Or, Subtitled: “For wine … Sister Pryer”
In a previous posting, I shared here an article I published in August 2025 in the journal of the Tuscaloosa County Alabama Genealogical Society, Roots & Branches. That article focused on the question of the pre-Alabama roots of an early settler of Tuscaloosa County, Joseph Pryor (1767-1851). I’ve now published a follow-up article in Roots & Branches about Joseph Pryor’s pre-Alabama roots, and want to share it here with the kind permission of the Tuscaloosa County Genealogical Society. This article, entitled “Joseph Pryor of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama: Pre-Alabama Records Gap and Importance of Church Minutes,” appeared in Roots & Branches 50,4 (November 2025), pp. 16-25. Please click page 2 below to find this article.
Thank you for taking the time to research this and write about it. I am a descendant of Zachariah Simpson and thus, the Sarah Pryor and family you are writing about. Much of this I did not know but will try and incorporate it into my ancestry.
You also provided me with a key piece of information, for which I have been looking for a year or so. Some of my other Clements and McGee relatives had an intertwined history with Bethel Baptist Church from its earliest days. I have tried to contact the current church through calls and emails, but I haven’t received any return call. I currently live in Tuscaloosa and just returned from a Tuscaloosa Genealogical Society Meeting when I found your article. I am looking forward to reading your “prior” article on Joseph Pryor and Zachariah Simpson. I sincerely appreciate your time, research, effort and scholarship which are invested in producing a piece like this.
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Thanks so much for letting me know my postings and articles about our shared ancestor Joseph Pryor are worthwhile. I am now planning one about Zachariah S. Simpson, which I’ll send to the Tuscaloosa County genealogical group for publication. You probably know that Jacob Clements and Frances Sims Simpson joined Bethel Baptist church in 1823 — and that Frances was Zachariah S. Simpson’s mother by her unidentified Simpson husband. I had known that the McGees connect to the Clements kinship network through the marriage of Gabriel Clements and Barsheba McGee, whose son Thomas married Z.S. Simpson’s daughter Elizabeth. Bethel Baptist church is no longer in existence, as far as I know. The original church organized in 1818 was at the falls of the Black Warrior River. The church now called Bethel is about 5 miles northeast of Tuscaloosa on Watermelon Road and is a Presbyterian church. The original Bethel Baptist church minutes are at the West Alabama Heritage Learning center in Northport. In 2024, the staff there kindly let me read through the original minutes on a visit there. I hope this is helpful information and am glad to hear from you.
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I actually live about a quarter mile from the current iteration of the Bethel Presbyterian church on Watermelon Rd. Gabriel Clements and Barsheba McGee Clements are my 4xGGParents, but I am not certain of where they are buried. Barsheba died in Missouri, evidently leaving Tuscaloosa after Gabriel’s death. Gabriel filed a claim with the Southern Claims Commission after the Civil War and was paid by the Government for 2 horses taken by Croxton’s Raiders on their way through this area to burn the University of Alabama. His estate was paid, as his son, Thomas (my 3xGGF) pursued the claim after his father’s death. Evidently, Gabriel was a Union loyalist and the Confederates jailed him until his 3 fighting age sons volunteered to sign up for the CSA military. Barsheba’s father, David McGee was a Rev. War Veteran, so I don’t think the family wanted any part of the war.
All of that was a roundabout way of getting back to my interest in the Bethel Church records. I know some of Barsheba’s brothers were involved with the church, so I was hoping she might be mentioned in the documents. Barsheba and Gabriel’s Grandson through Thomas Clements and Elizabeth Simpson, Alonzo Berkley Clements and his wife Frances Elzadia Dunn Clements (my paternal grandmother’s maternal grandparents) are interred at Bethel Cemetery very close to the flagpole, so I drive by them a lot. LOL! I did not know that Jacob and Frances Clements were members of Bethel. That is even better for me.
