821–22. It has a gable roof with twin brick chimneys at each gable end. It was built with slave labor. Its original style was Federal, but its facade was modified in the 1859s by addition of a Greek Revival two-tiered portico and a doorway with side lights, corner lights and transom.
David O. Stewart is an American author and attorney who writes both nonfiction historical narratives and historical fiction and lives in Potomac, Maryland. His historical works include George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father; Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America; American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America; Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy; and The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution. His novels include The New Land,The Lincoln Deception, The Wilson Deception, and The Babe Ruth Deception.
Nicholas "Bigbee"Perkins III (1779–1848) was an attorney, federal land agent, and territorial militia officer who played a leading role in the 1807 arrest of Aaron Burr in the Mississippi Territory, now Wakefield, Alabama. Perkins is known for identifying Burr and, along with Edmund P. Gaines, arresting the former Vice-President. Perkins subsequently escorted Burr to Washington, D.C., and testified at his trial.