Fort Carney (Josiah Carney’s Fort)

Fort Carney was a stockade fort built in 1813 in present-day Clarke County, Alabama during the Creek War. Also known as Fort Hawn, built by Josiah Carney, who settled on the River in 1809. After Red Stick warriors began attacking settlers in the area, many families joined together to create protective stockades. Josiah Carney, who moved to Clarke County in 1809 from North Carolina, began building a stockade in 1813 at Carney’s Bluff. Carney’s Bluff was later known as Gullett’s Bluff. Fort Carney was also known as Fort Hawn or Fort Gullett. The fort site was located six miles south of Jackson on the road from Jackson to Mount Vernon.[3]

Fort Carney housed about four hundred people.  Located six miles south from Jackson, Alabama, in Clarke County, at Gullet’s Bluff, now called Carney Bluff, on the line of travel to Mount Vernon, Alabama.

History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi:

Rumors of the advance of the Indians were rife, and were believed. In Clarke county—in the fork of the rivers—a chain of rude defences had hastily been constructed by the citizens, and were filled, to overflowing, with white people and negroes. One of these was at Gullet’s Bluff, upon the Tombigby, another at Easley’s station, and the others at the residences of Sinquefield, Glass, White and Lavier. They were all called forts. Two block-houses were also in a state of completion, at St. Stephens.

During the Civil War, a Confederate fort named Fort Gullett was built on the site of Fort Carney. Fort Gullett was built in 1862 to protect the nearby salt wells. Fort Gullett also served to prevent Federal gunboats from traveling up the Tombigbee River.