Samuel Dale

Samuel Dale in the Canoe Fight.

Samuel Dale (1772 – May 24, 1841) was an American soldier and pioneer.

Dale was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia to Scotch-Irish parents from Pennsylvania. As a boy, both he and his parents moved many times with westward border expansion, most notably in 1775 and 1783. With the death of his parents in December 1792, he was responsible for the welfare of eight younger children. From 1793–96 he served as a United States Government scout. He abandoned work as a trader between Savannah, Georgia and the border settlements and as a mill owner-operator to guide immigrants into Mississippi, over Native American lands.

Dale was present in 1814 when Tecumseh enlisted local Alabama Native Americans to fight against Americans at the request of British agents in Detroit. He was involved in many of these confrontations, particularly in 1814, when he served as a courier bringing documents to Andrew Jackson in New Orleans, from Georgia in just eight days.

Dale was elected to the first Alabama General Assembly in 1817, serving until 1829. As a legislator and distinguished veteran brigadier general, he and four other men received the visiting Marquis de Lafayette of France into Alabama. A decade later, he was accidentally injured and was not able to carry out the illegal (against a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court) forced relocation of the local Choctaw-speaking Indians the complete distance from Alabama and Mississippi to their assigned territories in Oklahoma. General Dale was the first elected member of the Mississippi House of Representatives to come from Lauderdale County, Mississippi. He next visited Washington, D.C., to request compensation for the supplies that were bought for his troops. He was disappointed when he received no recognition from the Federal Government.

General Dale died in Lauderdale County, Miss., in 1841, and Dale County, Alabama, has received his name.

References

• Johnson, Allen & Malone, Dumas, eds. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959.
• Johnson, Allen (1959). Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)