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The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860

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THE STORY OF GEORGIA

A N I )

THE GEORGIA PEOPLE

1732 to i860

COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME

B V I

i

GEORGE GILLMAN SMITH. D.D. |

Macon, Ga.

GEORGE G. SMITH

Publisher

1900

Printed by

The Franklin Printing and Publishing Co.

Atlanta, Ga.

Cheeked

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

206104

ASrCNI, LENOX ANO

« ^90 t L.

i

Entered according to Act of Congress by GEORGE G. SMITH

NOTE,

I am my own publisher, not of choice, but of necessity. There are no publishing houses North or South that are willing to risk the publishing of State histories by whom- soever written. I have confidence in the Georgia people and have acted in accordance with it. The book is not as fully illustrated as I would have preferred. Some hand- some churches and court-houses would have appeared if the parties concerned had complied with my request for half-tones. Many have, and I am under obligations to them for the use of their plates.

Vineville, Macon, Ga.

'X

PREFACE.

I have tried to write the Story of Georgia and the Geor- gia People from 1732 to i860. I have rather aimed to give a series of pictures than a mere detail of events. I have freely used the labors of those who have gone before me, and have endeavored to put a fair estimate on their work.

Hewitt, the dignified and careful old Loyalist, who wrote a History of South Carolina, which was afterward repub- lished by Mr. Carroll in his Historical Collections, gives an account of the Georgia Colony up to the Revolution. His story of the early Colony is very accurate. Major McCall, who wrote the first History of the State of Georgia, drew page after page from Hewitt, making no acknowledgment of his source of information, and all that is valuable in his account of the colony is found in Hewitt's History. McCall participated actively in the revolutionary struggle, and had a Scotchman's hate for all opposed to him, and his account of revolutionary matters is to be taken somewhat cautiously.

Bishop Stevens,* who wrote the second History of Geor- gia, is very painstaking and reliable. His style is classic and his pages are stately, his stateliness becoming some- times almost ludicrous. Colonel Charles C. Jones, j- whose two portly octavos reach to the close of the Revolution, has left no stone unturned in his effort to discover everything which could interest the student of Georgia history. Geor-

* Stevens's History of Georgia, Vol. I. D. Appleton & Co., New York. 1847. Vol. II., 1859. E. H. Butler, Philadelphia.

t History of Georgia. By Charles C.Jones, Jr., LIv.D. Boston. Hough- ton, Mifflin & Co. 186S. 2 vols.

VI Preface.

gia was in her swaddling clothes when his story reached its conclusion. His somewhat untimely death was a great loss to Georgia, and the completion of the work he had laid out for himself was left to other hands.

Colonel Avery begins his history fifty years after Stevens ends his, and has given in a large octavo a full and graphic story of a stirring time.*

Professor Lawton B. Evans has written a school history of Georgia, which is very full and reliable. I have used the first edition of it very freely, and find it to be very trust- worthy. A second and improved edition is now used in the Georgia schools. Professor Evans has added to my obliga- tions by putting the collection of illustrations used in his first edition at my disposal, •j- and his obliging publishers, the University Publishing Co., have done the same.

Colonel Charles H. Smith has written an excellent sketch of Georgia, which has been published by a Northern firm. It is a mere sketch, but, like everything from the pen of the gifted writer, sprightly and valuable.

I have been much indebted to Adiel Sherwood, who pub- lished the first Gazetteer of Georgia in 1829, and who fol- lowed it by a new and improved edition in 1837.;!; ^^^ little book published in 1829 was the first effort to show the progress of the young State along industrial lines. It is thoroughly truthful. Mr. George White, § who has done so much for Georgia history, has drawn largely from Mr. Sherwood, not always giving him proper credit.

Mr. White's two books are invaluable, and I am very

*The History of the State of Georgia from 1S59 to ^SSi. Brown & Derby, New York.

t A Student's History of Georgia. By Lawton B. Evans. J. W. Burke & Co., Macon, Ga.

i Sherwood's Gazetteer, Washington, D. C, 1S37.

§ White's Statistics. W. T. Williams, Savannah. 1849. White's His- torical Collections, New York. 1856. Pudney & Russell.

PkEFACE. VII

largely indebted to him. lie devoted much attention to Biography, and his personal sketches are excellent.

I am under special obligations to the Georgia Historical Society of Savannah for the use of its rare and valuable collection of books and newspapers, as well as of MSS. bear- ing on Georgia history. And I must render publicly my thanks to the courteous and well-informed Colonel Harden, the librarian, who has given me very valuable assistance.

My friends of the Macon bar have given me free access to their collections of Georgia law books, and Colonel J. R. Saussy and Colonel S. B. Adams of Savannah have given me access to some very rare and important works not to be found elsewhere.

I have tried to be strictly non-partisan in my statements, for I can but think the bitter animosities of the Revolution and the fiery heat of early politics have in some degree prevented a fair treatment of those who were under the public ban.

I have aimed to make a book of moderate size and to give prominence to facts to a large degree overlooked by other histories of Georgia, and I have been much less mi- nute in my account of the first years of the Georgia Colony than I would have been had not those who preceded me given it such attention.

The aim I set forth at the beginning of this preface I have kept constantly before me, and have used a homeliness of treatment and a particularity of statement that would not have been warranted if I had designed to write a com- plete history for general circulation and reference.

The interesting story of De Soto in Georgia, which has so fascinated the early historians, has been so well told by Pickett, Jones and Stevens, that it was not necessary that I should tell it again, even if I regarded it, as I do not, as a part of the story of the Georgia people. It is an incident in the history of the Spaniards which is of very great in-

VIII Preface.

terest, and the account given by the Spanish chronicler is an amusing illustration of the temptation, never resisted in those days, to draw largely on the fancy for facts. To find bushels of precious pearls, wonderful princesses and great cities in the Georgia forests was possible only to those Spanish romancers.

A glance over the Bibliography appended will show my sources of information. I have in almost every instance referred to the original copies of the books referred to, and have been compelled in only one instance, that of DeBrahm's account of the province of Georgia, to take my facts at second-hand. I am indebted to Colonel C. C. Jones for the facts recited by this German engineer.

I have found the work of preparing this volume a diffi- cult one, not because I had no sufficient supply of material, but because of the difficulty of bringing into a moderate compass so much of interest to the Georgia people.

The good ladies of the Atlanta Chapters had prepared and put at my disposal, at their expense, as full a roster of the Georgia troops as could be secured. The well-informed and untiring Captain B. F. Johnson did the work, with the cooperation of the Secretary of State, Colonel Cook. In the Appendix is found the result of this labor.

George G. Smith.

Vi?ieville, Macon, Ga.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. Journal of Wm. Stephens, Esq., 3 vols., London, 1744. This very rare and very valuable book is to be found in

the library of the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah. It has been freely drawn upon by Hewitt, McCall, Bishop Stevens and Colonel Jones. It is very full and very reli able. It covers the period between 1738 and 1741.

2. Bartram's Journal of a Botanist.

3. Journal of John Wesley, Wesley's works, vol. I., Eaton & Maines, New York. Journal of Charles Wesley, in Jackson's Life. Whitefield's Letters and Journal as found in his life by Gillies, and in his works. London, 1770.

These books are of great service, especially the Journal of John Wesley, in which he gives much valuable informa- tion about the first days of Georgia and the Letters of White- field, which extend over thirty years.

4. Hewitt's History, as found in Carroll's Collections.

Dr. Hewitt was a Presbyterian minister of Charleston, and an intense Loyalist.

5. Bancroft's History, 2 vols.

6. Memorials of Oglethorpe, by Dr. Harris of Boston.

This biography, the only one we have of Oglethorpe, is, as far as the facts go, a valuable work. As is not unusual with biographers, he aims to magnify the subject of his story unduly.

X Bibliography.

7. Oglethorpe's Letters. Georgia Historical Society, vol. 3.

These are very valuable and cast much light on the early days of the colony.

A NevT and Accurate Account of the Province of South Carolina and Georgia. London, 1733.

A Voyage to Georgia, by Francis Moore, 1744.

An Impartial Inquiry, 1741.

Reasons for Establishing the Colony of Georgia, 1733.

The State of the Province of Georgia, 1740.

A Brief Account, a Tract against the Trustees, 1741.

Tailfer's Narrative, antagonistic to Oglethorpe. Pub- lished in Charleston, S. C, 1741.

The Trustee's Statement. London, 1742.

Governor Wright's Letter.

8. McCall's History of Georgia, 181 i.

9. Stevens's History of Georgia, vol. i. D. Appleton & Co., 1847. Stevens's History of Georgia, vol. 2. E. H. Butler & Co., 1858.

10. History of Georgia, by Colonel Chas. C. Jones, 2 vols., 1883.

As far as Colonel Jones goes he has left nothing behind him. Fair, non-partisan, graceful in style, his two large volumes are invaluable.

11. Life of James Jackson, by Judge T. U. P. Charlton, 1809. Reprint of Thomas Meghan, 1896. A full account of General Jackson's army life.

12. Pamphlets of Georgia History, by A. H. Chappell, E^sq.

This series of j)amphlets, which were published in Co- lumbus in 1873, and republished by Thos. Meghan in

Bibliography. xi

Atlanta in 1896, are very valuable and I have drawn freely on them.

13. History of Savannah, by Lee & Agnew.

14. History of Savannah, by C. C. Jones.

15. History of Augusta, by C. C. Jones.

16. History of Atlanta, by E. Y. Clarke.

17. History of Macon, by J. C. Butler, have all aided me in making up my history of the cities. Mr. Butler's book is especially valuable in recovering everything which concerns Macon's infant history.

18. Memoirs of Georgia, published by the Georgia His- torical Association.

Two large volumes, to which contributions were made by Colonel Avery, Mr. J. Chandler Harris, Mr. W. P. Reed, Chas. N. West, Esq., General C. A. Evans, Dr. Foster and others, and in which there are a great many biographical sketches. There is much in this book which is very valuable.

19. King Alcohol in the Land of King Cotton, by Professor Scomp.

It is a very voluminous, accurate and carefully written story of the temperance reform. It is a v^^ork of great re- search, but is unreadably minute in its statements.

20. History OF Georgia, 1850 to 1881. Avery. This is a full and sprightly account of a stormy time.

CoLOiNiAL Laws of Georgia. Lewis Johnson, 1771.

There are only three volumes of this collection of which I have knowledge, one in the Historical Society in Savan- nah, and two owned by J. R. Saussy, Esq., that city.

XII Bibliography.

The Egmont Papers, published by Mr. DeRenne, which shed much light on colonial history.

Watkins's Digest of Georgia Laws to 1800. R. Aiken, 1st Ed., Philadelphia.

Marbury's Georgia Laws. R. Aiken, Philadelphia.

Compilation of Georgia Laws, by Augustine S. Clayton, to 1 8 10.

Compilation of Georgia Laws, by L. Q. C. Lamar, Sr., to 1820.

Compilation of Georgia Laws, by W. C. Dawson, to 1825.

Digest of Georgia Laws, by O. H. Prince, 1837.

Sherwood's Gazetteer of Georgia, ist Ed., 1829. Second edition, Washington, D. C, 1837.

It is difficult to speak too highly of this unpretending work. It casts a flood of light over the second period of Georgia history.

White's Statistics. Mr. White was largely indebted to Sherwood, but was a laborious and patient investigator himself, and his Book of Statistics, somewhat inaccurately called such, is invaluable. His larger work. Historical Collections, gives a very great amount of valuable matter out of which a history can be made, and has been of great service to me.

Georgians, by Governor Gilmer, is a rare book, full of reminiscences, very interesting and generally reliable.

Bench and Bar of Georgia, a series of biographical sketches of distinguished lawyers, by Stephen F. Miller, is a very carefully prepared, trustworthy and somewhat diffuse -account of some of the leading lawyers of the State. It was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.

Reminiscences of a Georgia Lawyer, by Judge Garnett Andrews, is a pamphlet which aims at showing some of the ludicrous things in early Georgia, but casts some light on the early history of the period.

BlBLIOGRAPUY. XIII

Georgia Scenes, Wm. Mitten; by Judge A. B. Long- street, These books are invaluable for the information they give of the social life of the second generation of Georgians.

Asbury's Journal, giving an account of early Methodism.

Bishop Stevens's Centennial Address, presenting a sketch of the Episcopal Church in Georgia.

Campbell's History of the Baptists. J. W. Burke & Co., Macon. History of Baptists, Christian Index Pub. Co.

Wilson's Necrology of the Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, 1887.

Smith's History of Methodism in Georgia. J. W. Burke •& Co., Macon.

Life of Edmond Bottsford. Mallary.

Life of Jesse Mercer. Mallary.

Life of James O. Andrew. Smith.

Life of Geo. F. Pierce. Smith.

Life of Robert Toombs. Stovall.

Life of B. H. Hill. Hill.

Life of Alex. H. Stephens. Brown & Johnson.

Life of Linton Stephens. Waddell.

Memorial of Howell Cobb. Boykin.

Georgia Gazette, from 1765 till its suspension.

The Augusta Chro?iicle, from i 796.

