If Samuel K. Green is the Samuel Green whose name appears in a writ filed by Natchitoches Parish sheriff Benjamin Bullitt on 6 October 1823, then Samuel had interacted with Dr. John Sibley by October 1823. The writ states that Sheriff Bullitt had seized 1,800 arpents belonging to Sibley at Campté (i.e., Campti) in Natchitoches Parish in a case of debt Isaac Baldwin had filed against John Sibley and his son Samuel, his security. The writ also notes that the Sibleys had made a mortgage to Samuel Green for $1,808.50, and that St. François parish in Natchitoches also held a mortgage against the Sibleys.[2]

I don’t have proof that the Samuel Green named in this document is Samuel Kerr Green, but I think it’s worth asking about this, when Samuel’s son Ezekiel would live and own a sawmill some years later at Campti, and when Samuel lost the land he purchased from Sibley in 1835 to St. François church, which had acquired Sibley’s mortgage on that land, something I’ll discuss later. If Samuel K. Green did hold a mortgage on John Sibley by October 1823, when he was employed in Plaquemines Parish by Joseph Biddle Wilkinson, then Samuel may have arrived in south Louisiana by 1821-2 with some economic resources saved from his years as a trader and co-owner of a steamboat in Nashville. If he did arrive in Louisiana with resources he was holding from his Nashville years, then it would seem he undertook his three stints as an overseer in south Louisiana to add to his financial resources so that he could buy land of his own eventually.

Los Adaes and the Neutral Territory

John Sibley’s Rio Hondo claim of 640 acres is documented in a series of claims in the so-called neutral ground or neutral territory west of Natchitoches. This was a part of Natchitoches Parish between Rio Hondo or Arroyo Hondo and the Sabine River to which both Spain and France had previously laid claim. When the U.S. government acquired the Louisiana Territory, the government attempted to validate land claims in this disputed strip in Louisiana. On 1 November 1824, the land office of the Southwestern Land District of Louisiana at Opelousas submitted to the U.S. Congress a report on land claims in this neutral territory, and Congress validated this and other land claims in the neutral territory on 24 January 1828. The Congressional and land office report shows John Sibley with a number of land claims in this area, including claim #124, a claim for 640 acres on both sides of Bayou Adaise (that is, Adaes) in Natchitoches Parish.[3]

The patent for the land was issued on 4 January 1932 to John Sibley, many years following his death in 1837 [4] As we’ll see when I discuss a chain of documents about the 640 acres Sibley sold to Samuel K. Green, the Rio Hondo claim that Samuel acquired from Sibley was in township 8 north, range 9 west, sections 3, 4, and 10 in Natchitoches Parish. As Abigail Grace Scott notes, Sibley’s 640-acre tract was at the site of the old Spanish fort Los Adaes between Rio Hondo and the Sabine River.[5] BLM GLO tract maps show sections 3, 4, and 10 of township 8 north, range 9 west covering the site of the old Los Adaes fort (section 4) and land just to the east and southeast of the fort (sections 3 and 10).[6] This land is just north of the present-day community of Robeline in Natchitoches Parish. The original survey for this land filed at the federal land office at Washington, Mississippi, on 17 July 1832 shows Bayou Adois running roughly from west to east through section 4 of the tract, with the village of Adois just south and west of the bayou and the site of the old Los Adaes fort.[7]

Adayes, Adaes, Adois, Adaise: in 1710, the Spanish notified the French of their intent to establish a mission at what became the fort of Los Adaes.[8] Their communication about this reached the French only in 1713, and the French response to the communication was then to set up a trading post-cum-fort at Natchitoches in that year. Three years later, the Spanish built the Los Adaes mission only a few miles west of the Natchitoches trading post, which had the name Fort St. Jean Baptiste aux Natchitoches and which grew into the town of Natchitoches.