I was aware of Zachariah Simpson’s mother marrying Jacob Clements but I get a little confused because somehow Zachariah is the uncle to his half-brother’s children who then they marry sisters of Elizabeth Pryor, which makes him their children’s uncle through the Pryor side? So, he is their uncle on both sides? I haven’t really studied it lately.
I am from a family tree with several instances of having double cousins due to several sets of siblings marrying another family’s set of siblings. One would think I would understand it better, but I think it’s analogous to not looking too directly into the sun or it might blind me. My brain goes blue screen at that point. It is either too complicated or too close for me to handle. Haha!
I can’t wait to see what you have in the article about Zachariah. Thanks again for everything.
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There was a strong, thickly interconnected kinship network of Unionist families in northern Tuscaloosa County during the Civil War. As you say, a claim was filed on Gabriel Clements’ behalf with the Southern Claims Commission, attesting to Gabriel’s loyalty to the Union. His son Thomas Clements who married Elizabeth Simpson filed the claim. Thomas Clements filed a similar claim on behalf of the estate of Zachariah S. Simpson. In his claim on behalf of his father Gabriel, Thomas Clements stated that in May 1864, his father was arrested and placed in jail in New Lexington, and those arresting him tried to force him to place his sons in the Confederate Army. He was released only when sons Mannen, Solomon James, and David surrendered themselves at New Lexington and were forced into the CSA. Thomas also testified that those doing all of this threatened to burn Gabriel Clements’ place down in March 1864 if his son Thomas did not enlist in the CSA. Thomas Clements testified that Gabriel said he’d rather die than take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy.
John Hamner also gave testimony on behalf of Thomas Clements’ claim, saying he had known Gabriel Clements for 40 years and that Gabriel “was arrested and put in Jail and his property was threatened to be burned, all because he was a loyal man to the government of the United States.” Hamner says that there was “not a more determined [Union] man in the whole South than Gabriel Clements” up to his death, which occurred in September 1867.
C.H. Lunceford corroborated what Thomas Clements and John Hamner had said.
After the war, Gabriel left Tuscaloosa County due to the harassment he and his family had experienced. He made a will in Laclede County, Missouri, on 25 July 1867, and it was filed there on 10 December 1867, so it’s clear he died there between those two dates.
Among those filing Unionist claims and living in that part of Tuscaloosa County was also my g-g-grandmother Elizabeth Ann Winn Braselton, who testified that she had kept her son Walter out of the Confederate Army and had fed men hiding in the woods to avoid conscription into the CSA. Her son Jackson ended up joining the CSA under duress. Elizabeth’s cousin Judge Richard D. Winn voted against secession at the Secession Convention in Georgia and after the other representative from Gwinnett County changed his vote when it became clear the state would secede, Richard D. Winn refused to do so. Elizabeth’s first cousin Thomas Posey McConnell, who represented Fayette County in the Alabama legislature, also voted against secession.
Some years ago, Gene Armistead, who was descended from a number of families in the northern part of Tuscaloosa County, was preparing to write a published study of all the Unionist families in that part of the county and their connections to each other. The connections were thick and as you say, definitely confusing. You’re exactly right that Zachariah Simpson was a “double uncle” to the children of Joseph Pryor who married children of Jacob Clements and Frances Simms. My great-grandfather Mannen Clements Simpson, son of Zachariah S. Simpson and Elizabeth Pryor, was named for his uncle Mannen Clements, who was an uncle both as the half-brother of Z.S. Simpson and as the husband of Elizabeth Pryor’s sister Nancy! Very confusing. Z.S. and Elizabeth Pryor Simpson also named a son James Clements Simpson, for another half-brother of Z.S. Simpson and for James L. Clements who married Elizabeth Pryor’s sister Sarah. My family tree is full of double cousins, too. Just today, I’ve been texting several cousins whose grandparents were both first cousins of my mother, on both sides of my mother’s family.