The Georgia Messenger ami Telegraph, in Macon

The Milledgeville Federal Union, from 1825.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Georgia under the Trustees — 1732 to 1754. — Preliminan — Carolina. Settled — Mr. Oglethorpe Plans a Benevolent Colony — A Board of Trustees Organized — The King Makes a Grant of Territory West of the Savannah River — Proposal Made to Immigrants — Immigration of Thirty-five Families — Dr. Herbert First Clergyman — Immigrants Ar- rive at Charleston and Beaufort — Colonel Bull and Mr. Oglethorpe Select a Place for the Settlement of the Colony — Tomichichi and his People — Savannah Laid Out — Coming of the Salzburghers — Coming^ of the Highlanders — Second Immigration of English People, Salz- burghers and Moravians — Troubles with the Spaniards — Mr. Ogle- thorpe Commissioned a Colonel, Raises a Regiment and Commands the British Forces — ^The Spanish War — The War Over — Mr. Oglethorpe at Frederica — Trouble with Malcontents — Mr. Oglethorpe's Return to England — Number of Immigrants up to his Date of Departure — The English Settlement — Allowance to Immigrants — Beneficiaries of the Trustees — Rum Forbidden -Slavery Prohibited — Reason for the Pro- hibition of Slavery — Difiiculties Encountered by First Settlers — Failure of the Attempt to Make Wine and Silk — Discontent of the Colonists — Controversy — The Side of the Trustees — The Side of the Malcon- tents— List of the Malcontents — The First Office-holders and their Occupation — Mr. Oglethorpe's Treaty with the Creeks — The Scotch Settlement — Origin of the Immigration — John More Mcintosh — Pastor McLeod, the First Presbyterian Minister in Georgia — New Inverness Founded — Partial List of the Colonists in New Inverness in 1740 — Change of Name to Darien — Breaking up of the Scotch Settlement — The German Settlement — The Coming of the Salzburghers and their First Settlement at Ebenezer — Failure of the Settlement — Second Settlement — Partial List of the First Immigrants — Coming of a Second Colony of Germans — Frederica — Description of St. Simons Island — Settlement of Frederica — Rapid Growth of the City — Its Rapid Decline — Mr. James Spalding — Augusta Settled in 1735 — A Sketch of its First Years — George Galphin — Indian Slave Trade — Results of the Efforts of the Trustees — Change of Laws — Slavery Permitted — Practical Fail- ure of the Colony — The First Assembly Called — Surrender of the Charter — Amount of Land Granted — Religious History of the Colony for the First Twenty Years 1-37'

XVI Contents.

CHAPTER II,

Under the Royal Governors. — Governor Reynolds — Some of his Dif- ficulties with the Colonists. — Dr. Little — Clement Martin Removed from the Council — Governor Reynolds Asks to be Recalled — Georgia as it Appeared in his Time — The Dorchester Settlement — The English Emigration to Dorchester, Mass. — The Settlement of Dorchester, S. C. — Removal to Georgia — List of the First Patentees — Midway Church Built — Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett — The Land Grants Made by Governor Reynolds — Slavery in the Colony — Native Africans — The Condition of the New Negroes — Laws for Regulation of the Slaves — Governor Ellis — His Administration — Church of England Established — Episcopal Churches in Georgia — The First Presbyterian Church — The Congregational — The Lutheran — The List of Parishes — Governor James Wright — The Capital Settled in Savannah — Governor Wright's First Assembly — Condition of Affairs in the Colony — Troubles Im- pending in Consequence of the Stamp Act — Collision between Gov- ernor Wright and the Assembly — The Newly Ceded Lands and the Middle Georgia People — General View of the Colony to 1774 — Mr. Whitefield's College Plan— The Moral Tone of the Colony— Sabbath Laws — Governor James Wright's Administration — Education in the Colony — Advance of the Colony among the English, the Scotch, the Germans, in St. George's Parish, Augusta, and St. Paul's Parish — Social Changes — Religious Movements — Baptists Enter the State. .38- 72

CHAPTER III.

.'■Revolution. — The Call for a Meeting of the Disaffected — Appointments of the Revolutionary Committee — Passage of Resolutions — Governor Wright's Counter Movement — Call of a Congress — Failure — Dissatis- faction of St. John's Parish — Lyman Hall — Increase of Excitement — Stealing Gunpowder — War Begun at Lexington — Call for a Congress ■ — Members of the Congress — Archibald Bulloch the President — Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones, John Glen, John Houston, Edward Telfair, Dr. Zubly. Wm. Gibbons, John Adam Truetlen, Geo. Walton — Organ- ization of the Council of Safety — Governor Wright Virtually Deposed — The Formation of the Battalion of Georgia Troops — Lachlan jNIc- Intosh, Samuel Elbert, John Habersham, James Jackson — Mr. Bulloch Elected Temporary President — Convention Called — Expedition to St. Augustine a Failure — Peaceful Condition of Affairs in the Colony 1 776-1 778 — Constitutional Convention — List of Members not to be Found — Constitutional Provisions — Formation of Counties — Act of Confiscation and Amercement — Truetlen Elected Governor — Gwin- nett's Duel with Mcintosh — Both W^ounded — The War in Earnest 1779 — Triumphant March of the British — Capture of Savannah — Flight of -Legislature — Trouble witli Tories — Capture of Augusta — Colonel

Contents. xvii--

Twiggs, the Fews, Wm. Candler, Elijah Clarke — Sir James Wright at Home Again — Act of Proscription — The Battle of Kettle Creek — De- feat of General Ash — Exode to North Carolina — The Itinerating Capi- tal— The Loyalists and the Tories — Bloody Days — The War Drawing to a Close — Return of the Government to Augusta — Governor Brown- son — Assembly in Session — Act of Confiscation and Amercement — Condition of Things in 1783 — Religious Affairs — The Quakers — The Baptists — Marshall, Mercer, Bottsford — Characteristics of the People — General View of the Churches — Social Conditions just after the War 73- 1 1 c

CHAPTER IV.

1782 TO 1789. — Georgia a Free and Independent State — Governors Hous- ton, Elbert, Handley, Telfair, and Mathews — Gloomy State of Affairs — College Projected — The Decision to Remove Capitol to Louisville — The State Government Temporarily in Augusta — Military Land Grants Issued — Rapid Settlement of the State — Indian Troubles — Oconee War — Paper Money Issued— Call for a Convention to Form a more Perfect Union — Delegates Appointed — Ratification of the Constitution of the United States — State Conventions — History of the Counties of Chat- ham, Etlfingham, Burke, Richmond, Liberty, Camden, Wilkes, Franklin, Washington, and Greene 11 1-165 .

CHAPTER V.

1789 TO iSoo. — George Walton Governor — Convention 1789 — Some of its Provisions — First General Thanksgiving Day Observed— Governor Telfair — General Washington's Visit to Georgia — Governor Mathews — New Counties — Educational Advancement — The Old Field School — Shooting Matches — Gander-pulling — Dancing — Fighting in the Ring — Horse-swapping — Drinking Habits — General Character of the People — The Yazoo Troubles — General Jackson's Course — Rescinding of the Act — Convention of 1795 — Convention of 1798 — General Jackson Governor — Pine-barren Frauds — History of Elbert, Columbia, Screven, Oglethorpe, Hancock, Bulloch, Bryan, Mcintosh, Jackson, Montgom- ery, Lincoln — Georgia in the Federal Union 166-227 ■

CHAPTER VI.

1800 TO 18 1 2. — The New Century and the New Era — Political Bitterness — Duel between Van Allen and Wm. H. Crawford — Duel between John Clark and Wm. H. Crawford — Jackson Elected Senator — Josiah Tattnall Governor — David Emanuel — John Milledge — Jared Irwin — David B. Mitchell — Sale of the Yazoo Lands to the United States — New Counties Opened — Baldwin, Wilkinson and Wayne Formed — New Settlements Made — The Cotton Gin — Rapid Growth of Cotton planting — Virginia Immigrants — North Carolina Immigration — Re-

XVIII Contents,

moval of the Capital — Flush Times in Georgia — The University- Opened — Great Religious Revival — Christ Church, Savannah — The Independent Church, Savannah — The Roman Catholics — The Bap- tists— Dr. Holcombe — Judge Clay — Jesse JNIercer — Mt. Enon Acade- my— The Methodists — Stith Mead — Camp-meetings — Lorenzo Dow — Jesse Lee — The Embargo — The Alleviating Acts — Establishment of the First State Bank — First Cotton and Wool Factory — First Stage Coach Line — River Communication. 228-295

CHAPTER VII.

1S13 TO 1S20. — Peter Early — William Rabun — Matthew Talbot — Great Increase in Production — Advance in Population — First Steamboat Line — Improvement of Rivers — First Transatlantic Steamship — Roads — Character of the Productions of the State — Inflation — Change Bills — New Banks — Bank of Darien — Academies — Religious Progress — So- cial Conditions — The Low-Country People — The Low-Country Slaves — Life among the Cotton-Planters — Drinking Habits — The Cross- Roads Whisky Shop — The Georgia Yeomanry — The Georgia Cracker and his Origin — Trouble with the Creeks — Massacre of Friendly Indians — Political Antagonisms — Newspapers in Georgia — New Coun- ties— General Description of the Mountaineers — The Hill Country and its People — The Piny Woods Counties and the People — Emanuel — Irwin — Appling — Early — Walton — Habersham — Rabun 296-337

CHAPTER VIII.

1S20 TO 1829. — John Clarke — George M. Troup — The Treaty — John For- syth— Purchase of the Lands between the Ocmulgee and Flint — Great Purchase between Flint and Chattahoochee — The Opening of the New Country — Banks — Education — Lotteries — Macon — Columbus — The Newspapers — Dueling — Religious History of the Period — Great Revi- val— Jos. C. Stiles — John E. Dawson — C. D. Mallary — Stephen Olin — John Howard — Lovick Pierce — Settlement of the New Country — Flush Times — Education — Factories — Anti-Tariff Feeling — Counties Formed — Newton — Houston — Dooly — Monroe — Henry — Fayette — Dekalb — Bibb — Crawford — Pike — Upson — Decatur — Ware — Talia- ferro— Butts — Baker — Lee — Troup — Meriwether — Harris — Coweta — Campbell — Carroll — Talbot — Marion — Thomas — Lowndes — Mus- cogee— Randolph 338-41

•7

CHAPTER L\.

1829 TO 1837. — Governor Gilmer — Gold Discovered in Habersham — The Rush of Intruders — Troubles of the Governor with them and with the Indians — Extension of Georgia Laws over the Cherokee Nation — Recusant Missionaries Arrested and Convicted — Their Imprisonment in the State Prison — Governor Lumpkin — Governor Schley — Flush

Contents. • xix

Times — Banking Mania — Wild Speculation — List of Enterprises — l^lanual Labor Schools — Mercer University — Emory College — Ogle- thorpe University — Wesleyan Female College — Mission Work among the Cherokees — Final Removal of the Cherokees — 'Nevf Counties Laid Out — The Mountains and the Mountaineers — The Settlers in the Hill Country — State Benevolences — Asylum for Deaf and Dumb — Asylum for Lunatics — First Public Move towards Securing a History of Geor- gia— The First Geological Survey — Dr. Cotting — The Gold-seekers — Salting Mines — The Blue Limestone Country — Political Strife — News- papers— Education — Religion — The Great Railroad Movement. . .413-465

CHAPTER X.

1837 TO 1847. — Governor Gilmer — Governor McDonald — Governor Craw- ford— The Beginning of the Great Financial Crash — List of Banks — Low-price Cotton — Condition of State Treasury — Contraction of the Circulation — Troubles in the State Finances — Governor McDonald's Nerve — The Central Bank of Georgia — Cherokee County Populated — The Monroe Railroad Failure — Completion of the Central Railroad ; of the Georgia Railroad ; of the Western and Atlantic Railroad — The Effect of the Depression — Political Excitement — "Tippecanoe and Tyler too " — The Opening of Mercer and Emory — Settlement of the Western Counties — Features of Middle Georgia Life in 1840 — The Mountaineers — The WMre-grass Country — The Religious Condition of Georgia — The Camp-meeting — Georgia Talent in the Pulpit and on the Ptatform 466-478

CHAPTER XL

iS47TX3i86o. — Governor Towns — Howell Cobb — Herschel V. Johnson — Joseph E. Brown — The Completion of the Main Railroad Lines — A Picture of the Georgia People in the Middle of the Century — The Sea island People — The Middle Georgia Planters — The Georgia Yeo- manry— Introduction of Commercial Fertilizers — Manufacturing in the Rural Districts — Educational Facilities — The Middle Georgia Negroes — ^The Middle Georgia Towns and Villages — Religious Improvement — ^The Blue Limestone Country Developed — The Piedmont Country — Wonderful Development of Southwest Georgia — The Wire-grass Country again — M. & B. and A. c& G. R. R. — Features of Every-day Life — Days of Prosperity — Banks — The Panic of 1857 — Suspension of the Banks — Passage of the Stay Law — Illiteracy of the People — Measure of Thomas R. R. Cobb to Dispel It — The Daily Press — The Southern Cidtivator — The Agricultural Society — The First Agricultural Fair in Georgia — The End of the Current History — General Account of the Origin of the Georgians — Coming of the Catholic Irish and of the Jewish Traders 479-491

XX • Contents.

CHAPTER XII.

