For a man who’s been dead nearly 180 years, Gen. John Coffee has been in the news quite a bit lately.
What’s made him newsworthy again is where he’s buried and the proximity of a proposed Walmart. If the city grants final approval to build, the Walmart parking lot will be within 50 feet of the general’s family cemetery, and an access road to the store will be even closer.
That has some people upset, including his descendants.
“As the country approaches the bicentennial of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, a victory obtained in large part through the efforts of the Tennessee volunteers Coffee led, the city of Florence should consider creative ways to honor this man instead of diminishing his importance by rezoning land next to his final resting spot,” said John Coffee O’Neal, of Clinton, N.Y., the general’s great-great-great-great-grandson.
“That Coffee chose to live and remain in Florence attests to his close attachment to the area, one that the city should recognize and pay tribute to in some fitting way.”
The City Council last week granted a zoning change that would allow the store to be built.
The developer will be required to conduct further testing for burials immediately north of the walled cemetery where the parking lot will be located, and get final subdivision approval from the Planning Commission.
A citizens’ group opposed to the Walmart development has cited the historical significance of Coffee and the members of his family buried there.
John Coffee was born in Virginia in 1772, and after his father died, he inherited five slaves whom he sold to buy land in Tennessee in 1798. He befriended future president, Andrew Jackson, and they started several businesses together in 1804. He married a niece of Jackson’s wife, Rachel, and fought a pistol duel with a man to defend Jackson’s honor, suffering a wound.
When the War of 1812 broke out, Coffee organized the 2nd Regiment of Volunteer Mounted Riflemen, which included a company from Madison County, Ala., according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama. His regiment joined Gen. Jackson’s army in Natchez, Miss., expecting to move on to New Orleans. But Jackson refused to turn over his command to another general and they returned to Tennessee.
In August 1813, news of the massacre at Fort Mims in south Alabama reached Nashville, and Jackson and Coffee reorganized their troops and set out to fight the Creek Indians. Coffee was given command of 1,300 cavalry, and was promoted from colonel to brigadier general.
Coffee was Jackson’s most trusted subordinate officer during the Creek War of 1813-14, most of which was fought in Alabama, culminating in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Among the soldiers he commanded during the war was Davy Crockett.
After the Creek War concluded, Coffee returned to Nashville to recruit and then rejoined Jackson in Mobile to prepare for an expected invasion by the British, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama. Coffee’s troops conducted a raid on the British in Pensacola, Fla., then marched to Louisiana and attacked British forces at Villere’s Plantation on Dec. 23, 1814. Coffee’s attack stopped the British advance long enough to give Jackson time to prepare breastworks defending New Orleans. Coffee’s cavalry and mounted riflemen then moved back and covered Jackson’s left flank during the Jan. 8, 1815, Battle of New Orleans. It was a decisive victory for the United States in a war that saw few successes on land, although the war was officially over when the battle was fought.
After the war, Coffee was appointed by President James Madison to survey boundaries created by treaties with Native Americans in 1815. He settled in north Alabama in 1817 and received an appointment from President James Monroe as surveyor general of public lands.
Lee Freeman, of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library’s history department, said Coffee moved to what is now Florence in 1818 to form the Cypress Land Co. with Andrew Jackson and others. It was that year that he bought land north of town and started Hickory Hill plantation.
Florence was chartered in 1818, and incorporated in 1826. Coffee drew the original map depicting the city’s layout, and did the same for Tuscumbia on the south side of the Tennessee River.
“He was trying to attract other planters and business people, so it made sense that he live here,” Freeman said.
Coffee wasn’t just a farmer. His plantation was what University of North Alabama history professor George Makowski described as an agricultural-industrial enterprise.
“It was a very different plantation from what we see in ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ” he said. “They were wealthy before they set up the plantation, but it was set up as a real money-making enterprise that was unique for this area.”
Makowski said Hickory Hill had a saw mill powered by a nearby creek, and a grist mill that was used by the community. Coffee also grew nursery stock — fruit and nut trees and shrubs — that was truly unique at that time for a frontier area.
“His plantation was the road less taken in this part of the South at that time,” he said. “It was industrial, value-added production instead of straight commodities.”
Coffee was employed by the federal government to negotiate treaties with the Native Americans that yielded vast new tracts of land for the expanding nation, Freeman said.
Coffee died in 1833 at the age of 61. He is buried in the cemetery that was next to his home off present-day Cloverdale Road.
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