McGrews Fort

McGrews Fort

(1813), near Salitpa
A settlers’ two-acre palisaded fort in Section 1, Township 7, Range 1 west. Built by William and John McGrew, brothers. Located in the corner of section one, township seven, range one west, about three miles north of Fort St. Stephens, in Clark County, Alabama; five miles north and eighteen west from Fort Madison.

This wooden stockade enclosed nearly two acres. Some of the palisades post were still in place as late as 1879, and around the fort locality was an old field. Here two brothers, William McGrew and John McGrew, British royalists and refugees, made an early settlement near the Tombigbee River. McGrew’s Reserve, an old Spanish grant, was a landmark in Clarke County for many years. They were known to have become exemplary Americans.