Religion in Georgia. — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Metho- dists, Roman Catholics, Jews, Other Small Bodies, Temperance Reform 492-501

CHAPTER XIII.

Education in Georgia. — First School at Ebenezer — Mr. DeLamotte in Savannah — Schools in Dorchester Settlements — School in Augusta — Constitutional Provision for Public Education — Academies Established and Endorsed — Old Field Schools — Appropriation for Poor Scholars — Appropriation for Academies — General Cobb's Measures for Public Schools — Private Academies and High Schools in Georgia — Mr. Whitefield's Effort to Establish a College — The Proposition for a State University — The Charter Granted and the University Established at Athens — First Graduates — A Glance at the History of the Institution — First Methodist School — School at Salem — Manual Labor School — Emory College Established — Glance at its History — First Baptist School at Enon — Manual Labor School at Penfield — Mercer University- Established — Its History — Oglethorpe University — Sidney Lanier — First Female College in the World Established in Macon, Ga. — History of the Georgia after\vard the Wesleyan Female College — Lagrange Female College — Georgia Female College — Monroe Female College — Andrew Female College — Young Harris College — North Georgia Agricultural and Military College — South Georgia College at McRae — Industrial College at Milledgeville — Technological College in Atlanta — Colleges for Negroes and Colored People — Cox Female College — Gainesville Female College — Shorter Female College — Dal- ton Female College — Lucy Cobb Institute — Gordon Institute — R. E. Lee Institute, Thomaston 502-513',

CHAPTER XIV. The Cities 5I4-5SS'

APPENDIX.

Headrights Granted by the Colonial and State Governments from 1754 to 1800. — List of Soldiers of the Line — Soldiers Paid in Money — Bounty Warrants — List of Counties 557-63+

The Story of Georgia and the Georgia People.

CHAPTER I.

GEORGIA UNDER THE TRUSTEES— 1732 to 1754.,

Preliminary — Carolina Settled — Mr. Oglethorpe Plans a Benevolent Colony — A Board of Trustees Organized — The King Makes a Grant of Territory West of the Savannah River — Proposal Made to Immigrants — Immigrjition of Thirty-tive Families — Dr, Herbert First Clergyman — Immigrants Arrive at Charleston and Beaufort — Colonel Bull and Mr. Oglethorpe Select a Place for the Settlement of the Colony — Tomichichi and his People — Savannah Laid Out — Coming of the Salzburghers — Coming of the Highlanders — Second Immigration of English People, Salzburghers and Moravians — Troubles with the Spaniards — Mr. Oglethorpe Commissioned a Colonel, Raises a Regiment and Commands the British Forces — The Spanish War — The War Over — Mr. Oglethorpe at Frederica — Trouble with Malcontents — Mr. Oglethorpe's Return to England — Number of Immigrants up to his Date of Departure — The English Settlement — Allowance to Immigrants — Beneficia- ries of the Trustees — Rum Forbidden — Slavery Prohibited — Reason for the Prohibition of Slavery — Difficulties Encountered by First Settlers — Failure of the Attempt to Make Wine and Silk — Discontent of the Colonists — Contro- versy— The Side of the I'rustees — The Side of the Malcontents — List of the Malcontents — The First Office-holders and their Occupation — Mr. Ogle- thorpe's Treaty with the Creeks — The Scotch Settlement — Origin of the Immigration — John More Mcintosh — Pastor McLeod, the First Presbyterian Minister in Georgia — New Inverness Founded — Partial List of the Colonists in New Inverness in 1740 — Change of Name to Darien — Breaking up of the Scotch Settlement — The German Settlement — The Coming of the Salzburgh- ers and their First Settlement at Ebenezer- Failure of the Settlement — Second Settlement — Partial List of the First Immigrants — Coming of a Second Colony of Germans — Frederica — Description of St. Simons Island — Settlement of Frederica — Rapid Growth of the City — Its Rapid Decline — Mr. James Spalding — Augusta Settled in 1735— A Sketch of its First Years — George Galphin— Indian Slave Trade - Results of the Efforts of the Trus- tees— Change of Laws — Slavery Permitted — Practical Failure of the Colony — The First Assembly Called — Surrender of the Charter — Amount of Land Granted — Religious History of the Colony for the First Twenty Years.

Authorities : Hewitt, McCall, Stevens, Jones, Historical Collections L, II., III., IV., Wm. Stephens's Journal, Wesley's Journal, Whitfield's Journal, Harris's Memorials of Oglethorpe.

Georgia History, so far as it concerns itself with much the larger part of its first settlers, begins in Virginia. Those European immigrants who settled near Savannah, and who

2 The Story of Georgia [Chap. I.

came directly to Georgia from England, Germany, Scotland and Ireland, were not many.

There was little progress in Georgia until after 1752, when the tide of immigration came in from South Carolina, Virginia and North Carolina, and the American origin of the first Georgians is largely to be found in the old Virginia recordst

The researches of Mr. Alexander Brown, the Rev. Dr. Niele, Dr. R. A. Brock, Mr. E. A. Stannard, Mr. A. C. Bruce, the collections of the Virginia Historical Society and the various histories of Virginia, all cast light on the origin of the Georgia people.

To begin the study of the larger part of the Georgians we must begin with the London company.

England claimed the whole North American continent by virtue of John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland, but one hundred years had gone before she made any effort to settle the wilds. After Sir Walter Raleigh's failure to make a permanent settlement in the latter part of the sixteenth century, in the early part of the seventeenth a company of English adventurers, known as the London company, was organized. This was a great stock company, whose avowed aim was to Christianize the Indians, and whose real aim was to get large dividends from the mines and the fields and forests of the new world. The list of the members of this company and the amount of money each man contrib- uted has been preserved. For near twenty years this company made constant efforts and spent much money in order to settle the colony, and by the year 1624 the inhab- itants of the colony were about twelve hundred. In 1624 the London company passed out of sight, the charter being revoked by the king. This company took in all classes of Englishmen of means. Noblemen, gentlemen, tradesmen, clergymen and corporations all invested, allured by the returns secured by the Spanish in South America, the

1732-17i:4.] AND THE (iEOIUilA PeOPLE. 3

Portuguese in Africa, and the Dutch in India. The immense profits which these people gained inspired the hope of those who invested their money in Virginia stock that they would be equally fortunate.

The stockholders of this company, when it went into liquidation, received lands for their investment at one half shilling per acre, and the foundations of the immense landed estates of Virginia were laid by the shareholders of the London company, and it was in this way that so many of the descendants of these people were found in Virginia in its early history, and afterwards in Georgia. The first settlements in Virginia were made on the rivers, and a large body of Virginians were found in eastern North Carolina early in the eighteenth century, and from thence came into Georgia. Many Georgia families count their origin as North Carolinian when it was really Virginian, and many South Carolina people who came to Georgia had an ancestry which one hundred years before was in Virginia. There were very few people of any considerable estate who came to Virginia in its first settlement. The days of Virginia's splendor, when the old Virginian begins his story, were not for fifty years after the first settlement of the colony, and though many of the early settlers were sons of noblemen and of gentlemen, they were very poor, and many a man entitled by his birth to a coat of arms had some difficulty in getting a coat of frieze to cover his arms. In those early days men who came from lordly halls in England lived in log cabins and toiled with their own hands. Not a few people of distinction in after time were redemptioners who worked for five years after they came to America to pay back their passage money to the planter who bought them for that time from the ship captain.

While this last stated fact is true, it is only exceptionally true, and it will be seen that the men of small means, who came from the upper and middle classes of England, Scot-

4

The Story of Georgia

[Chap. I.

land and Wales, men who had some education and some small means, were largely the ancestors of the present race

of Georgians.

That part of the colony of South Carolina, now Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi, was only settled by a few scattered Indians, and in it the Indian trader had now and then a warehouse and a ranch.

Gen. James Oglethorpe.

\

Florida was held by the restless and grasping Spaniard, who also laid claims to the lands on the Tombigbee and the Mississippi. The Spaniards menaced the South Caro- lina colony, and the English authorities realized the im- portance of settling a strong colony nearer Florida ; so when Mr. Oglethorpe and his associates asked George II. for a grant of land for their projected refuge for the unfor- tunate, they met with a ready resjjonse, and all of the country originally granted to the proprietors which lay west of the Savannah was granted to them for the benev-

1732-1754.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 6

olent purpose they had in view. George II. made the grant, and in his honor the colony was called Georgia. There were associated with Mr. Oglethorpe in the trustee- ship of the new colony twenty others. They were noble- men and gentlemen, and had a charter carefully drawn, which was to run for twenty years. Mr. Oglethorpe was selected by them for the work of planting the colony.

He was a member of Parliament, an English gentleman in easy circumstances and of excellent family. He had been educated at Oxford and had in his youth entered the army and served on the continent under Prince Eugene. He served on the prince's staff until the peace, then re- turned to England and was elected to Parliament, of which he was an active member in 1730. He was a man of gentle nature and of philanthropic spirit, and was led to enterprise an over-the-sea colony by finding that a friend of his, a baronet who had become involved in debt and who was confined in a debtors' prison, was in irons for some infraction of prison laws. The severe punishment inflicted on his friend led him to look into the matter of imprisonment for debt, and to ask if a plan could not be devised by which those who were poor and embarrassed might be kept out of debtors' prisons. An over-the-sea colony suggested itself. He would give the poor a chance in the new world to make a living, and, if in debt, to pay their creditors. His plan was not, as many have supposed, to pay poor debtors out of prison, but rather to give poor men a chance to keep out. To accomplish this extensive grants of land were to be made by the crown, and then by public aid and private contribution means were to be pro- vided to settle needy families. They were to be those who could not make a comfortable living in England, men of good morals, who were not in debt, or, if in debt, whose creditors were willing for them to leave England. The

6 The Story of Georgia [Chap. i.

grant was secured, the charter was written, and the trustees were given large powers by the crown.

Mr. Oglethorpe, who had charge of the colony, was per- haps a little visionary, but he was nobly unselfish and heroic, and devoted himself to the interest committed to his charge with great zeal.

The English Parliament granted ;^io,000 to the new col- ony in order to put it on its feet, and the English philan- thropists subscribed liberally to the funds the trustees were securing for their project. They were now prepared to offer inducements to those who were willing to emigrate to the new colony. The colonists were to have a free pas- sage across the sea, a town lot and a section of land, and were to be clothed and fed at the expense of the trustees for a twelvemonth.

The land to which they were going was contiguous to prosperous Carolina, and was pictured to them as an Eden. The silkworm and the vineyard they were assured would enrich them in a few years.

There should be no negro slaves to compete with them, and no large landed proprietors to monopolize their terri- tory. They should have vines and fig-trees, and none should make them afraid.

So thirty -five families — carpenters, brick -layers, and farmers — with Dr. Herbert, a clergyman of the Church of England, as their chaplain, took passage at Deptford on the 1 6th November, 1732, and on the 12th of January, 1733, the Ann reached Charleston, S. C, on its way to Georgia.

The Carolinians received these new adventurers ver^^ kindly and convoyed their ship to Beaufort, where a smaller craft was provided to take them to some point on the west side of the Savannah river. Mr. Oglethorpe and the benevolent Colonel Bull made a prospecting tour up the Savannah river while the immigrants remained at Beaufort, and they decided to fix the settlement near Yamacraw town,

1732-1754.]

AND THE Georgia People.

some eighteen miles from the mouth of the Savannah, on a high bluff on the west side of the stream. This city stands to-day near where it was located by Oglethorpe in 1733, and Yamacraw still holds its old name on the map and in com- mon parlance. The settlers were provided with abundant

TOMICHICHI AND NePHP:W.

supplies of necessary things. The generous Mr. Whittaker from South Carolina furnished one hundred head of cattle to give them a start, and Colonel Bull, Mr. Barlow, Mr. St. Julian, Mr. Woodward and Mr. Joseph Bryan, all wealthy planters, brought over a number of their slaves from South Carolina to assist them in building their houses.

8 The Story of Georgia [Chap. I.

There was no trouble to be expected from the poverty- stricken band of runaway Indians at Yamacraw, and Mr, Oglethorpe soon made a good friend of Tomichichi, who was head chief of the tribe. The colonists were sheltered in cloth tents on their first landing, and as it was in a Savannah February they were abundantly comfortable.

The bluff on which they had pitched their tents was covered with wide-spreading live-oaks, and a short distance away from the river was a wide stretch of pine forest. Colonel Bull and Mr. Bryan brought over some sawyers from their plantations, saw pits were dug and the pines were cut into boards, and the carpenters went to work to provide houses for these homeless Englishmen.

The little houses, i6 x 24, made of pine boards, were soon erected, a board tabernacle for a church was built, and then Mr. Oglethorpe proceeded to select a place for a fort for the protection of the colony from the Spaniards. He went across the country some twenty miles to the Ogeechee and built a fort called Fort Argyle, and settled a few families around it, and north of Savannah he located the village of Abercorn, where there were placed ten families.

