History Spotlight: Who was Col. Philip H. Alston?

SOURCE: COLUMBUS, GEORGIA'S ORIGINAL COMMISSIONERS: Part Two - PHILIP HENRY ALSTON By Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr., Muscogiana Journal, Vol. 1, Fall 1989.

---

Philip Henry Alston was a resident of Elbert County, Georgia in December 1827 when he was chosen by Georgia Governor John Forsyth to be a commissioner to plan the new town of Columbus. How he came to the attention of the governor is not known. Alston was born c. 1794-1800, probably 1796-1797, in Elbert County; the youngest son, perhaps the youngest child, of William Alston (1750s-1810) and Charity (Alston) Alston (1750s-1823). They were married in 1774 in North Carolina. Philip Henry Alston was an orphan at his father's death and probably did not reach his majority (21) until about 1817.

He first appears individually in a public record as a winner from Elbert County in the 1820 Land Lottery, held to distribute land in both northeast and south Georgia. Alston won a 490-acre lot in Habersham County and moved there in 1821, where he was an attorney in Clarkesville. Shortly thereafter he was appointed a militia colonel and moved to Gwinnett County on Georgia's then-western frontier; a county also formed in 1818 and whose lands were distributed in the 1820 Land Lottery.

Alston's record in Gwinnett County, where he apparently lived for five years or less, is scant due to a loss of many early courthouse records. He was appointed Colonel of the 45th Regiment of Georgia Militia on May 9, 1821, by the governor and served in that capacity until being replaced in 1826. He also appears to have been a lawyer in Lawrenceville in the early 1820s. Apparently, he left Habersham County for a five-year stint in Gwinnett due to his militia commission, or he may have followed one of his sisters and her husband.

George M. Toup, Governor of Georgia (1823 - 1827)

Col. Alston's career in Gwinnett and the militia was hindered by his poor health. In August 1825 he wrote Governor George M. Troup from Warrenton, North Carolina, where he had already spent four months due to "ill health." Having noted the growing crisis between Troup and the U. S. Government over the recent Treaty of Indian Springs and the need to protect the surveyors who were surveying the Native American lands ceded by this treaty, Alston offered to return to Georgia if the governor required his services. He wrote Troup, “I am one of the oldest officers of my grade....", even though he was only 28. There is no evidence as to Troup's reply, but the lands being surveyed included the future Muscogee County. It was probably due to poor health and a need to fully recover from his illness that when he returned to Georgia, he settled in Elbert County.

During 1826-1827 we see his political interests in several issues there that grew hot enough for citizens to gather and protest publicly. Alston signed at least two local petitions of grievances which appeared statewide in a number of newspapers in 1826 and 1827. One of these was to protest the Treaty of Indian Springs of 1825 and the other the Tariff of 1827. It seems likely that this is only the tip of the iceberg of his political profile. It could be that due to his outspokenness on a number of issues he came to the attention of Governor John Forsyth when he took office in November 1827.

John Forsyth, Governor of Georgia (1827 - 1829)

Alston's appointment took place in December 1827, and his bond was dated January 9, 1828. The first meeting of the commissioners for the city of Columbus took place in Milledgeville, the state capital, on January 25th. Alston was present at that meeting and most others until the commissioners' services were terminated in the spring of 1829. While it was not necessary that the commissioners move permanently to Columbus, Alston apparently did or did so briefly.

Two of the commissioners, Dr. Edwin L. DeGraffenreid and Elias Beall, left descendants in Columbus. Alston may have intended to be the third. Other Elbert Countians, no doubt friends and relatives of Alston, came to Columbus and Muscogee County in the early years, most prominent among these would be Alston's cousin, John Banks, who built the Cedars in Wynnton.

Alston was apparently unmarried when selected to be a commissioner. The secretary to the Board of Commissioners was Sowell Woolfolk (1790s-1832), also appointed by the governor, and as an early resident of Muscogee County was its first state representative in 1827, before Columbus was established. Although he moved to Columbus, it was in Milledgeville where Woolfolk married Sophia W. Thomas on December 20, 1829. Shortly after the commissioners gathered in Columbus in July 1828 for the actual sale of the city lots, it was announced in several Georgia newspapers that on "Sunday last" (July 27, 1828) Colonel Philip H. Alston and Mrs. Sarah D. Parks, a widow, both "of Columbus" had married. No doubt this was also announced in the fledgling Columbus Enquirer, but the issues are now missing, as are the county marriage records for the early years. We must rely on other Georgia newspapers which reprinted the news.

The couple was married by Edwin E. Bissell (1793-1838), who does not appear to have been a minister, but was shortly thereafter appointed Justice of the Inferior Court for Muscogee County. The "Widow Parks" turns out to be a sister of Sowell Woolfolk, so the commission was a match-making ground!

Born Sarah Dalton Woolfolk, she lived most of her early years in Stokes County, North Carolina. Her first marriage, in 1822, was to John P. Parks and presumably took place in North Carolina. Parks died "March 10, 1827" either in North Carolina or Georgia. One of her two sisters, Elizabeth Biggers Woolfolk, had married in 1821 in Stokes County to James G. Parks, most likely a brother of Sarah's husband. Sarah may have come to Georgia with her sister and the latter's husband, either before or after she was widowed herself. Her sister's husband died in 1830 and Elizabeth by 1836.

