Just south of this site lies Sims Cemetery, where Robert B. "Bob" Sims (1831-1891) is buried. From the early 1870s to 1891, Bob Sims and his followers carried out a virtual reign of terror in central and southern Choctaw County. In 1891, violence intensified, including the murder of the Rev. Richard Carroll, a Baptist minister in the Souwilpa community. In August 1891 at Bladon Springs, as U.S. Marshalls were transporting Sims to Mobile to face charges of producing and selling untaxed whiskey, he escaped with the help of family members and other followers, and several people were killed or injured. Later that year, Sims and other "Simsites" returned to the area near present-day Gilbertown and, on the night of December 23, 1891, ambushed members of the McMillan family, burned the McMillan house and store, and killed four people, including two children. On Christmas Day 1891, a citizen posse hanged four "Simsites" from a large tree limb over the road just southwest of here after overtaking law enforcement officials who were trying to escort them to the county jail in Butler, Alabama; Will and Tyree Savage were among those hanged. Also buried there is Harry Hinton, an African-American "Simsite" captured later and hanged from the same tree as Bob Sims and the Savages. After these events, which became known as "The Sims War," the death toll stood at 18, with nine killed by shooting and nine by hanging; among the dead were 11 "Simsites" and 7 law-abiding people, including those killed at Bladon Springs.