The next immigrants to the colony were a body of Salz- burghers. They were originally Austrians who had been driven from the Tyrol and who had been living for a time in Germany. They were Lutherans of the Pietist wing, people famous for their solid worth, and they had been invited to settle in this new colony, and the society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts had consented to pay the cost of transporting them. They were cordially welcomed by Mr. Oglethorpe and were permitted to select a home for themselves. Their agents selected a place in what is now Effingham, and they settled a village called Ebenezer. This spot was not happily chosen, and the next year they removed to another spot nearer the river, to which they gave the same name. There were a few Je\vs>

1732-1754] AND THE GEORGIA, PEOPLE. U

originally from Portugal but directly from England, and a few French Huguenots who came from South Carolina. These were the first immigrants.

In July, the city having been tastefully laid out, there was allotted to each immigrant a town lot, a garden of five acres and a farm of forty-five acres, in all fifty acres. This prop- erty, however, was not granted in fee simple but was to de- scend to heirs, male, and in case there were none, then it was to revert to the trust. The English settlers received their grants in and around Savannah, and the Salzburghers had lands granted them some twenty miles away.

A body of Scotch Highlanders was the next considerable body of immigrants. They came from the north of Scot- land and were settled by Oglethorpe at a place near the mouth of the Altamaha, which they called New Inverness, near what is now Darien.

Early in 1735 Mr. Oglethorpe, having settled these first colonists, returned to England, and in the fall of that year came again to Georgia with a large body of immigrants composed of Germans and Englishmen, and located a new town on the island of St. Simons, which he called Frederica. With these German Salzburghers there came another body of German religionists, the Moravians, who came to Georgia to Christianize the Indians, but after making a settlement called Irene, they removed to Pennsylvania to their larger settlement at Bethlehem.

The troubles with Spain were increasing, and it was evi- dent that there would be a collision between the English and the Spaniards, and Mr. Oglethorpe went back to England to get a commission as colonel and to recruit a regiment for service in the colony. He endeavored to secure married men for his recruits, that they might bring their wives with them, so that when discharged they would remain in the colony.

The war came, as was expected, and Mr. Oglethorpe, now

10 The Story of Georgia [Cuap. I.

commander-in-chief, with the aid of troops from the South Carolina colony, made an abortive effort to capture St. Augustine, and the Spaniards in return made a failure in their effort to capture Frederica, and the war ended in- gloriously. Mr. Oglethorpe, henceforth known as General, became involved in some unpleasant affairs with some of his subalterns and demanded a court of inquiry. He re- turned to England and was fully vindicated.

He did not again visit the colony for whose interests he had labored so hard and sacrificed so much. He was very bitterly assailed by some hialcontents, and vigorous pam- phlets making all kinds of charges were written against him. The reader of these attacks will decide that they are unsup- ported by facts and do great injustice to one whose motives were of the noblest kind, although his jud*gment on the practical affairs of the colony was none of the best.

During his administration there were sent over, at the ex- pense of the trustees, 1,521 immigrants, of whom 687 were foreigners. These immigrants were settled at and around Savannah, Ebenezer, Darien and Frederica.

General Oglethorpe has received so large a share of attention on the part of all who have written of Georgia that it is hardly necessary that I should say much of him here. Save to bring over the first two bodies of colonists and to conduct the Spanish war, he had but little to do with the Georgia colony or the Georgia people. He only spent seven years in Georgia. He went back to England and retired to his estate. Here he remained until the troubles with the Pretender began, and he was selected as brigadier to command some of the militia, but did little military service. He had a nominal connection with the British army, and living to a great age, was at one time the oldest general in the service. He has been very highly eulogized, and perhaps he has been overpraised and his

1732-1754.]

■AND THE Georgia People. 11

services to the Georgia colony have been rated too highly. but he is worthy of very high commendation.

We will now take a more careful view of the social con- dition of the people and glance first at the English settlers.

The colonies in Virginia and New England were over one hundred years old. They were thickly peopled, and their inhabitants were in many respects in as comfortable circumstances as people of the same class were in Europe. Large fortunes had been made in many cases, especially in Virginia and Maryland and in the New England cities, and all the comforts and many of the luxuries of London and Bristol and Rotterdam were brought into Virginia, Massa- chusetts, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and New York.

The valley of Virginia was now being opened to settle- ment, and bodies of fine settlers were finding homes in the fertile valley of the Yadkin in North Carolina. South Carolina, in which slavery was allowed, was very prosper- ous, and there was a great area in that colony yet unsettled where free homes were awaiting all comers.

There was but little inducement for men of capital to emigrate to Georgia, and she was dependent upon the poorer class for her settlers.

In 1735, when the second bod}^ of English emigrants was to be sent out, in order to induce emigration it was agreed to give to every man who would go to the new col- ony a watch-coat, a musket and a bayonet, a hatchet, hand- saw, shovel, spade, three hoes, a gimlet, a drawing-knife, and a frying-pan. There should be given to each one during the year, 312 pounds of beef or pork, 104 pounds of rice, 104 pounds of cornmeal and peas, 104 pounds of flour, I pint of beer for each working-day, 52 quarts of molasses, 16 pounds of cheese, 12 pounds of butter, 12 pounds of sugar, 4 gallons of vinegar, 24 pounds of salt, 12 quarts of lamp oil, 20 pounds of soap, and i

12 The IStory of Georgia ' [Chap. l.

pound spun cotton. The same allowance of food was to be made to women and half that to each child.

In consideration of this they were to work for the col- ony for twelve months, and then settle in the town or coun- try near by, on lots granted to them. These lots were not to be united and could not be sold without a special license. If the land was not improved in ten years it should be forfeited to the colony. A rent charge of two shillings for each fifty acres was to be a fixed charge.

None could take advantage of these offers but persons in decayed circumstances and those who had large families and whose habits were good. Emigrants might take a male servant or an apprentice whose expenses in three years should be repaid to the trustees. To us of this day it would seem as if stupidity could have gone no further than in the adoption of some of the regulations of the trustees, and that if they had aimed to prevent the settlement of the colony they could not have worked more effectively. The trustees made a provision that no rum should be sold in the colony, and that if any one brought in any of the fiery spirit the casks should be staved and the same poured out. When the drinking habits of the people at that time are remembered, when there was as yet no temperance so- cieties, when at the raising of church buildings in New England the keg of rum was always opened, when pious deacons distilled the spirit with a good conscience, when the good pastor had his rum toddy to recruit his exhausted strength after his long Sabbath labors, when ministers and physicians defended the use of rum as a necessity in the malarious sections, it was a remarkable evidence of ad- vanced views that the trustees endeavored to prevent the introduction of rum into the Georgia colony. Their well- devised scheme came to naught, and it is probable that rum was openly sold in Savannah almost from the be- ginning.

1732-17541

AND THE GrEORGIA PeOPLE. 13

If the views of the trustees on rum and on African slavery- could have been carried out as perfectly in all the colony as they were for twenty years in the Ebenezer settlement, the prosperity that from the beginning marked that com- munity might have attended all Georgia from the first, but the unhappy regulation concerning land tenures, added to the prohibition of negro slavery, turned the tide of immi- gration into South Carolina and North Carolina, and the Georgia colony was neglected. The law forbidding the introduction of slaves was not made because slavery was thought to be a moral evil, but for purely economic reasons; and the practical workings of the law soon demonstrated the fact that its enforcement would prevent all development, for the country on the coast could not be developed by white labor. So most of the few people of means who came into the colony at its first settlement, and who tried to use white men as laborers, were compelled to remove to South Carolina, where they could get negroes.

There was no commerce. Rice and indigo, which made South Carolina rich, could not be cultivated without negro labor. There was no manufacturing of any kind. The few men of means, for none could be called wealthy, soon had stock ranches and depended on the wild grasses and nuts for food for their cows and ponies and hogs. The poorer classes, many of whom were day-laborers and artisans or small farmers, were dependent largely on the company stores to keep them from want. The country on the coast was far from fertile, and life was very hard at best.

The main part of the poorer Englishmen were not farmers but came from the cities and were dependent upon handi- work for a living, and those who attempted to farm on their small tracts near Savannah made a poor out of it. Mr. Wesley,* who came in 1737, says "the land was of four sorts, pine-barren, oak, marshes and hummocks. The pine

* Wesley's Journal.

1-1 TuE Story of Georgia [Chap. I.

land was cleared with difficulty, and produced the first year

from two to four bushels of corn and from four to eiorht

o

bushels of peas. The second year it produced half as much and the third year nothing. The oak lands were better,, producing as much as ten bushels of corn per acre.

"The savannas and marshes furnished some pasturage. There were two kinds of grapes, the fox - grape and the cluster. The chinkapin and huckleberry and persimmon were wild fruits." As Mr. Wesley had never been twenty miles from the coast, his knowledge of the real value of the lands of the interior was exceedingly limited, but his account of the farming lands near Savannah and down the coast to Frederica is very correct, and these were the lands upon which the first comers were located. When one thinks of an Englishman who had been brought up in the fertile island going with his axe into a Georgia pine wood or a Georgia swamp to clear his field and make it ready for the hoe, for he had neither team nor plow, and that in an almost torrid clime ; and when he adds to that the wide sweep of deadly malaria in the fall, he can well understand the supreme disgust with which the immigrants looked upon farm life in Georgia. The trustees had hoped to found in Georgia a silk-raising colony ; the same scheme which had fascinated the Virginians over a hundred years before, and which had resulted in failure there, was to be found practi- cable in a softer clime.

So they had planted the mulberry and had brought over Mr. Camuse and his too bibulous wife and a supply of cocoons and began to raise silkworms and make silk, and when raw silk was made sufficient to weave a robe for the queen they were quite sure failure was impossible. Silk- raising was the "will-o'-the-wisp" to the Georgia colony for several disappointing years.

The raising of grapes from which to make wine began well and promised well, but it was soon found to be imprac—

1732 1754.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. " 15

ticable to make good wine in a climate so hot, and this- enterprise was also given over.

The colonists were not prosperous and laid the blame of their straitened condition on Mr. Oglethorpe, who spent all his time at Frederica, and there was formed an anti- Oglethorpe party. The Oglethorpe party was under the control of the secretary of the colony, afterwards Governor William Stephens, who was the son of an English baronet, and had been a member of Parliament, and the anti-Ogle- thorpe party was led by his son, Thomas Stephens.* This last named gentleman was selected by sundry citizens to go to England and present their grievances to the trustees, which he did very vigorously, if not very skilfully. The result of it was that he was compelled to apologize for his reflections upon the good governor, and the friends of Mr. Oglethorpe published in 1740 a statement of the Province of Georgia, attested upon oath, which was designed to show how successfully all things had been managed. This account stated that the ground produced corn, rice, peas, potatoes, pumpkins, melons, wheat, oats, barley, mulberry trees, vines and cotton. That hogs and cattle increased beyond imagination. That there was considerable trade in the river.

That there was a court-house, a gaol, a storehouse, a wharf, a guard-house, and some other public buildings. A garden of ten acres in the city. Oranges had not yet been grown successfully, but would be. Silk was increasing. Vines grew luxuriantly, and some good white wine had been made. The trustees had a number of cattle. There were villages at Abercorn, Highgate and Hampstead. The houses in Darien were mostly huts, but tight and warm, and there was a little fort there. Frederica was very pros- perous.f The people sent on charity from England were

* Mr. Stephens's Journal.

t Georgia Historical Collections, Vol. I.

16 TuE Story of Georgia [Chap. I.

of the unfortunate. Some of them had thriven. Some were worthless and ran away to South Carolina to live by cunning. The servants picked up in London had proven worthless. The Germans had done well. This cheerinsT report was signed by Patrick Graham, John Burton, Wil- liam Stephens, Joe Fitzwalter, Joe Pavey, Henry Parker, James Carswell, Robert Hanks, Thomas Jones, Thomas Upton, Samuel Mercer, John Milledge, Giles Bean, Thomas Bailey, Aaron Campbell, Thomas Egerton. George Johnson, John Rae, Thomas Cindlell, Samuel Parker, Noble Jones, Anthony Camuse, Thomas Palmer, Thomas Young, Thomas Ellis.*

The anti-Oglethorpe people were not to be suppressed, and so Mr. Thomas Stephens, still sore over his experience at court, and Sir Richard Everhard prepared a spicy rebut- tal, supported also by oaths. They said: "The agricul- tural condition was very bad. There was no magistrate in Darien or Ebenezer. The magistrates in Savannah and Frederica had so disregarded law as to be worse than none. The militia was untrained. The land was held on unsatis- factory tenures. Rum was not allowed and negroes were forbidden. Thomas Jones, the storekeeper, was a felon." These charges they tried to support by afifidavits of the mal- contents from all parts of the colony. But the affidavits do not support any charges of a serious nature againr.t Gen- eral Oglethorpe or his chief officers. The}^ only show the great discontent of the colonists and the low state which the colony had reached. The fact was the poor people had many of them been grievously misled by the glowing pictures presented by the first visitors to the colony, and were not prepared to adjust themselves to the condition of things ; and it is evident that, while the trustees were per- fectly sincere and unselfish, they knew nothing of the real difficulties which were to be overcome. f

* Georgia Historical Collections, Vol. 2. "I" Georgia Historical Collections, Vol. 2.

1732-1754.]

