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(Transcribed excerpt is from The Monroe Journal, Monroe County Alabama, December 5, 1935)
PICTURESQUE PERSONALITIES OF MONROE
by
Miriam Brewer Richardson,
Montgomery Advertiser
Charles Tait, Alabama’s first Federal district judge, resided in Monroe. He was born in Louisa County, Virginia, and came of distinguished ancestry, being a cousin of Henry Clay.
While studying law as a youth in Baltimore he lost a leg through and accidental fall. Later while residing in Georgia, this led to his strange duel with Judge Dooly, in which the latter refused to fight unless his leg was encased in a hollow tree stump to off-set Judge Tait’s disability.
Appointed Federal judge of Alabama in 1819, he became a planter in Wilcox County and made his home in Monroe. He died in Wilcox in 1835, leaving one child James A. Tait, whose descendants are worthy citizens of that county.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IN EXCERPT FROM EARLY SETTLERS OF ALABAMA, Part 1, by James Edmonds Saunders
Judge Charles Tait, (brother of James Minor Tait, Esq.), was a man of a high order of talents, but he is now remembered by an amusing incident which happened on a dueling ground. He had challenged Judge Dooly, one of the wittiest men that State ever produced, and the parties promptly met with their seconds. Judge Dooly cooly took his seat on a stump, and his second went down into the woods. Some time elapsed and the second of Tait approached Dooly, and inquired where his second was. Dooly answered that he had gone ot hunt for a hollow log to stand one of his legs in, while he fought Tait (who had lost a leg). “They you don’t intend to fight,” says the second of Tait. Dooley responded, “Certainly not, unless you agree to this,” said Dooly, and of course this ended the fight.
SEE MORE AT https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8033134/charles-tait
ALABAMA FOOTPRINTS Pioneers: Lost & Forgotten Stories (Volume 3)
ALABAMA FOOTPRINTS Pioneers
Includes the following stories
- The Yazoo land fraud
- Daily life as an Alabama pioneer
- The capture and arrest of Vice-president Aaron Burr
- The early life of William Barrett Travis, hero of the Alamo
- Description of Native Americans of early Alabama, including the visit by Tecumseh
- Treaties and building the first roads in Alabama.
