Red Hills Genealogy Group

08/20/2026

08/20/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A2TUmTask/

08/19/2026

On August 15, 1806, a federal contract was signed for establishing a postal road from Athens, Georgia, to New Orleans, Louisiana. A few months earlier, in April, Congress appropriated $6,400 to build one that would link Athens to Fort Stoddert on the Mobile River north of Mobile, in Alabama. The route was through Creek territory in lower Alabama. When completed, the post road would connect Washington and New Orleans over a distance of some 1,100 miles—300 miles shorter than the existing Natchez Trace. Alabama's Federal Road helped usher in a new era of national expansion, communication, and exploitation of Native American groups. It functioned as a major thoroughfare for the western migration into the Old Southwest for the first three decades of the 19th century. The land rush became known as "Alabama Fever" and it contributed to Alabama becoming a state in 1819. With the advent of steamboats and railroads, travel over the Federal Road diminished considerably. Worsening economic times in 1837 further reduced traffic along the road. In 1844, Samuel Morse's invention of the telegraph radically improved communication across large distances, lessening the need for frontier post roads as well. Photograph shows a remaining section of the Old Federal Road in Monroe County, near the Butler County line. (Photograph courtesy of Greg Waselkov) Read the EOA article: https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/federal-road-in-alabama/

08/19/2026

07/25/2026

More responses to WPPG radio program on the Confederate forts in Clarke Co.
A caller furnished the name of her ancestor that joined Co. A, 32nd Ala. Inf. He served at Oven Bluff salt mines. In his words, (I saw a letter that read), "I served for a very short time under Gen. Forrest then began a tour with Bragg, Johnston, and Hood, men whose names were not synonymous with victory.

07/25/2026

The Jackleg Historian discussed two Confedertate forts constructed in Clarke County and Boatyard on the Tombigbee during the WPPG-FM radio program Friday last. The response created a great story concerning the 21st Ala. Regt., with 20 officers and 217 men at both Fort Stonewall Jackson, (Choctaw Bluff on west bank of Alabama) and Fort Sidney Johnson (Oven Bluff on east bank of Tombigbee). Both forts in Clarke. Soldiers of the 21st were moved to Blakeley and Spanish Fort whereupon Pvt. James RUDOLPH Reed of the 21st was captured after a brief skirmish with Federal troops along the Stockton road. Pvt. Reed was ordered to carry a wounded Federal officer horseback along the road south towards Blakeley. As they ventured south, Pvt. Reed observed a gully ahead and when alongside, Pvt. Reed pitched the Federal officer over into the gully and raced towards Confederate lines. Halted by sentries, a very excited Pvt. Reed was taken to the commanding officer. Pvt. Reed told of the capture, and embellished the escape by telling the officer that "I ranned off as fast as I could go". Henceforth and forever more he was Randolph Reed, not Rudolph Reed. Pvt. Reed was a Creek whose son, Mr. Arthur Reed) later served as a tribal leader at Porch.

07/22/2026

Found this story in my e-mail sent from a fellow soldier. It is the reason every kid at age 18 needs to serve our country.

I enlisted at seventeen, lied about my age on the form, and by the time anyone caught the mistake, I was already on a transport ship headed overseas. Nobody in my unit believed I belonged there. I was the youngest by four years, and it showed — in the way my hands shook the first time I heard real gunfire, in the way I flinched at sounds the older guys had long stopped noticing.
They started calling me "The Kid" the first week. At first I hated it. I wanted to be seen as capable, not coddled. But I didn't understand yet that the nickname wasn't an insult — it was protection.
The older soldiers, men in their early twenties who felt like grown adults to me back then, made sure I never walked point. They split their rations with me when supplies ran thin. One sergeant, a quiet man from Ohio, spent every evening teaching me how to read a map properly, "in case," he said, "you're the one who has to get everyone home."
I didn't understand it then. I thought they saw me as weak. It took decades — long after the war, long after I'd lost touch with most of them — to realize what they were actually doing. They were making sure that if only one of us made it back to tell the story, it would be the one with the most life left to live.
I'm in my seventies now. I still think about "The Kid" every year around this time. Not because of what I went through, but because of what a handful of men decided I didn't have to go through, simply because someone, somewhere, had to make it home to remember them.

07/21/2026

Jackleg History Hour on WPPG-FM, 101.1 on the dial, Friday, July 24, 2026. Normally scheduled for last Friday, in the month, the Jackleg Historian must attend some minor medical issues. Therefore, this Friday, we will talk about the Confederate forts built in Clarke County and the role of the Miller Guards, a Conecuh unit that became Co. E, 38th Ala. Infantry Regiment. Thanks to Trae Stacey and AJ's RTestaurant for sponsoring the Jackleg History Hour. For those who asked about Big L, he is 100% Big L, resting peacefully so I am told but he has one knee the size of his head and I suspect he was attempting to travel when the old legs failed. Nonetheless, we expect a full recovery. It is hard to harm a Jarhead.