AND THE Georgia People. 17

The malcontents who signed the declaration were : John Amory, Ren Adams, Thos. Andrews, Thos. Atwill, Thomas Antrobus, James Anderson, Hugh Anderson, John Brownfield, John Burton, Chas. Brittain, Jas. Burnside, F. Brooks, M. Bright, R. Bradley, M. Burkhalter, J. Blands, W. Barbo, P. Balliol, E. Bush, G. Bean, G. Bunch, P. Butler, T. Baillie, A. Bell, H. Buckley, L. Brown, W. Blecheman, A. Ban, T. Becher, W. Calvert, W. Carter, T. Cross, W. Cothred, J Clark, J. Cundale, Wm. Cooksey, Jno. Jacob Curl, A. Camuse, T. Clyatt, John Carneck, J. Cuthbert, J. Coin, John Clark, J. Dormer, J. Desborough, R. Davis, T. Delegal, Andrew Duchie, Thomas Dawson, J. Dodds, D. Douglas, J. Duddery, D. Douglas, S Davidson, W. Davy, J. Dean, P. Delegal, E. Davidson, C. Dasher, W. Elbert, Thomas Edgerton, John Evans, W. Ewen, T. Ellis, P. Emery, W. Evans, H. Frazer, J. Fitzwalter, H. Fletcher, W. Francis, John Fallowfield, W. Fox, E. Foster, T. Frazer, J. Foulds, R. Gilbert, P. Gordon, Pat. Grahame, John Grahame, D. Grendee, W. Greenfield, C. Greenfield, W. Grech- son, J. Hetreman, Jas. Galloway, Jas. Gould, G. Herbougl, A. Glenn, Thos. Gaulet, Jas. Houston, M. German, Geo. Gorland, T. Hetherington, Jno. Gould, H. Green, J. Harboughs, C. Grunaldi, A. Grant, Jas. Jeansack, John Goldwire, R. Howes, Peter Jouberts, S. Holmes, J. Haselfoot, Ed. Jenkins, John Kelly, Wm. Kennedy, L. Lacy, R. Lobb, J. Cannon, P. Cantey, M. Lowley, H. Lloyd, L. Lyon, J. Loudry, Thomas Lee, S. Mercer, S. Marrauld, S. Montford, F. Mellichamp, J. McDonald, P. McKay, B. Mcintosh, J. Mcintosh, B. McKay, J. Muse, A. McBride, J. Miller, T. Neale, T. Ormston, C. Arlraan, K. O. Brien, H. Parker, Wm. Parker, T. Morris, Sam'l Parker, J. Prestwood, Jno. Pye, R. Parker, J. Penrose, W. Pen- dicke, J. Papot, J. Pemberton, J. Perkins, G. Phillip, S. Rien- well, R. Rogers, Jno. Robe, Geo. Rush, J. Rae, A. Rose, J. Roberson, A. Rantowle, J. Watson, W. Rigdon, Hugh Ross, A. Reynolds, J. M. Rizer, L. Stamon, W. Starflichts, J. Stanley, D. Stewart, J. Smith, A. Simes, L. Sumners, J. Smith, J. Sellie, L. Salter, J. Scott, J. Smalley, D. Snook, G. Stephens, D. Snook, J. Spielberger, Jno. Spencer, G. Stephens, J. Smithers, John Scott, Jas. Springer, W. Stenhouse, J. Smalley, Jno. Scott, J.

18 The Story of Georgia [Chap. I.

Mackfield, L. Sparnell, W. Speeling, R. Williams, Peter Ector, E. Townsend, Geo. Tyrrell, S. Tarrian, J. Truan, T. Tripp, T. Tibbetts, P. Tailfer, A. Taylor, T. Upton, J. Williams, J. Watts, S. Ward, Geo. Waterman, J. Wilson, W. Williamson, W. Wood, J. White, T. Wattle, A. Walker, W. Woodruff, T. Webb, W. Wardrop, J. Warwick, Isaac Young, John Young, Thos. Young.

These composed a very large part of the freeholders of the colony and were from all the settled parts of it. This list of names is specially valuable, as it gives us a knowL edge of some of the first settlers. In the declaration there is also information as to the avocations of those who signed the other paper. It will be seen that there are a number of names found on both papers. The malcontents endeavored to show that those who did not sign their paper were interested in some way with the Government. It gives the avocations of some of the first people.

Patrick Graham was apothecary to the trustees; J. Fitz- walter, gardener; J. Carwells, jailer; T. Upton, commands a garrison of five men; Giles Beca, a baker; Thomas Eger- ton, grandson of wheelright; A. Camuse, silk man; John Burton, town officer; James Pavey, in pay at Augusta; R. Hankes, town officer ; Thomas Bayley, smith ; George Johnson, sawyer; S. Parker, son-in-law of Mercer; William Stephens, secretary of colony; H. Parker, magistrate ; T. Jones, magistrate, overseer, storekeeper; Samuel Mercer, constable; James Campbell, jailer; James Rae, scout, boat- man; Noble Jones, commands a garrison; Thomas Young, wheelright; Thomas Ellis, surveyor. The storekeeper of the trustees had been Thomas Causton. He was the pros- ecutor of John Wesley. He became involved in his ac- counts with the trustees and was called home to England to settle them and died on his returning voyage.

The silk industry had failed. The people were not pros- pering, and when Mr. Oglethorpe returned to England he gave up his place and never came back to Georgia. He

1732-1754.]

AND THE GrEORGIA PeOPLE.

19

lived long and honorably after his return to Ehgland, and his honest intentions to do good have never been ques- tioned. Few men were less capacitated to do the work he had in hand than he was, but no man ever tried more earnestly to do what duty demanded.

While Mr. Oglethorpe was here he made a treaty with the Creeks, going to the nation to do so, which was of great value to the colony. He was evidently more anxious to build up Frederica than Savannah, and was by no means popular with the colonists who had located themselves near the city which had been the first founded by him in Georgia.

Beihesda.

The people who came to the colony were in the main Church of England people and brought with them a pastor from England, Dr. Henry Herbert. His health failed and he returned to England and Mr. Josiah Quincy was his successor, and after he left the colony Mr. John Wesley was the rector of the church, and after two years Mr. Whitfield came out. Of these we have given a full account in the last chapter of this book, in which the history of the early days of the church in Savannah is given at length. This is, however, the proper place to recognize the fact of Mr. Whitfield's establishment of the Bethesda Home for orphans, of which a full account will be found in the chapter on the Story of the Cities (chapter 14).

20 The Story of Georgia [Chap. i.

This English settlement, as I designate the one near Savannah, was by no means purely English. Some of the leading settlers in it were Scotchmen, and as we have seen elsewhere, some of them were Jews and Italians. The planters, at the time that Oglethorpe left the colony, were few and perhaps none of them in easy circumstances, and the larger part of the people were poor and disheartened. Secretary Stephens has left a copious journal, beginning with 1737 and going to 1742, and from it we gather that Patrick Houston, afterward Sir Patrick, Mr. Cuthbert, Mr. Noble Jones, Mr. Fallowfield, Mr. DcLacy, Mr. Thomas Jones, Mr. Mathews (who married Mary, the Creek princess). Dr. Patrick Grahame and a few others were the only people near Savannah who had any considerable quantity of land. Savannah was a straggling village of small log huts or houses built of sheathing plank. In the account of the cities the reader will find a more satisfactory statement of the first years of this principal village of the c :)lony. The larger part of the inhabitants of the English colony lived near the village of Savannah and made a scanty livelihood by cultivating the land contiguous to it, and by doing such work as was to be found to do in so small a hamlet. When Mr. Whitfield began to build his orphans' home at Bethesda he gave employment to many of the people, much to their relief. They had their forty-acre fields on the outskirts and their little houses in the village, and soon . gathered about them some cattle and hogs, and managed with their fishing- nets and fowling-pieces and the produce of their herds and fields to live in a plain and simple way. There were very few of them who were prosperous. There was some small trade, and, as we see from the account of the city, there was some gaiety to be found in the city even thtn There was, however, for the first twenty years in this English settle- ment nothing like prosperity.

1732-1754.] AND THE GeoRCJIA 1'eOPLE. 21

THE SCOTCH SETTLEMENT.

The sturdy Scotch Highlanders had little sympathy with the House of Hanover, and finding life hard among the wild hills of their native land were easily persuaded by Captain Mackay to come to the new colony of Georgia, which was jjictured to them in the glowing language of the times as a land where all that man wanted could be had for the ask- ing. Mr. John More Mcintosh, a Scotch laird, the head of his clan, consented to lead the colony, and one hundred and thirty of them, with fifty women, took shipping from Inver- ness for Georgia. They reached Savannah in due time and then went in flat-bottomed boats to find their new home sixteen miles from Frederica, on the Altamaha.

Calling their town New Inverness, they established their settlement, built their huts and were just getting settled when the war with Spain began.

Mr. McLeod was their minister, and he had established the first Presbyterian kirk in Georgia, and he tells of how the sad failure of their hopes led the poorer Highlanders all to enlist in General Oglethorpe's army. By a night attack at St. Augustine over half of these brave Scotchmen were mas- sacred by the Spaniards. They had not had an easy life in the Highlands, but their life in Georgia had been far harder, and so after this massacre many of the poorer members of the colony went elsewhere. Mr. John More Mcintosh and his immediate family remained, and as he was a man of substance and kept the storehouse of the colony and traded with the Indians, he was well-to-do.

The settlers were in the main very poor peasants, only seventeen, accordmg to General Oglethorpe's Letters, being able to pay their way across the sea. Some of the immi- grants were, however, men of property and lairds of the clans from which most of the immigrants were recruited by Captain Mackay, and while many of the poorer members of

22 The Story of Georgia [Chap. I.

the colony became dissatisfied with New Inverness and joined the malcontents, these leading families sided with Mr. Oglethorpe's adherents and signed a document in which they indorsed him and his measures. This list is the only one of these first settlers I have been able to secure. These were John Mackintosh Moore, John Mackintosh, Roland McDonald, John McDonald, John MacLean, John Mcintosh, John Mcintosh Bain, James Mackay, Daniel Clark, Alex Clark, I. Burgess, D. Clark, Jr., A. McBain, Wm. Munroe, John Cuthbert. These are all the names of the first immi- grants I have been able to recover. These were Scotch without an admixture and most of them traders. At a later period there are found some English names among them.

The remnant of the Highland company, who were dis- charged after the Spanish war ended, did not return to Darien but distributed themselves over the lower part of the colony. Some of them settled in St. John's parish and some of them in what are now Camden, Glynn and Mcintosh counties.

The removal of the restriction to the use of negroes led to the opening by the wealthier part of the settlers of rice plantations, and when the first assembly was called in 1750 John More IMcIntosh was a member from this section. In 1775 among those who sympathized with the revolutionists there were Lachlan Mcintosh, Richard Cooper, George Threadcraft, Seth McCuUough, Charles McDonald, Isaac Hall, John Mcintosh, Thos. King, Raymond Demere, John Roland, Giles More, P. Shuttleworth, Joseph Slade, Samuel McClellan, Isaac Newsome, A. D. Cuthbert, John Wither- spoon, John Hall, John Fulton, John McCullough, Samuel Fulton, Peter Sallen, Isaac Cuthbert, James Clark, M. McCullough, Wm. McCullough, B. Shuttleworth, John McClelland.

Some of these first comers engaged in Indian trade and had their warehouses and trading-post in Florida, and their

1732-1754.] AND THE GEORGIA TeOPLE. 23

rice plantations on the river and their summer homes on the islands. Some of the descendants of these immigrants fixed their homes in Savannah and engaged in mercantile pursuits.

After the breaking up of the kirk in Darien and the de- parture of their minister, there does not seem for some years to have been any religious teacher among those who remained, but after the Church of England was established under Governor Ellis, there was likely occasional service held by an Episcopal missionary. The wealthy planters sent their children to Savannah and Charleston and Sunbury for education, and the poor grew up m ignorance.

As we shall see in a future chapter, there was another body of Scotch Highlanders who came to Georgia at a later time, who came through North Carolina.

THE GERMAN SETTLEMENT.

The Germans who came with Mr. Oglethorpe on his first coming to the colony chose in their location a section of land in what is now Effingham county, and established a village which was called Ebenezer. The glowing descrip- tion of Mr. Van Reck, who was deputed to select the spot for their home, is so extravagant that one acquainted with the country finds it hard to understand how the good man could have seen so much and have been so deluded, and it was as disappointing to the honest Germans who settled it as it has been to the modern observer.

The Salzburghers were a body of Austrian Protestants who had been exiled from the native hills and found a temporary refuge in Germany, and from thence a body of seventy-eight came to Dover, in England, from which place, at the expense of the society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts, they were transported free of charge to Georgia. They had with them their two pastors, Bolzius and Gronau. Their commissary, Van Reck, went with

24 The Story of Georgia

[Chap. I.

Oglethorpe into the wilderness to find a home for them. It was in early March when the pine woods were in their fairest garb.