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That is awesome history to know. My 86-year-old father and his 86-year-old double second cousin grew up together in Alberta, as they shared the same four grandparents, they are very close. I will send your story to them so they can enjoy it, as well. I have been transcribing as a volunteer with the National Archives and Records Administration and worked on some of the records about Gabriel’s Estate Claim with the Southern Claims Commission, so I am familiar with the story.
Also, I transcribed some records on General Croxton about a horse rustling and fraud ring being run by some of Croxton’s underlings during the Civil War. So, as it turns out, the horses taken from Gabriel, may have been involved in that scheme. The Commission looking into it, deposed several of the soldiers involved and they were trying to implicate Croxton. But, as I was transcribing the situation, there is a point where the file goes missing and it seems to just get dropped. I had never hear nor read anything about that before and don’t think it was searchable before I transcribed it last year. I was not surprised they didn’t charge anyone. as that is the way the fog of war works, but I thought it interesting.
I remember reading the story about your g-g-grandmother Braselton hiding her son from the Confederates. It has changed my view of my ancestors and their war leanings. Seems I had relatives with quite disparate feelings about it but only one side was spoken of. The strange thing about Croxton and my family is that he took horses from my father’s mother’s Clements family and then marched his men to Pickens County and camped out at the store, The King’s Store in Pleasant Grove, of some of my dad’s paternal ancestors, Williamson Riley King (who had died before the war) but was run by his wife, Martha Bonner King and their children. Croxton reallly got around. The next day, they had the “Skirmish at King’s Bridge or Pleasant Ridge” and that may have been one of the last engagements of the Civil War, if I remember correctly.
It’s a pleasure messaging you. I will look forward to your continued research and scholarship!
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You’re very fortunate to have those elders in your family, to share stories they may have heard and information passed down to them. Yes, I had noticed some conflicting strands of information provided in the testimony of those supporting Thomas Clements’ Southern Claims Commission filing on behalf of his father Gabriel. Some testimony seems to suggest that it was Union soldiers who jailed Gabriel in New Lexington. Others report that it was Confederates who placed him in jail. Since he was being threatened because he had kept his sons from conscription in the Confederate Army, it wouldn’t seem to make sense to have Union soldiers placing him in jail, though. Much of the testimony given in these claims filed in northern Tuscaloosa County does have to do with horses taken from farms by Croxton’s raiders. I think that’s understandable since the commission was set up to reimburse families who were Unionists and lost property to the Union Army during the war. People were trying to establish that their horses had been taken by Croxton’s men, and lots of testimony states where the horses ended up. My Elizabeth Ann Winn Braselton, who filed a claim (which was honored, by the way), us buried at New Lexington in Campground Methodist cemetery with her her parents John Alexander Winn and Laodicea/Dicey Horton Winn. I suspect that, because there was contention among neighbors who had conflicting loyalties during the war, people tended to stop talking about who took what side in the years after the war ended, and that resulted in many of us raised in the Southern states assuming that our ancestors were uniformly Confederate. I was very surprised to discover quite a few Unionists in my family. My grandmother had an Irish-born uncle who had been in the war and lost an eye, I knew from family stories I heard as a child. For years, I thought he must have been a Confederate soldier since he lived south of Little Rock in the part of Arkansas that was most Confederate-leaning. Then I found that he had gone as a boy, really, and joined the Union Army in Little Rock, and that he and his wife had filed a pension claim on his behalf, with a file full of fascinating and valuable genealogical information. In northwest Louisiana, where my father’s family lived, there was horrible violence for years after the war, with people whose families had supported the Union or who were collaborating with Reconstruction leaders being murdered and driven out of the state. In western Arkansas, where a brother of my g-g-grandfather moved from West Tennessee following the war, there was similar violence, with people using the excuse of political differences to settle old scores by killing folks. That brother of my g-g-grandfather had been a Unionist in Hardin County, Tennessee, and he wrote in his diary after he moved to Arkansas that in all his years growing up in Tennessee, he had not seen the kind of violence, shootings and stabbings, that he saw in only one year in Arkansas. Much of his medical practice was sewing men up who had been stabbed, shot, or clobbered, often following a dance at which lots of whiskey was flowing.
