Without firing a shot, early Madison County settler James "John" Ditto played a key role in America's victory over the British in the War of 1812.

In 1807, Ditto established a Tennessee River ferry crossing near present-day Ditto Landing Marina in Huntsville. For a fee, he would row people, horses and livestock across the river on one of his handmade flatboats.

An artist's depiction of the Battle of New Orleans, the last major clash of the War of 1812. (Library of Congress)

By 1813, Ditto's ferry was shuttling future president Andrew Jackson, frontier legend Davy Crockett and scores of soldiers on their way south to battle the British and their Indian allies.

"If it hadn't been for James Ditto and his ferry, it would have been very difficult for our troops to quickly get to where they needed to go," said Martha Ann Whitt, president of Huntsville's National Society United States Daughters of 1812 chapter.

Ditto's contributions won't soon be forgotten, thanks to a new historical marker dedicated Thursday. The granite sign, a Daughters of 1812 project, occupies a prime spot on the grassy river bank near Ditto Landing pavilion.

Born in Baltimore County, Md., James Ditto migrated with his parents to the Carolinas. Around 1802, the enterprising boat builder and his family set out for the untamed Mississippi Territory west of Georgia.

Whitt said Ditto discovered the Big Spring before Huntsville namesake John Hunt. He built a lean-to shelter near the spring before establishing Ditto's Landing, his riverside trading post and ferry crossing.

The ferry took on added importance after Congress declared war on Great Britain and Ireland in June 1812. Whitt, a descendent of War of 1812 veteran Robert Higginbotham, said American troops under the command of Jackson and Gen. John Coffee made several river crossings at Ditto's Landing.

Without help from Ditto, she said, the soldiers would have had to blaze a more than 70-mile-long path through dense woods to the next-closest Tennessee River ferry crossing in Colbert County. Such a delay might have given the British the upper hand in the pivotal January 1815 Battle of New Orleans.

"If it had not been for James Ditto and Ditto Landing," said Whitt, "we could have been under British rule."