These developments, the establishment of rival footholds a few miles apart from each other in western Louisiana, reflected rivalry and growing tension between Spain and France regarding where the line between the territories of the two nations ran. Spain asserted that the Red River, on which the Natchitoches fort and town that grew out of it sat, was the dividing line between Spanish and French territories. France argued for the Sabine River on the western boundary of Louisiana as the dividing line. A precarious agreement was reached by the two nations, but spearheaded largely by the Spanish, that the border was to be the small stream a few miles west of Natchitoches called the Arroyo Hondo or Rio Hondo.[9]

As the detailed history of Los Adaes offered by the Texas Beyond History site of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at University of Texas at Austin states,[10]

The paramount reason the Spanish established Los Adaes and made it their provincial capital was to protect the far-flung lands they claimed and thwart the aims of their European competitor, France. … Los Adaes was placed a mere 13 miles west of Natchitoches, the French fort and trade center on the Red River established in 1713.

In 1719, French soldiers at the Natchitoches fort attacked the Adaes mission and it was closed. Two years later, Spain built a new mission in another location less than two miles east of the earlier one. With the second mission, Spain also built a presidio at Los Adaes, and this served as the capital of the Province of Texas from 1729 to 1770. The presidio was called Nuestra Señora del Pilar de los Adaes. Initially, 100 Mexican soldiers were stationed at Los Adaes, some of them bringing families there. After 1729, 60 soldiers were at Los Adaes. Los Adaes eventually grew to comprise some 400 Spanish citizens that included soldiers, their families, priests, and converts from the native peoples living in the region — from whose tribal name the site got its name Adaes. Los Adaes was the terminating point of the El Camino Real de los Tejas, which ran from Mexico City to Adaes. In 1768, the governor moved his residence to San Antonio and the capital was officially moved to San Antonio in 1770. In 1772, Spain closed the Los Adaes fort and mission, and in 1773, the site was abandoned by the Spanish.

Because the border between Spanish and French territory had been notoriously indeterminate in the late 1700s and early 1800s, when the Louisiana Purchase occurred in 1803, uncertainty continued about exactly where the line between the two territories fell. Thomas Jefferson sought to make the Sabine River the border, but this decision contravened the understanding pushed largely by the Spanish in the 1700s that the border was Rio or Arroyo Hondo. After the American accession to power, American troops were determined to push the border west of this stream and in 1806, troops under General James Wilkinson established an encampment near the Sabine River in Sabine Parish, from which Fort Jesup, south and west of Los Adaes, soon developed.[11] This is the same James Wilkinson whom we’ve met in previous postings about Samuel K. Green’s first employer in south Louisiana, Joseph Biddle Wilkinson of Plaquemines Parish. As the linked posting notes, James Wilkinson was the general who received Louisiana from the French in 1803, the man Jefferson appointed as governor of Louisiana Territory in 1805 — and he was Joseph Biddle Wilkinson’s father.

During the period of dispute over where the border between American and Spanish territory lay following the Louisiana Purchase, there was pressure in some sectors to push the Spanish border all the way back to the Rio Grande, citing La Salle’s claim. In 1804, rumors circulated that Spain was intending to send troops to the abandoned presidio at Los Adaes, and in 1805, tensions arose when soldiers from Fort Claiborne in Natchitoches clashed with a Spanish force camped just to the northeast of Los Adaes. In 1806, another confrontation occurred on the Sabine River, and an agreement was reached that the land between the Rio/Arroyo Hondo and Natchitoches would belong to neither side and be declared a “neutral strip,” a no-man’s land.

When the first Mexican Revolution started in 1810, some of the former inhabitants of Los Adaes, who had moved to San Antonio and Nacogdoches following the closing of the fort and mission in 1772, returned to Louisiana, thinking they would be safer there than to the west of Louisiana. After 1814, these returned settlers established another community called Adaes about 1.5 miles west of the former presidio and mission. This is the site labeled as the village of Adois on the 1832 U.S. land office plat map of this region. This is the village of Adayes that is referenced in John Sibley’s October 1835 conveyance of 640 acres to Samuel K. Green.