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I think that was Laudanum that they drank before they danced. Hahaha! One of my Dunn relations grew poppies at his place, or so it was told, to make laudunum and supply his opium habit. All of that is allegedly, of course.
I knew there was an odd county that did not vote to secede in Alabama during the secession times, but I just assumed everything was calm and back to the business of living after the war. This morning, I was looking through the old Tuscaloosa newspapers from not long after the war and it mentioned that the town administrators elected by the newly expanded electorate had not established good order yet in the county. I found a couple of articles which confirmed an old story told to us about some of the Dunn’s in Dunn’s Beat near Windham Springs. I am sure you have heard it before. The first part has not been mentioned in any paper article, but it was told that Jap Dunn killed one of his nephews for stealing an onion out of Jap’s garden. The rest was in the paper where, Ozze (Osse) Dunn and another brother John went to avenge their brother’s murder. Apparently, Ozze shot his Uncle Jap and Jap shot Ozze at close range killing him. As Jap was trying to get away from there, John walked over and ended Jap’s time on Earth with a shot to the head. I see where John fled and the law captures him in Memphis a little while later. I haven’t gotten to the trial yet, but he was in custody in Montgomery from the last I found.
It sounds like your ancestor was not exaggerating about the violence and lawlessness in the Reconstruction South. And you’re probably right that people likely didn’t talk about sides after the South lost the war. Even after 160 years, some families are still in pain or less than ideal circumstances after the losses incurred during the war. I know one of my family lines from Perry County lost one 18-year-old son in an accident the year before the Civil War and then the last 3 sons died during Civil War battles. The only ones left after the war were the oldest men and the women. Their paternal line died on the fields of smoke and steel during the war.
Another tidbit I ran across in the papers was when the Feds arrested several of the scions of Tuscaloosa Pioneer families for counterfeiting. It seems one of them was one of my 3xGGF, ES Dunn. Supposedly, they found stacks of counterfeit greenbacks at his home when they went to arrest him. They had court in Huntsville but I don’t think ES Dunn showed up or he was let out on bond. Whatever the case, he ran from justice. The last I found was a blurb saying that the US Marshalls caught him in Arkansas and returned him to jail in Montgomery.
Now, I have to find those cases and find out what happened. Have a great weekend!
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Laudanum was definitely the go-to remedy for all sorts of ailments in the diary Dr. Wilson Bachelor kept from 1870, when he left Tennessee for Arkansas, up to not long before his death in 1903. I’m always surprised when I read his diary how freely he gave laudanum to his patients (and also used it himself). You’re exactly right that it’s an extract of poppy seeds.
Your Dunn stories are fascinating. I do see lots of references to Dunn’s Beat near Windham Springs as I work on my (and your) families in Tuscaloosa County. Unless I’m mistaken, Alonzo Berkley Clements, a son of Thomas Clements and Elizabeth Simpson, lived at Windham Springs, and married Frances Elzadia Dunn. Their son William Houston Clements then married Martha Ann Christian, whose grandmother was a Dunn, and William and Martha had a son Herman Wiley Clements who married Lela Belle Dunn!
The violence and threats of violence stemming from the Civil War did continue in Tuscaloosa County after the war. My g-g-grandmother Elizabeth Ann Winn Braselton had an uncle Abner Winn, who was a Methodist minister in Northport and who represented the county in the state legislature. In his will, Abner stipulates that he wanted his widow Nancy Adaline Cook to allow an enslaved man Jerry to buy his freedom. Jerry was Jeremiah Abner Winn, son of a Jack Winn on whose behalf Jeremiah filed a Southern Claims Commission claim. This Winn family had a blacksmith business in Northport, and Jack Winn and his wife Lucy belonged to Abner Winn’s father Abner Winn Sr. and wife Lucretia/Lucy Posey Winn. At Abner Sr.’s estate sale, Abner Jr. bought Jack and Lucy and at some point prior to 1860 had freed them or allowed them to buy their freedom.