Finding a spot in the wilderness of what he thought was matchless loveliness, he decided that was the place in which the weary exiles could find rest. "It was," he said, "be- tween two rivers which fell into the Savannah, a little rivulet with crystal water glided by the town, the woods are open, the air balmv, there are wide meadows, there is the cedar, the walnut, the pine, the cypress, the oak, the myrtle and the sassafras, the ground is fertile, and the woods full of game." This was the land the German dreamer found, but when the settlement was made it was found to be a barren waste, and after two years of effort to make it productive they found it would be necessary to remove to another spot. They found that nearer the river and settled the New Ebenezer. They were a very thrifty people and secured help not only from the trustees, but from their kinspeople and sympathizers across the seas, and in a few years they were in very comfortable circumstances. Their history was written some years ago by Mr. Strobel, the pastor of Eb- enezer, and is a very full and satisfactory account of them. These German immigrants were connected with the great Lutheran body, and they brought into Georgia and planted in its forests a German village.

They soon had a school and a home for widows or orphans, and away from the temptations of city life they developed a model community. Mr. Strobel has given the foUowino- list of persons who belonged to the community in 1741:

Messrs. Bolzius, Gronau, Rieser, Laub, Grewandel, Mamer, Kaigler, Zittreur, Runter, Rottenberger, Zubli, Ortman, Kulcher, Ramer, Reidelsparger, MoUer, Hertzog, Hessler, Pletter, Sigismund, Hernberger, Bruckner, Ott, Zettler, Tribner, Eischberger, Arnsdorf, Ruter, Brandner, Lumber- ger, Lackner, Steiner, Schwarzer, Schmidt, Crause, Gruber,

1732-1754.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 25

Schutner, Lietner, Corberger, Grimnuiger, Bergshammer, Landseller, Ernst (Ernest), Rieser, Pickler, Spurlbergen, Niedlinger, Helfenstein, Rabenhorst, Lembke, Muhlenberg, Wertch, MuUer, Treutlen, Floerl, Wiesenbaker, Schubtrien, Kramer, Goldwire, Kraus, Beddenbach, Waldhauer, Pauler, Rahn, Helme, Remshart, Grau, Heil, Buchler, Hanleiter, Bollinger, McCay.Zimmerbuer, Oechele (Exley), Kimberger, Winkler, Witman, Dasher, Schrampa, Schwenger, Mohr, Liemberger, Buntz, Micheal, Beckley, Hausler, Gugel, Schremph, De Rosche, Moeler, Deppe, Metzger, Seckinger, Mack, Schneider, Schuele, Helfenstein, Freyermouth, Keifer, Tarringer, Pfluger, Meyer, Ditters, Rentz, Bergman.

Those who examine this list will find names which have since been Anglicized and slightly changed, but they will find many unchanged which are still borne by Georgians. No people have been more noted for industry,, probity and intelligence. The little hamletthey founded, and which for so many years was the center of so much of interest to the Salzburghers, has long since ceased to be anything like even a village, but the church still stands and many of the descendants of these German refugees are still living. While the Pilgrim Fathers, who were a smaller number than these Salzburghers, have a high place in American history, this noble band of Austrian refugees has been almost lost to sight by the historian. They came to Georgia from their native Tyrol because of their devotion to Christian principle, and wherever their descendants are found the spirit which belonged to their fathers is manifested in them.

This people resided in what was afterward the upper part of St. Matthew's parish. They had been accustomed to farmers' work in their native land and to live in a simple, frugal way, and receiving help both from the trustees and from their German coreligicnists across the seas, they had prospered from the first, and in 1754 their part of the colony received an accession by the coming of a body of German

26 The Story of Georgia [Chap. i.

Lutherans, not Salzburghers, who were brought into the colony by Captain De Brahm and settled at a place five miles north of Ebenezer. This colony increased very rapidly, and, according to Jones, the one hundred and fifty were multiplied tenfold in a little over a twelvemonth. This must, how- ever, be a mistake, as it is not all probable that fifteen hundred Germans came at that time. They settled a village called Bethany in what is now Screven county, and De Brahm says there were three hundred and twenty Germans who came.* There were, before the negroes were allowed, a small number of Germans who were brought over by the trustees, indentured for five years as servants, and in 1739 General Oglethorpe, in one of his letters to the trustees, mentions the coming of sixty-nine, who were distributed among the planters; but there was so little demand for them that there were several for whom homes could not be secured. There were in the number twelve marriageable females, who were taken by Mr. Bolzius to Ebenezer to furnish wives for the unmarried men.-j- Mr. Stephens mentions some German laborers who came with Captain Hewitt. It was a regular thing for the shipmasters coming to the American colonies to bring over a ship-load of young laborers, who were sold to the planters, and Virginia is not the only colony in which the wives of some of the planters were procured by paying the passage money across the seas. These last coming Germans evidently were absorbed by the already considerable bodies of their countrymen who were in the colony.

FREDERICA.

One of the objects of establishing the Georgia colony was to protect the more northern colonies from the aggres- sive Spaniards, who were in strong force in St. Augustine,

* See De Brahm's account, Wormsloe ed.

■j" Mr. Oglethorpe's Letters in Historical Collections.

1732-1754.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 27

and General Oglethorpe on his first visit determined to establish a fort and build a city on St. Simons Island at the mouth of the Altamaha. On his second coming to Georgia he brought with him quite a number of emigrants whom he intended to locate on this beautiful island, where he had a military post. Colonel Jones, to whom Georgia is so greatly indebted for having recovered so much of lost history, gives an account of Frederica in his "Dead Towns of Georgia." It was located on St. Simons Island, oppo- site to where the city of Brunswick now is, and was called Frederica in honor of Frederick, the son of George II. The town was located near the beach, where there had been once an Indian town. It was settled by the emi- grants which Mr. Oglethorpe brought with him in his second coming to Georgia. The emigrants intended for it were landed at Savannah and reshipped in broad flat boats, which reached the bluff at St. Simons after six days of voyaging. The people found shelter from the March weather in booths made of the palmetto boughs. The city was laid out on forty acres of cleared land covered with grass sod. Around it was a beautiful forest of live-oaks, water-oaks, laurel, bay, cedar, sweet-gum, sassafras and pines. The muscadine and fox-grape and the fragrant yellow jessa- mine festooned the forest trees. The island abounded in deer, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, wild turkeys, doves, red- birds, mocking-birds and great flocks of rice-birds. The marshes were crowded with wild geese, ducks, herons, cranes, plovers and marsh-hens, and the waters were filled with fishes of all kinds, crabs, shrimps and oysters.

This is not an exaggerated statement of what was to be found on St. Simons and the islands contia^uous at that time. The island was said to be fertile and healthy, It was hard land to be cleared, and when the land was culti- vated it soon was apparent that those crops which were in-

28 The Story of Georgia [Chap. I. i

dispensable to an Englishman's or a German's comfort were not suitable to the climate and the soil. The settlers reached the island too late the year of their first coming to , do any farm work for that year, and before they could get fully settled the Spanish war was upon them. The money ; which came to the troops and for furnishing the supplies i necessary for the subsistence of the small army helped to ; build up the little city and make it prosperous for a time. It is evident that this new city was a favorite of General Oglethorpe. The only land he located in Georgia was on St. Simons, and here he spent the larger part of the time - he was in America. Up to the period when Oglethorpe returned to England Frederica prospered, but when peace came the town began to decline and soon ceased to be a place of any note at all. It afterward became the home of Mr. James Spalding, who carried on quite a trade with , the Creek and Seminole Indians. There was nothing in ; the location or its surroundings to give anything like per- | manent prosperity to it, and after its bright and vigorous in- ' fancy it declined constantly until there was nothing left of ; the second city of Georgia — not even the name. Mr. Bar- ! tram, the French botanist, who visited this country just be- i fore the Revolution, found only the ruins of what had once ; been the city, and when it was decided some years ago to ' take a picture of the live-oak under which John Wesley : and his brother Charles had preached, they found the oak \ still standing in magnificence, but no vestige of a living |

being near-by. Frederica was truly a dead town.

«

AUGUSTA.

Before Mr. Oglethorpe came to Georgia there was a trading-post near what is now Hamburg, S. C, on the South Carolina side of the river called Fort Moore, and j Mr. Oglethorpe decided to build a fort on the Georgia side ! and orarrison it. This he did, and in honor of the Princess

I

1732-1754.]

AND THE Georgia People. 29

Augusta it was called by her name. In the pamphlet to which we have referred, by Wm. Stephens, there is the following list of Indian traders who had headquarters at Augusta. The names given are: Wood, Brown, Clark, Knott, Spencer, Barnett, Ladson, Mackey, Elsey, Facy, McQueen, Wright, Gardner, Andrews, Duvall, Cammell Randel, Chauncey, Newberry.

There were beside these traders, living near the fort, Kennedy O'Brien, Frazer, Miller, Brown, a saddler, a tailor, William Clark, H. Overstreet, L. Bean, William Grey, William Calahan, McGilveray, Casson, Gilmore, Goodale, Ross, Galphin.

On the east side of the Savannah, in South Carolina, where negroes were allowed, there were numbers of plan- tations opened, and the corn consumed by the large number of horses needed in the trade with the Indians was pro- duced there.

These Indian traders sent out their men to the towns of the Chickasaws, Uchees, Creeks and Cherokees, and in the spring season great crowds of Indians came with their ponies loaded with peltry to trade at the post for powder and lead, and especially for rum. There was a mean rum known as tafia which was the main article of trafific. It was brought by Indian traders from the coast and traded for all kinds of products and for Indian slaves.* These slaves, taken by their enemies in war, were brought to Au- gusta and sold and carried to Charleston and shipped to the West Indies. The traders were oftentimes wretchedly dissolute. They lived shameless lives with the squaws, and when they grew weary of them went from them with- out hesitation.

There was a large trading-post owned by Galphin in Ogeechee Town. This old Galphinton is ten miles south

* See Logan's History of South Carolina, p. i8o and beyond, for a full account of this trafific.

30 The Story of Gteorgia [Chap. i.

of Louisville, on the Ogeechee river. George Galphin was a famous Indian trader, who had an elegant home at Silver Bluff and was recognized as a king by the various tribes. They brought all questions to him for settlement It was told of him that once a chief, attracted by the red coat Galphin wore, said to him one day:

" Me had dream."

" Oh!" said Galphin, " what was it ?"

" Me dream you give me dat coat."

" Then you shall have it," said the trader.

A long time passed, when one day, when the chief was at the post, Galphin said: . -

" Chief, I had a dream."

" Ugh ! What you dream ?"

" I dreamt you give me all the land in the fork of this creek."

" Well, you shall have it, but we dream no more."

Augusta was not a place for a quiet residence in those wild days. Two thousand ponies owned by the traders were loaded with goods in Charleston and with peltry at the fort, and kept the now almost deserted old road to Charles- ton alive. As one now rides over the deep sands through which the old highway runs, he can bring before him the great train of Indian slaves doomed to a life worse than death, who had been bought and branded by the traders with a red-hot iron, and who were now to go in weary pro- cession from Augusta to Charleston. There were great fortunes made in this Indian slave-trade and in furnishing the Indians with rum and gunpowder ; and it was to pay the debts due George Galphin and other traders that Sir James Wright secured from the Indians their cession of Wilkes, Oglethorpe, Elbert and Lincoln counties. Augusta was not affected by the laws concerning negroes, and as far as rum was concerned it was the main article of trafifiic, but

1732-1754.]

AND THE (xEORGIA PeOPLE. 31

that rum was sold to the Indians, and the slaves she sold were captives secured in war.

There may have been, and I think it likely there were, sundry settlers wh5 were scattered among the Indians and who had squatted on lands belonging to them ; and it is probable that Mr. Galphin had around his settlement at Galphinton some of his countrymen before Oglethorpe came, but I find no positive proof of it, and Colonel Jones puts the emigration of the Scotch-Irish to St. George's parish as late as 1768. I find that certainly as early as Governor Reynolds's grants in 1752 there were grants of land made to men whom I know were in Jefferson.

General Oglethorpe had done his best to make a model colony, and though he left it in a sadly depressed condi- tion, it was not from any failure on his part to endure hard- ships or face danger. When he returned to England the trustees selected Mr. William Stephens, who had for some years been his secretary and the de facto governor. He was at one time a member of Parliament in England, and was a man of excellent family and good cultivation. He had been a servant of the trustees from his first coming to the colony, and was devoted to their interests. He had been virtually the governor of the Savannah part of the colony during Mr. Oglethorpe's stay, and after Mr. Ogle- thorpe's return to England he was in entire control of affairs.