It does not appear that Philip and Sarah had any surviving children of their own. Of the two children which Sarah is known to have raised, one Richard M. Parks was hers by her first marriage, and the other was her sister's child. The Alstons appear in the 1830 Census of Muscogee County with one male child under five, presumably hers, who will be discussed later.

The Alston’s stay in Columbus was brief. The reason for their departure in 1831 is unknown but could have resulted from a number of reasons: Colonel Alston's health (he died only a few months after they left and had been quite ill earlier), financial reasons, to join other family members (once they left, she remained in the new region for the rest of her life), or just to go to yet another frontier or developing area. It should be noted that at the time they left Columbus, they each had a brother living there. It seems his health is the most likely reason for their leaving.

Shortly after they left Columbus her brother, Sowell, was killed in January 1832 in a duel. Sowell had been a legislator and a very influential man in the growing city of Columbus. Whatever sphere of influence he had, the Alstons no doubt basked in it, as well as from being one of the founding fathers and a commissioner.

When they left Columbus they moved to Clarkesville, in northeast Georgia's Habersham County, where Alston had won land ten years earlier and lived briefly. Alston apparently resumed his role as an attorney in the county, as his name appears on some court records. He sold the 490-acre tract he had won to his older brother, James of Abbeville District, South Carolina, on December 28, 1831, giving his own residence as Habersham County.

Sometime before June 20, 1832, Alston died. It was in July 1832 that "Sarah D. Alston, widow of Philip H. Alston" appeared before the justices of the Inferior Court of Habersham County, Georgia to challenge the "Estate of Philip H. Alston deceased." Ironically, while Sarah was essentially challenging his will, none was ever recorded and no other records of his estate can be located in Habersham County, or in Elbert County for that matter. This would indicate that his estate was neither substantial nor solvent, for if it were, it would have to have been probated.

The lack of an exact date of death, as well as definite certainty as to where he was living when he died, adds some mystery to his departure from Columbus and subsequently quick demise. It is also unusual that during the 1832 Land and Gold Lottery registrations, which were going on during the first half of 1832 (approximately February 20-June 20), by some quirk of fate Col. Alston registered for the 1832 Land Lottery from Elbert County, and later won posthumously, and Sarah D. Alston registered for the Gold Lottery as a widow from Habersham County and also won. This would indicate that their residency was not certain and that Alston died during the registration period.

Whether or not she was in dire financial straits due to being widowed with two small children to support, or due to a lack of any immediate kinsmen since her influential brother, her sister, and her husband were all dead, Sarah was married a third time on December 25, 1832, in Habersham County to Hezekiah Dyer (1799-after I860).

Her third marriage was perhaps her luckiest, for it lasted over 25 years until her death on February 2, 1860, presumably in Clarkesville, Habersham County. Her obituary appeared in the Southern Christian Advocate, the official Methodist publication, indicating that she had joined the Methodist church at the time of or before her first marriage in 1822 and had remained a member until her death.

It is not known where Sarah was buried, or for that matter where Colonel Alston was buried. Dyer was named guardian for Mary Henrietta Parks, orphan of James G. Parks, on November 7, 1836. This would indicate that the child was Sarah's sister's child, not hers. Mary Henrietta Parks was born in 1822 in North Carolina and married in 1841 to John Harris Wyly (1812-1886), son of Sarah Clark, a granddaughter of Gov. John Sevier of Tennessee and a member of the prominent Cleveland family. His father, James R. Wyly, had briefly been one of the owners/builders of Traveler's Rest, now a state-owned historic site. The Wylys and their growing family eventually moved to Atlanta after 1860 and are buried there in Oakland Cemetery.

Mary Henrietta, who died November 23, 1894, left many descendants. Her siblings were Camilla C. and James S. Parks who both lived in Muscogee County or Marion County in 1839. They have not been traced. The other child in the Alston and Dyer household, Sarah's only child, was Richard M. Parks, who was born in North Carolina in 1825. He was married first in Habersham County on September 9, 1845, to Sarah Allen. They later moved to Gwinnett County, where she died in 1861, also a Methodist. A doctor and a farmer, he later remarried and was living in Gwinnett County in 1870. He had at least two children, John Richard Parks (born c. 1847), who served in the Civil War and Sarah (born c. 1853), unmarried in 1870. The descendants have not been traced any further.

While Philip Henry and Sarah Woolfolk Alston married and lived in Columbus only briefly, their kinsmen left a longer legacy there. Today, there are many collateral relatives of the Woolfolk family in Columbus. They are descendants of Sowell and Sarah's uncle, John Woolfolk (1781-1861), whose plantation south of the city was a large part of what became Fort Benning.

Col. Alston's brother, William Hinton Alston, and his wife Elizabeth Rucker, moved to Columbus by 1830 and were here in 1860 and presumably later. They left numerous descendants, including a son Philip Henry (1830-1882) named for his uncle, but who has no descendants. Another descendant of William H. and Elizabeth who bore the same name was Philip Henry Alston, Jr. (1911-1988), a prominent Atlanta attorney and President Jimmy Carter's Ambassador to Australia.

Col. Alston's brief stint as a commissioner for Columbus and his earlier political activity foreshadowed an active future. His removal to Habersham County and his sudden demise ended that career. More might be learned about him if any letters he wrote could be found in manuscript collections, if an obituary is ever discovered, through family material, or if a complete search of all pertinent governmental records is made.