The unsettled conditions of this borderland region made for confusion about titles to land as late as the 1830s, with the U.S. federal government trying to sort out the validity of claims in the neutral territory in the 1820s, as noted above. When John Sibley filed his claim at the Opelousas land office in 1824, he stated that he had a right to his 640 acres on both sides of Bayou Adaise “by virtue of occupation, habitation, and cultivation.” William Ettridge testified on Sibley’s behalf that a tenant of Sibley named John Evans had occupied the land since 1813, and the land had been continuously cultivated since that year on Sibley’s behalf by tenants Evans, Henry Quirk, John Sheridan, Andrew Leaper, and Robert McDonald (see image at the head of the posting). In 1824, about 20 of the 640 acres were cleared and under cultivation.[12] The 640 acres that Samuel K. Green bought from John Sibley were not rich plantation land like the land along the Red River. They were hilly, with less than optimal soil in a part of the parish that was not well-watered. I think it’s unlikely that, in the decade and a bit longer that Samuel farmed the land, that much of the land was ever cleared and farmed.

The fort of Los Adaes and all structures of the fort, mission, and nearby village are no longer extant. In 1986, the site was declared a National Historic Site, and in 2004, its ownership passed from the National Parks Service to the state of Louisiana.[13] In December 2000, I visited the Los Adaes historic site and spoke with its curator at that time, a Mr. Cox. He told me that the site is located on what had been land owned by John Sibley, and if Samuel K. Green bought the land from Sibley, then it appears it would sit on the site of land Samuel occupied from 1835 to 1846, when he lost the land to St. François church of Natchitoches. Mr. Cox told me that an Elijah Clark who claimed Samuel’s ownership of this land, as we’ll see down the road, lived just to the east of John Sibley’s land and married a Sheridan, daughter of a very early settlers in the area.

This Sheridan man who married a daughter of Elijah Clark would have been a relative of the John Sheridan mentioned in William Ettridge’s 1824 affidavit supporting John Sibley’s claim to his 640 acres at Los Adaes discussed above. At the same time that John Sibley filed his claim to the 640 acres “by virtue of occupation, habitation, and cultivation,” John Sheridan filed a claim as well, also by virtue of occupation, habitation, and cultivation. Sheridan claimed 256.40 acres, stating that they were sixteen miles southwest of Natchitoches “in a Spanish village” (i.e., the village of Adaes, Adois, Adayes) and bordered by John Sibley on the northeast.[14] Sheridan had been living on this land since 1819, cultivating ten acres of it and growing corn on it. John Sheridan was the son of Henry Sheridan, who died in Natchitoches Parish in 1825.

A number of historic maps allow us to pinpoint the site of the Los Adaes fort and therefore the location of the land John Sibley sold to Samuel K. Green in 1835, as well as to locate other geographic features and settlements mentioned in relation to this tract of land above. A 1718 map drawn by Guillaume Delisle is the first map to show the Adaes mission and fort just to the west of Natchitoches and the Red River.[15]

In 1810, Zebulon Pike produced a map of Louisiana that shows a number of locations I’ve previously mentioned in connection to the tract Samuel K. Green purchased from Sibley.[16] The portion of this map that shows the Natchitoches region locates Adaes just to the west of Natchitoches and shows where the Arroyo Hondo ran between Adaes and Natchitoches. This map also labels the Neutral Territory west of the Hondo, and denotes the site Wilkinson’s encampment from which Fort Jesup grew: this is west of Los Adaes and near the Sabine River, and is labeled as Gen^l_.  Wilkinson’s Camp.

John La Tourette’s 1848 map of Louisiana allows us to see exactly where Bayou Adois or Adaise ran between Natchitoches and Fort Jesup, both of which are indicated on this map.[17] The map shows Bayou Adois flowing south out of Spanish Lake toward the site of Los Adaes, which is not indicated on the map.

On Edward Mendenhall’s 1864 railway and county map of the Southern states, we can see clearly marked the Adois Village that the settlers who returned from Nacogdoches and San Antonio to Los Adaes after 1810 established about 1.5 miles west of the former presidio and mission.[18] Mendenhall shows this village about halfway between Natchitoches to the east and Fort Jesup to the west.

Finally, Rand McNally’s 1895 map showing railroad lines in Louisiana clearly indicates the location of the railroad community of Robeline that grew up on a railroad line south of the site of the old Los Adaes fort after the railway came through this part of Louisiana.[19] Fort Jesup and Natchitoches are both also indicated on this map, allowing us to place Robeline between them and to see where the Los Adaes site and the land Samuel K. Green bought from John Sibley in 1835 lay just north of Robeline. Bayou Adois is also marked running just north of Robeline.