In 1749 there occurred the famous Bosomworth trouble, to which a ludicrous prominence has been given in the Georgia histories and in Hewitt's History of South Caro- lina, and a trifling affair has been magnified into an event of immense importance. Mary Bosomworth was a half- breed Creek woman, the daughter of a Scotch father. She had some education and spoke both the Creek and English languages. She had been employed by Mr. Oglethorpe as an interpreter. Having lost her first husband, Musgrove,

32 The Story of Georgia [Chap. I.

she had married a worthless fellow by the name of Mathews, who gave Governor Stephens much annoyance. When he died she married a scapegrace clergyman whose name was Bosomworth. She made some claims to back- pay due her as interpreter, and laid claims to some landed property and threatened the infant colony with her ven- geance if her claims were not allowed, and finally, with a small body of vagabond Indians, she came toward Savannah to enforce her demands. The few militia in the province, one hundred and seventy in all, under command of Cap- tain Noble Jones, met the Indians, who were two hundred in number, and disarmed them without any trouble; and eventually, after Mary, in her drunken rage, for she was a sad reprobate, forced Governor Stephens to lock her up, the Indians were all invited to the governor's house and took a glass together with the whites, and smoked the pipe of peace and went back to their wigwams.* Mary's claim was at last settled by Governor Ellis, and she secured some money and a grant to St. Catherine's Island, which was sold to Button Gwinnett. j-

Governor Stephens was old and feeble and the burdens of his office were borne by his associates, Parker and Hab- ersham. He voluntarily, after a short incumbency, retired to his plantation near Savannah, where very suddenly he died. He wrote a copious Journal, often referred to by the

* In Hewitt, McCall, Stevens and Jones there is substantially the same account. There were only two hundred Indians in all. They had no ammuni- tion and had not, in all likelihood, the slightest idea of doing any violence. The great army who saved the people from massacre were one hundred and seventy militia, under Captain Noble Jones. There was not a single drop of blood shed, and no threat or danger of a massacre. I am a little regretful that the brilliant rhetoric of Bishop Stevens, in giving account of this occur- rence, has so little to support it ; but he merely followed Hewitt, who was copied by McCall. The Journal of Mr. \Vm. Stephens gives the best ac- count of the whole affair. Colonel Jones has given all the facts with his accustomed accuracy.

t See Stephens's account in his Journal.

1732-1754.]

AND THE Georgia People.

33

historians of Georgia, which was published in three vol- umes. This Journal was the first book written in Georgia, with the exception of the small collection of hymns pub- lished by John and Charles Wesley.

The colony, as we have seen, was in a depressed condi- tion, and it was apparent to all on the ground that the chief cause of the state of things was the inability of the

planters to secure cheap labor and the nature of the ten- ures of the granted land. Even Mr. Bolzius recognized that something was the matter, and James Habersham was requested by him to draw up a statement setting forth the condition of the colony and the cause of it, and Mr. Hab- ersham wrote an article in which he attributed the depres- sion to the prohibition of negro labor.

This paper came into the hands of the trustees, and they, becoming convinced by it that the restriction was not a wise

34 The Story of Georgia [Chap. L.

one, decided that under certain conditions the colonists- might import negroes. They had not been led to prohibit slavery at the first from any moral considerations, but had been led to it by their opinion that it was best for the tem- poral interests of the colony. They were now convinced that they had been mistaken, and so they prescribed the- conditions under which the planters would be permitted to purchase and hold slaves.

These conditions were: The slaves should not be iii' large numbers on any plantation. They should be enjoined and encouraged to marry; they should be forbidden to use profane language; they should not be sold without registry,. and should not learn any mechanical arts; they should not be worked on the Sabbath day, but should be compelled to go to church and be instructed by the Protestant ministry- Under these conditions the restriction against slave labor was removed.

The law against the admission of rum had probably been disregarded for some time, and it was repealed, and the restriction concerning land tenure was removed and the property was to be held in fee. There was nothing now, save that Georgia was still governed by trustees, to distinguish the youngest of the colonies from her older sisters ; and this government by trustees was nearly at an end, for in 175 1 the trustees surrendered their charter to the crown and the colonial ofifice took the government of Georgia in hand. For two vears and nine months the old appointees held over, and Mr. Henry Parker and Sir John Graham were successively in charge of the gov- ernment.

In 1754, however. Sir John Reynolds was duly appointed to the position of governor.

In 1 75 1 the first Assembly met in Savannah. The members were Francis Harris, John Milledge, William Francis, VVm. Russell, Savannah ; Geo. Codagan, David

1732-1754.]

AND THE Georgia People. 35

Douglas, Augusta; Christian Riedelsperger, Theobald Kiefer, Ebenczcr ; Wm. Ewen, Abercorn ; Patrick Houston, Ver- nonsburg ; Peter Morel, Acton ; Jos. Summers, Little Ogee- chee ; Jno. Barnard, Skidaway ; Audley Maxwell, Midway; Jno. More Mackintosh, Darien.*

The names of the places from which the delegates came give us some idea of how the population had moved and of the advance of the settlements into the interior.

In taking a survey of the colony for these twenty years one cannot but be impressed with the elevated aims of its founders. The trustees doubtless made grave mistakes, and in endeavoring to do too much had failed to do what might have been done for the good of the colony; but their motives were of the highest kind, and, with the single exception of Mr. Causton, there seems to have been among the officers of the colony only men of probity and intel- ligence. Men like Wm. Stephens, Noble Jones, James Habersham, and ministers like Jno. and Charles Wesley, Geo. Whitfield, and Pastors Gronau and Bolzius would have ornamented any State.

Up to the time the trustees surrendered their trust there had been granted in trust forty-one thousand acres, and sold outright twenty-seven thousand acres. The colony had been settled twenty years, and while it had had but little prosperity, it had had no disasters. There was no Indian massacre as in Virginia, no Indian war as in New England, no servile insurrection as in South Carolina, but it had by no means met the hopes of those who planted it. Perhaps no colony ever had a better class of first settlers. They were most of them quite poor, but so were the first settlers of Virginia and New England, the Huguenots and German emigrants to Pennsylvania. They were hampered at first by impracticable regulations, and many of them left the colony for South Carolina, but many remained

* Jones.

36 The Story of Georgia [Chap. I.

in Georgia, and many of those who left the colony returned in an after time. These first settlers had none of the ca- lamities which befell the early settlers in the older col- onies, but there were all the discomforts of frontier life. There were no mills driven by wind or water, and the settlers were dependent for bread upon Indian corn which was beaten in a mortar or ground on a hand- mill. The houses out of the villages were of round logs, and sometimes of clapboards. The floors were of dirt, and the chimneys were made of clay and stakes. ' The settlers had no comforts, but there was generally a sufificiency of food. Turkeys were caught in pens and quails and rabbits in traps, and near the towns where ammunition could be easily secured the pot hunter provided ducks and wild geese and venison for the table. In a few years cattle were abundant and hogs in large numbers were raised on the acorns in the swamps.

There was no wheat flour save what came from New . England, but soon after the settlements were made there were patches of rice. Even those planters who at this early date were considered well-to-do had few comforts, and even near the coast, where there was some shipping, living was plain, but away from it it was exceedingly hard.

There was comparatively little difference in the style of living among the rural people, and there were but three small villages — Savannah, Augusta and Ebenezer. Fred- erica had been almost abandoned and Augusta was merely a trading-post. There were only a few settlers above Savannah or below Brunswick, and these were far from prosperous.

In the sketch of Savannah in a later chapter an account is given of the religious history of the colony — the found- ing of Bethesda and the growth of Ebenezer. There was but little attention paid to churches and schools during the time of the trustees, although there was a school in Savan-

1732-1754.] AND THi! GeOROIA PeOPLE. 37

nah and a tabernacle and a church and school in Ebenezer; but there were, so far as I can find, neither churches nor schools at the time when the trustees ^ave up their charge out of these villages. The Presbyterians had abandoned the colony, the Moravians had gone to Pennsylvania, and save at Bethesda and at Ebenezer there was little attention given to religious matters.

38 The Story of Georgia [Chap. Ii.

CHAPTER II.

UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS.

Governor Reynolds — Some of his Difficulties with the Colonists — Dr. Little — Clement Martin Removed from the Council — Governor Reynolds Asks to be Recalled— Georgia as it Appeared in his Time — The Dorchester Settlement — The English Emigration to Dorchester, Mass. — The Settlement of Dorchester, S. C. — Removal to Georgia — List of the First Patentees — Midway Church Built — Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett — The Land Grants Made by Gov- ernor Reynolds — Slavery in the Colony — Native Africans — The Condition of the New Negroes — Laws for Regulation of the Slaves — Governor Ellis — His Administration — Church of England Established — Episcopal Churches in Georgia — The First Presbyterian Church — The Congregational — The Luthe- ran— The List of Parishes — Governer James Wright — The Capital Settled in Savannah — Governor Wright's First Assembly — Condition of Affairs in the Colony — Troubles Impending in Consequence of the Stamp Act — Collision between Governor Wright and the Assembly — The Newly Ceded Lands and the Middle Georgia People — General View of the Colony to 1774 — Mr. Whitfield's College Plan — The Moral Tone of the Colony — Sabbath Laws — Governor James Wright's Administration — Education in the Colony — Ad- vance of the Colony among the English, the Scotch, the Germans, in St. George's Parish, Augusta, and St. Paul's Parish — Social Changes — Relig- ious Movements — Baptists Enter the State.

Authorities : McCall, Stevens, Jones, Georgia Historical Collections, White's Statistics, White's Historical Collections, Whitfield's Journal, Colonial Laws, Hewitt, Records in Secretary of State's Office, Bartram, De Brahm.

Governor Reynolds, who came into his office in 1754, had been a captain in the British navy, and as a reward for his naval services he was made the first royal governor of the Georgia colony. He was officially designated as captain-general and governor-in-chief of his majesty's province in Georgia and vice-admiral of the same.

He was received by the people of the colony with great enthusiasm and began his administration very promisingly. He selected an able council consistinor of the leadins: men

1754-1775.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 39

in the colony. They were Sir Patrick Houston, Patrick Grahame, James Habersham, Noble Jones, Pickering Rob- inson, Francis Harris, Alex Kellett, Jonathan Bryan, Wm. Russell, Wm. Clifton and Clement Martin, Sr.

The bluff old sailor found things in a rather cheerless condition and was evidently greatly disappointed in the outlook. Savannah was not a well-built city, as he ex- pected to iind it, but a dilapidated village; and the govern- orship of a province in which there was not five thousand people, and whose most important public building was a board tabernacle, was not a place to be coveted. He began, however, to do some very needful things. He organized the courts and ordered all previous grants of land recalled, and proposed to issue new patents. He called the Assembly together, but soon found he had some troublesome men in it. One of these was Edmond Gray, a Quaker from St. Paul's parish. Gray, in connection with Farmer, Mcintosh and Carr, issued a call for the people of the colony who valued their liberty to appear as soon as possible at Savannah. This Governor Reynolds thought was open rebellion, and as such denounced it. What led to the call of Gray we do not know, but we can conjecture it was to protest against the proposed measure of Governor Reynolds to recall the grants of land hitherto made and issue new warrants upon new conditions. These conditions were so hard that the entire Assembly united in a success- ful petition to the king for a negation of them, and the governor reluctantly withdrew them.

Edmond Gray, of whom we know too little, went after- ward to the neutral ground south of Darien, and was vis- ited by Governor Ellis at his home. Governor Ellis speaks of him kindly, and says he was a man of remarkable abil- ity but had no common sense.

There was perhaps not a man in Governor Reynolds's council who did not know better than he did how to orovern

40 The Story of Georgia [Chap. ll.

the Georgia colony, for every one of them, and they were superior men, knew the condition of things in the colony as Governor Reynolds could not have possibly known it; but the blustering old sea captain, who knew noth- ing of the conditions about him, and who, in addition to his own incompetency, was under the control of his pri- vate secretary. Dr. Little, another newcomer who was thoroughly detested by all of the council, treated their suggestions with contempt, and was not even satisfied when they expelled Mr. Carr and Mr. Gray and Mr. Farmer from the Assembly, but dismissed Mr. Clement Martin from the council and was generally offensive.

There was no easy time for the captain-general and com- mander-in-chief in the new colony. His salary was small, his expenses were heavy, and the home government was not disposed to make further grants to a colony which made so poor a return.

The Assembly was impertinent, if not rebellious, the council was as bad, and so, as matters did not improve when he had spent two years of a troublous kind in the province, and had done some hard work, he asked relief, and went back to England to his congenial place on the quarter-deck once more.*

The colonists had not been pleased with Governor Rey- nolds, and he fretted at the idea of being an exile to a small American town, so there was mutual pleasure at the separation. He said there were only one hundred and fifty houses in Savannah; the biggest of them was used for the meeting of the president and council; " but one end fell down whilst we were there, and obliged us to move to a kind of shed behind the court-house which was quite unfit. I have given orders, with the advice of the council, to fit up a shell of a house which was lately built as far as the laying of the sills, but never made use of. The prison

* Stephens and Jones.

1754-1775.] AND TJIE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 41

was an insecure structure, which I ordered to be strength- ened with bolts and bars."

Captain De Brahm, who came during Governor Stephens's last incumbency, confirms the governor's story. He says he could have bought the best improved lot in Savannah for a few pounds, and somewhat complacently intimates that if he had not come when he did the colony would have been deserted.

Governor Reynolds, however, did much good work. He organized the courts and put the government machinery into operation. He was governor in a very important day for Georgia, for the opening wide the gates to new settlers brought in the first American immigrants to the colony, except the few settlers who had come from lower South Carolina into the country below Savannah. There were the Virginians and North Carolinians, who came near this time to St. George's parish, then including all of Burke, Jefferson, and a large part of Screven county. In my sketches of these counties I have given a fuller account of these settlers than I can give here. They were numerous enough to send a representative from Halifax to the first Assembly called by Governor Reynolds, and when the parishes were laid off by Governor Ellis, to call for a special parish known as St. George's. A body of Quakers, before 1754, had settled some lands on Little river at a place which was called Blendon. It was in St. Paul's parish, on Little river, and was near the spot where Wrightsboro was afterward located. These Quakers were led by the Edmond Gray who became so obnoxious to Governor Reynolds. The Indians, however, menaced the peace-loving Quakers and they decided to abandon the settlement. The project was however revived during the time of Governor Wright, under the care of Joseph Mat- tock and Jona Sells, and a road joining the Savannah road, in St. George's parish, known still as the Quaker road, was

42 The Story of Georgia [Chap. Tl.

cut at that time. There is near Wrightsboro a Quaker graveyard, but the Quaker settlement was abandoned during the Revolution.

