From 1799 to 1817, this part of the United States lay within Mississippi Territory, where the area north of Mobile was divided into the Tombigbee District west of the Mobile River and the Tensaw District to the east. For five years, civilians there settled disputes by deferring to the highest-ranking federal official in the region, the military commander at Fort Stoddert. In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Ephraim Kirby judge of the Mississippi Territorial Superior Court and federal land commissioner for the Tombigbee District. A Revolutionary War veteran, prominent Connecticut attorney, General Grand High Priest of the Masonic Order, and organizer of the country’s first temperance society, Kirby arrived at Fort Stoddert and soon sent Jefferson a harsh assessment of the local population in a May 1, 1804 letter, portraying most inhabitants as illiterate, lawless, distrustful, and corrupt, while distinguishing a small number of older French residents as generally peaceable and honest. After receiving Kirby’s report, Jefferson decided to appoint him governor of Mississippi Territory, but Kirby died of yellow fever at Fort Stoddert on October 20, 1804, at age 46. The exact location of his grave is unknown, though a visitor in the 1850s reported seeing a grave marked with his name in a cemetery just north of the fort site, and a later monument marked his death.