John Sibley (1757-1837)

Some notes about John Sibley, who sold Samuel 640 acres in Natchitoches Parish in October 1835:[20] Sibley was born in Sutton, Massachusetts on 19 May 1757. In 1780 he married Elizabeth Hopkins in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and in 1784, he went to Fayetteville, North Carolina, to establish a newspaper, leaving his wife and children behind in Massachusetts. After his family joined him in North Carolina, Elizabeth died in 1790 and remarried to Mary Winslow, a widow, in 1791. In September 1802 he went to New Orleans, leaving his wife and children in North Carolina.

In October 1802, on a visit to his friend Judge David Ker (1758-1805) at Washington, Mississippi, Sibley met W.C.C. Claiborne, governor of Mississippi Territory and later of Orleans Territory. William Charles Cole Claiborne would soon act with James Wilkinson to receive the Louisiana Purchase from France.

Claiborne was favorably impressed with Sibley and spoke with praise about him to Thomas Jefferson. In the following year, Sibley traveled up the Red River, arriving at Natchitoches in March 1803. He began acquiring property both in Natchitoches and around it, and settled there. In December 1804 Secretary of War Henry Dearborn requested that Sibley act as an occasional Indian agent for the U.S. at Natchitoches. On 17 October 1805, he was officially appointed U.S. Indian agent for the part of the Territory of Orleans west of the Mississippi. In 1813, following the death of his second wife Mary, Sibley he married Eudalie Malique at Natchitoches. In 1815, he was removed from his position as federal Indian agent by President Madison. John Sibley died 8 April 1837 at his plantation at Grande Ecore on the Red River, north of Natchitoches.

During his years at Natchitoches, he was a justice of the peace, a parish judge, and state senator, and he also acted as a surgeon for the military personnel stationed at Natchitoches. In 1807, Sibley published a report from Natchitoches that was made available to the public in a publication by the Museum of the American Indian in 1922.[21] In his years at Natchitoches, Sibley acquired extensive real estate holdings in and around Natchitoches, and shipped the first shipment of cotton from the Red River to New Orleans in 1810. In 1819, he participated in James Long’s abortive attempt to take American control of Spanish Texas by filibusters. Sibley is buried in the American cemetery at Natchitoches, and memorial marker in Natchitoches erected Natchitoches Historic District Development Commission commemorates him.[22] A park in Natchitoches and a nearby lake are also named for him.

In my next posting, I’ll document Samuel Kerr Green’s life in Natchitoches Parish from his October 1835 purchase of 640 acres from John Sibley up to his move to Pointe Coupee Parish in the late 1840s.

---

[1] Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, Mortgage Record Bk. 22, p. 110, #578. 

[2] Congressional Series of United States Public Documents, vol. 316 (Washington, D.C.: Blair and Rives, 1838), pp. 206-7. The town of Campti in Red River Parish is the oldest town on the Red River, and is named after a native American chief, Campté.

[3] U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Documents of the Congress of the United States in Relation to the Public Lands from the First Session of the Eighteenth to the Second Session of the Nineteenth Congress, Inclusive: Commencing December 1, 1823, and Ending March 3, 1827, vol. 4 (D.C.: Cornelius Wendell, 1859), p. 114.

[4] Bureau of Land Management General Land Office Serial Patent 03413, accession #1052573.               

[5] Abigail Grace Scott, “Save a Place for Me: Natchitoches, Nacogdoches, and the Sabine Strip, 1803-1833,” M.A. thesis, University of Louisiana at Lafayette (2020), p. 42. Scott erroneously states that the acreage was 630 and not 640 — or, as the BLM GLO patent for the land shows it, 639.99.

[6] See Gregory A. Boyd, Family Maps of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, with Homesteads, Waterways, Towns, Cemeteries, Railroads, and More (Norman, Oklahoma: Arphax, 2007), pp. 252-5.

[7] The original 1832 survey is on file with the BLM GLO, DM #79976, and is available digitally at the BLM GLO website.

