Memorable Walker Creagh (1817-1872)

                                    Creagh's name on a roster of Alabama State Representatives.

   Today we profile an infinitely obscure Alabama state representative with the unusual name of Memorable Walker Creagh. As you may have guessed, no picture of Memorable Creagh could be found for this article, and the information contained herein mainly comes from the only available biography on him (a small column in the History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama biography, Volume 3.)

  Creagh was born in South Carolina on July 4, 1817, and relocated to Alabama with his family in 1826. As a young man, he earned a degree in law in his native South Carolina. Later, Creagh earned a degree to practice medicine from a school in Philadelphia, but the book mentioned above states that he "never practiced either profession."

  Creagh inherited a large plantation from his father and with it, the plantation's slaves. This period also saw him enter politics. In 1849 he was elected to the Alabama state House of Representatives from Marengo County and was re-elected to another four-year term in 1853. It is mentioned that Creagh was an "old-line Whig" until that party's dissolution in the 1850s, and later switched political allegiance to the Democratic party. He was subsequently acknowledged as a "good speaker and had considerable influence on the floor of the house."

 On May 21, 1872, at age fifty-seven, Memorable Creagh died at his home in Demopolis, Alabama. He was later interred at the Riverside Cemetery in that city and was survived by his wife Willie Harris (Burton) Creagh (1927-1898) and two sons. 

Addendum--December 17, 2020

  Several years after the above article on Memorable Creagh was published here, a helpful blog reader posted a comments section link (that has since disappeared) regarding Creagh's connection to Matilda McCrear (ca.1857-1940), the last known survivor of the last American slave ship, the Clotilda. McRear (whose given name was Abake) was a member of the Yoruba tribe in modern-day West Africa, and as a two-year-old was captured and sold into slavery with her mother and sisters. 

  Transported to the United States aboard the Clotilda, Abake, her mother, and sister were purchased at a slave auction by Creagh, to work on his plantation in Marengo County. Upon their resettlement on Creagh's plantation, Abake's name was changed to Matilda. After the conclusion of the Civil War Matilda, her mother (having married a fellow Clotilde survivor), and stepfather moved to Athens, Alabama. Matilda's surname of Creagh (having been given by her former master) changed to McCrear, which was kept through the remainder of her life.

  Matilda McCrear had become the mother of three children by the late 1870s and later had a decades-long relationship with a German immigrant, with whom she had a further seven children. During a long life, McCrear sought compensation for her being enslaved while a child, a legal claim that was ultimately dismissed by the courts. McCrear lived long enough to be photographed and died in January 1940, being past eighty years of age. Through the efforts of modern historians, McCrear was revealed to be the last survivor of the Clotilde and was profiled in a February 2020 National Geographic article. Some months later, further facts on her life (as well as the history of Cudjo Lewis, a fellow Clotilde survivor) were featured on the History Channel webpage, which can be viewed in its entirety at the following link.