Washington County was a center for Native American activity for thousands of years and later saw military action during the Creek War of 1813-1814 and the First Seminole War of 1817-1818. A Red Stick chief named Holms, or Holmes, left Alabama around the time of the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814 and followed the Choctawhatchee River into Florida. In 1815, Dr. Thomas G. Holmes of Alabama wrote that U.S. troops destroyed villages in the "Uchee and Holmes Old Fields," which legend places at today's Holmes Valley. The area was raided in 1818 during the First Seminole War, and Capt. Thomas H. Boyles reported that Holms was killed and his town destroyed, after which Boyles built a small fort near today's Moss Hill Methodist Church. The first American settlers arrived in 1891. Most of the Muscogee (Creek) and other groups were removed from West Florida and sent west on the Trail of Tears in 1837-1838, but a few remained by hiding in the woods, and their descendants still live in the area today.