These two newspaper clippings were taken from the 5 Aug 1837 edition of the weekly Southern Democrat of Cahawba, Dallas Co., AL, Vol. 2, No. 6. The top clipping is from pg. 4, col. 4. It lists Mr. Solomon Adams' four pieces of property in thirteen parts (labeled by me for easier reference), all in Township 16, Range 7, as follows: ID Section Part Sec. No. John M. Gwin Comments A NE 1/4 23 B S 1/2 of NW 1/4 24 C W 1/2 of SE 1/4 22 D E 1/2 of SW 1/4 24 E E 1/2 of NW 1/4 22 F SW 1/4 23 G W 1/2 of SE 1/4 23 H E 1/2 of NW 1/4 22 Part H and part E are exactly the same in this clipping. This is clearly an error, requiring deeper investigation to solve. As I wanted to see where this property lay anyway, I therefore built a grid (shown directly below the clippings) to represent Township 16, Range 7--each smallest square representing ten acres--and logged the data onto the grid. I then guessed that the missing 80 acres (part H) should connect the other two 80-acre parts (parts E and C), meaning that part H should have read E 1/2 of SOUTHwest 1/4, not NW. Sure enough, when I looked at the three parts (E, C, and H) on the map of Dallas Co., a branch of Bear Creek runs right through part C and where I guessed part H to be. J W 1/2 of NE 1/4 32 K E 1/2 of SW 1/4 6 M W 1/2 of SE 1/4 6 N NW 1/4 7 O NE 1/4 7 .

The second clipping is from pg. 4, col. 2. It specifically mentions Mr. Greer Johnson's property's location as being three miles from the Town of Athens, bringing us closer to discovering the actual site of the town. I built a township grid for the property (seen directly below the first grid). It lists two (or is it one?--see my comment for part C) pieces of land in four parts, all in Township 15, Range 7, as follows: ID Section Part Sec. No. John M. Gwin Comments A E 1/2 of NW 1/4 17 B NW 1/4 of the SW 1/4 17 C E 1/2 of the SW 1/4 18 There may be an error in this entry as well. Looking at the second grid below, one can see that the 80-acre part C is half a mile west of the bulk of the property. It seems to make more sense to me that the property would have been connected (though not necessarily so), and, given the earlier typo, it could be that this SHOULD have read E 1/2 of the southEAST 1/4 (see second grid below) D W 1/2 of the NW 1/4 17

The topmost of the two grids below represents the 36 square miles (called "sections") of TOWNSHIP 16, RANGE 7, Dallas Co., AL, each square in the grid representing ten acres (one section = 640 acres). The yellow yellow squares were added by me to help identify the NE corner of the given sections. Some of the 10-acre squares contain capital letters to correspond with the labels I attached to the various section parts of the Adams and Johnson properties listed above. One can calculate that the property auctioned by Mr. Solomon Adams, all shown in the top grid, totaled 1360 acres. The sale of his property was advertised at least during July and August 1837 in the weekly newspaper, the  Southern Democrat of Cahawba, Alabama.

Several of us have been searching for years for the location of the antebellum Town of Athens, Dallas Co., AL, which disappeared long ago. An old map of Alabama shows the town as being approximately on the dividing line between Townships 15 and 16 and about in the middle of Range 7, the very area covered by these two grid maps. One can see that I labeled the area around the juncture of sections 33 and 34 of TS 16 and 3 and 4 of TS 15 as the site of the town according to that old map.

The location of the Greer Johnson plantation is listed in the newspaper clipping as being three miles from the Town of Athens, which, as one can see on the lower grid of TOWNSHIP 15, RANGE 7, seems to help corroborate the location of Athens on the old map.