One of the people testifying on behalf of Jeremiah Winn’s Southern Claims Commission claim was James Wiley Shepherd, who also served in the Alabama legislature. James’ sisters Elizabeth and Barsheba married sons of Zachariah Simms Simpson and Elizabeth Pryor — Richard A. Simpson and Joseph Pryor Simpson. In his testimony, James W. Shepherd states that he had been threatened for supporting the Union and had to buy a gun to protect himself. The threats evidently continued after the end of the war. I also find several newspaper articles in Tuscaloosa papers after the war, when Jack Winn’s family members were assisting freed formerly enslaved people to register to vote, calling for violence against the Winns, calling for their blacksmith shop to be burned down — and I think it did get set on fire at least once.
We’ve forgotten much of this history, because it complicates simplistic black-white narratives. There were also strong kinship networks of Unionists in Franklin and Colbert Counties, Alabama, I’ve found. A branch of my Lindsey family from Spartanburg County, South Carolina, settled in Franklin County and were all of them Unionists during the war — though it infuriates some of their descendants that I have publicized information from the Southern Claims Commission files showing this. My approach to history is that history is what happened, not what we imagine happened or want to have happened. I’d much rather know what actually happened than pretend and make things up. Very much enjoy your comments here, too!
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My little puddle of knowledge doesn’t deserve to be in the same room with the deep reservoir of history which you have flowing through your brain, but I am always ready to learn. I appreciate your responses and the info that comes with it.
The Christian and the Clement Families with a Double or Triple Portion of Dunn should be the title of a book. LOL! I was not aware of William Houston Clements marrying Martha Ann Christian. Not sure how to start, but I will see if I can make sense of it.
Frances Elzadia Dunn (wife of Alonzo Bekley Clements) and Peggy Jane “Sis” Dunn (wife of Samuel Cecil “Sam” Christian) were 2nd cousins, as their grandfathers, Daniel Dunn and Winton William “Wint” Dunn respectively were brothers. The Clements family had 11 children, and the Christian family had 12 children. 3 of the Clements siblings, Lula (my great grandmother), Corrie Lee and John Preston Clements married 3 of the Christian siblings, Marion Jackson “Jack” (my great grandfather). Thomas Edward “Tom” and Mary Frances Christian. So, their children were 3rd cousins to the other children through their Dunn mothers, and it follows that the progeny of that generation of 23 siblings were all 4th cousins to each other, 1st cousins to each other and the issue from the 3 sets of C&C marriages would be double 1st cousins.
From what I understand about William Houston Clements marrying Martha Ann Christian, William Houston Clements was a sibling of Lula, Corrie Lee and John Preston Clements. And Martha’s grandmother, Martha Jane Emeline Dunn (Banks) would have been Houston’s Dunn grandfather, Edley S Dunn’s 1st cousin. I think I have that right.
Additionally, Martha’s father Edward David “Ned” Christian was one of my 3xGGF Jesse Francis Christian’s brother. Ned was a Captain in Freemean’s Tuscaloosa Prison Guards during the civil war. Jesse Francia and two of my Clements kin were part of their regiment, too.
One of Edward David “Ned” Christian’s grandsons lives in Seattle around Puget sound and is 90 y/o. I met his son Kris Christian through one of the DNA sites and he, Lige and I got on a Zoon call one sunday afternoon. It is so fascinating to me that Lige is a living grandson of a Civil War Vet. talked for almost 3 hours. At 90, Lige Christian is as sharp as a tack and quite the card. Lige said he graduated from HS and went to University of Washington when he was 19 y/o. He said he fell in love with a midwestern farm girl while at school and never returned home.
