The Wondrous McCrarys: Alabama Pioneers: Same Family, Same Farm, 200 Years

The Alabama-original Thomas McCrary was a single, 20-year-old settler of the first North Alabama county who came into that wild country in 1809 on the heels of departing Cherokees and Chickasaws. He had some means, but mostly in his favor was a wagon load of ambition. He married a young lady who bore four children then died, then married his first wife’s cousin; she raised one child to maturity, a son--and that son’s eleven offspring were sufficient to occupy, comfortably, the expansive tract of some 2,250 acres the first Thomas eventually accrued. Early, the McCrarys had a hundred slaves to count on as Thomas branched out to many other endeavors: cotton factor, entrepreneur in several agricultural enterprises, and member of the county governing body. This all came tumbling down in the Civil War; brief weeks after it ended in 1865, he died without a will, insolvent. His survivors regrouped, paid his debts, and managed to retain, to this day, most of his extensive land holdings. This makes the McCrary farm the oldest in Alabama, still owned and operated by the family of the original settler, who arrived ten years before Alabama became a state, an attainment his spirited energy helped achieve.