[8] See the “Los Adaes,” at the Louisiana Department of Culture Recreation, and Tourism website, which offers a richly documented history of the site; “Los Adaes: 18th-Century Capital of Spanish Texas” at the Texas Beyond History site of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at University of Texas at Austin, also equally well-documented; Gary B. Mills, The Forgotten People (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1977), p. 1; Betje Black Klier, “Pavie in the Borderlands,” in Pavie in the Borderlands: The Journey of Theodore Pavie to Louisiana and Texas in 1829-1830, Including Portions of His “Souvenirs atlantiques” (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 21-2; Penny S. Brandt, “A Letter of Dr. John Sibley, Indian Agent,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the LouisianaHistorical Association, 29,4 (autumn 1988), pp. 365-387; and “Los Adaes” and “Neutral Ground (Louisiana)” at Wikipedia.

[9] Klier, “Pavie in the Borderlands,” pp. 21-2; and Brandt, “A Letter of Dr. John Sibley, Indian Agent,” p. 381, n. 14.

[10] “Los Adaes: 18th-Century Capital of Spanish Texas.”

[11] See Louis Raphael Nardini, No Man’s Land — A History of Camino Real (New Orleans: Pelican, 1961), pp. 92, 103-108. As Nardini notes (p. 80), John Sibley was helping the U.S. government track Spanish movements in the neutral territory in 1806, and he was evidently in contact with Wilkinson as he engaged in this task.

[12] See supra, n. 3.

[13] See “Los Adaes State Historic Site” at the National Park Service website; and “Los Adaes State Historic Site” at the Louisiana State Parks website.

[14] U.S. Congress, American State Papers, etc. vol. 4 (D.C.: Cornelius Wendell, 1859), pp. 102-3, Rio Hondo claim #71.

[15] Guillaume Delisle, Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississippi (1718): see the portion of this map showing the location of Los Adaes online at Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

[16] Zebulon Pike, Atlas accompanying An account of expeditions to the sources of the Mississippi and through the western parts of Louisiana to the sources of the Arkansaw, Kans, La Platte, and Pierre Jaun rivers (Philadelphia: C. & A. Conrad, 1810; online at the website of the Geography and Map Division of Library of Congress, in public domain.

[17] John La Tourette, La Tourrette’s reference map of the state of Louisiana, etc. (New Orleans: John La Tourrette, 1848); online at the website of the Geography and Map Division of Library of Congress, in public domain.

[18] Edward Mendenhall, Railway and county map of the Southern States, etc. (Cincinnati, E. Mendenhall, 1864); online at the website of the Geography and Map Division of Library of Congress, in public domain.

[19] Rand McNally, Indexed map showing drainage, cities and towns, with the railroad network overprinted in red (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1895); online at the website of the Geography and Map Division of Library of Congress, in public domain

[20] See Janet Karen Barefoot Miller, Dr. John Sibley (1757-1837), His Life and Letters (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1999); Julia Kathryn Garrett, “Dr. John Sibley and the Louisiana-Texas Frontier, 1803–1914,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 45–49 (January 1942-April 1946); G. P. Whittington, “Dr. John Sibley of Natchitoches, 1757–1837,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 104 (October 1927), pp. 467-512; Seymour V. Connor, “Sibley, John,” Handbook of Texas at website of Texas State Historical Association; “Sibley, John” at Louisiana Historical Association’s Dictionary of Louisiana Biography; and Brandt, “A Letter of Dr. John Sibley, Indian Agent,” cited supra, n. 8. In addition to providing biographical information about Sibley, Brandt published a 6 August 1807 letter from Sibley to Governor Claiborne held by the Yvonne Claiborne Humphreys Collection of the Eugene P. Watson Memorial Library at Northwestern University, Natchitoches. Whittington, pp. 467f, published Sibley’s journal from the period July-October 1802; the journal is held by Lindenwood College, St. Charles, Missouri. Sibley’s papers are held by various repositories including the Missouri Historical Society at St. Louis.

[21] A Report from Natchitoches in 1807, ed. Annie Heoise Abel (New York: Museum of the American Indian, 1922).

[22] “Dr. John Sibley,” Historical Marker Database, with a photo of the marker by Tom Bosse.