Have a great week!
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You’re kind to say I have some knowledge. I suspect I’m very much a dilettante. My notes about William Houston Clements and wife Martha Ann Christian cite an article entitled “History of the Historic Clements House” by an unidentified author, which is found in the Clements Surname File at the West Alabama Heritage Learning Center in Northport. I did some research there in May 2024 and found that article at that time. Just as you say, Martha was the daughter of Edward David Christian and Mary Ann Banks. You probably know that William taught school at Windham Springs and operated a resort hotel, general store, and farm there. And that he was a U.S. marshal and j.p.
The thick kinship web and intermarriages of these families in the upper part of Tuscaloosa County make my head spin — cousins marrying cousins. James Clements Simpson, son of Zachariah Simms Simpson and Elizabeth Pryor, went from Tuscaloosa County to Slate Spring in Calhoun County, Mississippi, as a young man. In moving there, he was following Elizabeth’s brother Samuel Odle Pryor and wife Unity Fox. The Fox family also moved from Tuscaloosa County to that area of Mississippi.
James Clements Simpson then married Samuel and Unity’s daughter Phebe Ann Pryor — James’s first cousin. You probably know that the Freemans are part of this kinship network, too: Boswell M. Freeman married Sarah Alexander, daughter of Thomas Alexander and Rachel Pryor. Thomas and Rachel’s son John Alexander married Editha Russell Freeman, a daughter of Boswell Freeman by his first wife Anna Maddox. And Martha Alexander, sister of Sarah and John, married Editha’s brother Boswell M. Freeman (Jr.). But I may be misreading what you wrote, since it refers to Freeeman! Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone off on a tangent.
The Christians and I think the Freemans also came from Laurens County, South Carolina, to Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, as did Jacob and Fannie Simms Clements and her son Zachariah Simms Simpson. You have distinguished Tuscaloosa County ancestors, with the Christians of the Shirley-Christian house in Northport, and William Houston Clements of the Clements house. Lige Christian sounds like a very interesting and admirable cousin to have.
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Your knowledge is definitely broader than mine. I respect that. I am still learning a lot. This endeavor has renewed my sense of pride in my country and humility from understanding what sacrifices and pain accompanied our forebearers on their journeys. Dilettante or not, gaining the level of knowledge you have is laudable.
I do not know a ton about any individual family members other than my direct line ancestors. I am working on filling out details, but even with rampant endogamy, one’s family of two joined surnames explodes into myriad threads in the tapestry of our kinship stories.
I had a question or two about some things into which you might have insight or knowledge. If it is alright, I will email the contact email here, as I don’t want to embarrass myself or my kinfolk. LOL! If that doesn’t work, I will come back here and ask you.
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I’ll be happy to have you email me! Will look forward to reading your email.
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I sent one and located what I was trying to find. The second email I typed part of an article listing the people arrested in the counterfeiting ring. Its network went from St Louis to Tennessee to North and South Alabama. And they insinuated that the people involved were from well-known or prominent families in these towns. I wanted to send you the names to see if you recognized any of them. There might be a Lorens County Cosa Nostra or Cecil Maryland Mafia or something. I figured you might recognize them if they were interrelated. One thing I forgot to mention. Frances Elzadia Sunn’s mother was Sarah A Simpson (1838-1908) but I do not think she is related to her husband’s, Alonzo Berkley Clements, mother Eizabeth Simpson (1830-1870). My tree has errors in it though, so I wouldn’t be completely shocked to find out they were cousins.
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The counterfeiting ring is new to me, and fascinating. I think you’re right about Frances Elzadia Dunn’s mother Sarah Simpson: she belonged to a Simpson family in Tuscaloosa County with Kentucky roots, not the South Carolina roots of Zachariah Simms Simpson. I had just emailed you something about that very matter before reading this comment.
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