While Jones, who is remarkably accurate, puts the settle- ment of the Scotch-Irish on the Ogeechee as late as 1768, I am sure there were many of these people in St. George's parish as early as the days of Governor Reynolds. Some who were associated with Galphin in the Indian trade were doubtless in the Nation before Oglethorpe came ; but after the country was fairly opened and all restrictions on land- holders had been removed, the tide of settlement from the north of Ireland set in very rapidly. The same class of Scotch-Irishmen who came to Pennsylvania, to Virginia and to the Carolinas came to Georgia and made quite a settle- ment. Captain De Brahm says that there were two hun- dred families in this section of the colony when his account was written, and, as will be seen by examining the list of land-patents, there were a large number who are registered as having received grants of land before 176S, whom one recognizes as being the progenitors of families who were afterward prominent in Jefferson, Screven and Burke coun- ties, and a Mr. Edward Brown, Andrew and James Lam- bert, Arthur Thomas, Jacob Depford and Solomon Kempe had a settlement on the Ogeechee as early as 1756, in what is now Jefferson and Screven counties.

The little hamlet about Fort Augusta continued to grow, and there was now at the fort a considerable villacre of loaf huts, and hundreds of Indians came to it on trading expe- ditions every season, bringing peltry and slaves and ponies, and buying rum and ammunition and Indian guns.

These traders, of whom we spoke in the last chapter, were now quite numerous and had posts in various parts of the nations, and, whether among Creeks or Cherokees or Choctaws, they took to themselves Indian wives, generally the daughters of the chiefs, and in after time their children

1754-1775.]

AND THE Georgia People.

43

by these Indian squaws were chiefs of the tribes, and the Adairs, Rosses, Mclntoshes, McGilverays, and many others had their descendants among the Indians, much to the grief of the white man. Nor were they alone, but Englishmen of high birth left the homes of the white people and mar- ried, lived and died among the Indians, and their children "led in many a foray against the white invaders in after

Major Ridge (Indian).

time. To these must be added not a few Virginians who were traders.

The settled portion of the colony, if any could be called settled at that early day, was confined to a narrow strip stretching along the Savannah, the Ogeechee and the Alta- maha rivers, and on the lands near the coast. The recog- nized western boundary of the white settlement was the Ogeechee. The section east of this river was slowly filling up with white people, but beyond the Ogeechee river, save a few small and scattered Creek and Chickasaw towns, all was an Indian hunting-ground. The Cherokees occupied,

44 The Story of Georgia [Chap. II.

without any one disturbing them, the northern and north- western part of the State, but they had their principal towns in East Tennessee. The Spanish gold-digger, under De Soto, had traversed their country in search of gold, and had left a record of his stay in the pits he had dug, but other than these no whites had as yet disturbed the dusky denizens of these valleys.

Hitherto our attention has been directed to those settlers who came from over the sea, but now we are to speak of a colony of native Americans, who were to do much for Georgia and to have a great influence on her future historv- During the time when Governor Stephens held over, and before Governor Reynolds reached Savannah, the Dorches- ter settlement, in what was afterwards St. John's parish, was made.

Captain De Brahm, a German engineer who made the first map of the colony and brought over the German emigrants, came to the colony at that time, and says he induced these settlers to come.

In Plymouth, England, in the heat of the persecution of the Puritans by Archbishop Laud about 1630, a colony of Church of England people, weary of bishops and of litur- gies, resolved to emigrate to then just settled New England. This they did and fixed their home at Dorchester, Mass. They accepted the Congregational form of government they found there, and became a Congregational church, with a Calvinistic confession. Fifty years after this they found themselves cramped for land, and as South Carolina had been settled largely b}' those who sympathized with their religious and political views, they secured a large grant of land on the Ashley river and planted a colony there, which they called Dorchester also. Here they planted rice and became large slaveholders.

They received an addition to their number from Virginia. The rice country about them was not sufficient for their

t

1754-1775.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 45

needs, and as soon as Georgia allowed the planters to bring slaves into the colony they sent over some of their congre- gation to survey the land. There were some extensive swamps between Savannah and Darien, in what is now known as the swamp land of Liberty county. They were admirably adapted to the growth of rice, but, save to a rice- planter accustomed to malarial swamps, certainly uninvit- ing. The Dorchester people succeeded in getting grants from the colonial government which covered over thirty thousand acres of this fertile country. They did not at once remove, but, remaining a part of the year in South Carolina, they came to Georgia after their crop was made and opened land and built shelters until the}^ were ready to change their habitations.

These immigrants fixed their homes on the edge of the swamps, building their humble cabins in the very center of the malarious district. The heavy timber was cleared away, the swamps were ditched and the dams made, and they moved their families and the cultivation of rice began. The only tool used in culture after the land was cleared, says Colonel Jones, was the hoe, and the rice was brought from the field on the head of the negroes and cleaned from the husks with pestle and mortar. Corn was ground in hand-mills. The market was Savannah, to which the rough rice was shipped by coasting schooners. The colony pros- pered and was soon quite populous. We give here a list of persons who received grants of five hundred acres : John Davis, John Maxwell, James Maxwell, William Maxwell, John Stevens, Benjamin Baker, John Lupton, Rev. Mr. Os- good, Samuel Stephens, Sarah Norman, Daniel Slade, Ed- ward Sumner, Andrew Way, Richard Spencer, William Brumley, Sarah Osgood, Rich Giraudeau, Joseph Bacon, Jonathan Bacon, John Norman, Sarah Mitchell, John Ed- wards, John Ellrod, John Way, William Graves, James Nor- man, John Stewart, Samuel James, Robert Glass, Robert

46 The Story of Georgia [Chap. it.

Eccles, John Quarterman, David Ross, William Lupton, Richard Baker, John Stevens, Joseph Oswald, Jacob Wes- ton, Joshua Clarke, A. Gleve, William Mackay, David Fox, Willoughby West, Palmer Gaulding, William Russell, Par- menus Way, Jacob Riden, Benjamin Andrew, and James Andrew.

It was decided by them to establish a market town nearer to the colony than Savannah, and in 1758 the town of Sun- bury, on the western bank of Medway river, was laid out. Colonel Jones, who gives a history of the dead towns of Georgia, gives not only a plot of the young city but a list of the lot-holders, which is interesting as showing who re- sided in this county at that time. They were: Mark Carr, Grey Elliott, Francis Arthur, William Graves, John Cub- bege, James Maxwell, Mary Spivey, Samuel Bennerworth, Stephen Dickerson, James Fisher, Schmidt & Molich, Swin- ton & Co., Darling & Munro, Thomas Peacock, A. Darling, Thomas Young, Roger Kelsal, John James, John Bacon, John Stewart, John Lupton, Dunbar, Young & Co., James Dunham, Lyman Hall, Samuel Miller, Kenneth Bailey, Samuel Benniworth, William Stevenson, Tabitha Bacon, John Winn, David Jcrray, Francis Arthur, John Steward, John Lawson, Thomas Ralph, John Quarterman, Thomas Goldsmith, James Houston, Ivan Stevens, William Baker, Elijah Simmons, Robert Bolton, John Humphrey, Francis Guilland, Henry Saltus, Donald McKay, Stephen Dicken- son, James Hurley, Francis Lee, John Quarterman, James Dovvell, John Irvine, Jemima Irvine, Math Smallwood, William Peacock, John Osgood, Rebecca Way, Hugh Clark, Paris Way, Nath Yates, William Dunham, Charles West, Samuel West, Thomas Carter, Audley Maxwell, John Graves, John Baker, James Fisher, Jno. Elliot, Jno. Lyman, John Sutherland, Sam Jeanes, Joseph Tichenor, William Mullen, William Davis, James Sergeant, John Jones, Strong Ashmore, F. Arthur, George Morris, Joshua Snowden,

1754-1775.] '"^ND THE Georgia People. 47

James Andrew. Samuel Morcock, George Bodington, Mary Bateman, Patrick McKay, Benjamin Andrew, Marmaduke Gerry, John Winn, Richard Mills, James Hatcher, John Perkins, William Low, Barnard Romans, Ed Mahonc, R. Spencer, John Mitchell, Morgan Tabb, Joseph Watcher, Jno. Gasper Stirkey, John Jones, Joseph Richardson, Robert Smallwood, John Futes, Arthur Carney, Isaac Linder, Fred- erick Holsendorf.

The first thing these good people did after fixing their homes was to build them a log church in the. midst of their plantations. This church was succeeded by a better one, which was burned during the Revolution, and that by a still better one. For many years the Midway church with its chapels, first at Sunbury, then at Walthourville, commanded the best talent of the Presbyterian Church, and the congre- gation was large, wealthy, and intelligent, but after the last war reluctantly the church was given up by the whites and is now occupied by the negroes.

The Rev. Mr. Osgood, for whom Bishop James Osgood Andrew was named, was the pastor they brought with them from South Carolina. Like his parishioners, he was a planter and a man evidently of some estate. He was virtu- ally a Presbyterian, and after Mr. McLeod, who only re- mained a little while in Georgia, was the first Presbyterian minister who had a charge in Georgia; for while Midway was a Congregational church during almost its entire his- tory, the pastoral office was filled by Presbyterian minis- ters, with whom the Congregationalists of an early day in America were always in accord.

It was to be expected that the Puritans of Dorchester would sympathize with their New England kinsmen in their resistance to the course of the English government, and they were in advance of all others in Georgia in their spirit of rebellion. They were represented in every public move- ment in Savannah, and sent hundreds of barrels of rice to

48

The Story of Georgia

[Chap. IL

the poor in Boston, and when the convention failed to send delegates to the Constitutional Congress the parish of St. John sent Dr. Lyman Hall as its representative. Two signers of the Declaration — Lyman Hall and Button Gwin- nett— were both from this parish, though Mr. Gwinnett was not a member of the Dorchester colony.

The list of grantees as I have given it is necessarily very imperfect, and is confined to those who received grants of five hundred acres. The list of those receiving grants

Button Gwinnett.

from the State published in the appendix will give many ■ more than those mentioned above, while the memorandum ' of those who had lots in Sunbury will give a still clearer idea of the people who composed this colony when it was ; in its infanc}'. j||

As slavery was now legalized in the colony the Assembly I passed sundry laws with reference to the treatment of slaves. It must be remembered that the larger part of the slaves were savages direct from Africa. They had been captured by their own countrymen in the cruel wars the tribes waged with each other, and driven like cattle to the

17r)4-1775.] AND THE GEORGIA 1'EOPLE. 49

west African ports, where they had been sold to the Por- tuguese and English traders. They had no idea of honesty, no feeling of pity to a foe, no conception of sex- ual purity or marital fidelity. They could not speak the language of the people who owned them and understood nothing of what was said to them except a few plain com- mands. Accustomed to nakedness and hunsfer in their own land, they found the regular supply of rice and pota- toes and the scanty apparel furnished by the rice-planters a great advance beyond all they had in negro-land. Slavery was permitted everywhere at that time and was condemned by none, not even the Quakers. The slavery, however, which was to be allowed in the colonies was by no means Roman or Grecian or African slavery, for the control of the slave was restricted by law, and the slave was carefully protected from all bodily harm. The acts passed provided : i. That the slave should not leave his place without a written permit. 2. Unusual assemblages of slaves were to be dispersed. 3. If he was guilty of a capital crime he should be tried by two justices and pun- ished with death. 4. A justice and two freeholders were a suf^cient court for ordinary offenses. 5. Arson should be punished with death. 6. Stealing a slave or effacing his brand should be a felony. 7. If a slave was con- demned to death the colony should pay his value to his owner, but not more than fifty pounds. 8. No slave should carry firearms. 9. If a slave struck a white man he should be punished. If he struck him the third time he should be put to death. Cruelty to slaves was forbidden. If any one should wilfully murder his slave he should be adjudged guilty of a felony, with the benefit of the clergy, for the first offense ; but if he did it the second time he should be deemed guilty of a murtlier. 10. If he should kill a slave in heat he should forfeit fifty pounds. 11. If

50 The Story of Georgia [Chap. ii.

he should maim him or cruelly maltreat him, he should forfeit ten pounds. 12. If he did not give him sufficient food and clothing he should be fined. 13. If an owner was charged with inhuman conduct, he should be presumed to be guilty, unless he showed his innocence. No one could have a plantation occupied entirely by slaves.

Governor Reynolds was succeeded by the scholarly and considerate Governor Ellis. Governor Ellis made aa honest and successful effort to conciliate the offended col- onists and to secure peace to all the colony. The Assem- bly, which had been called by Governor Reynolds, was by^ no means a representative body, and those who were eligi- ble to seats in it were by the restrictions laid down reduced to a very few.

The Assembly called by Governor Ellis met and estab- lished the Church of England and divided the colony into parishes. The administration of Governor Ellis was une- ventful and unimportant. He left the colony after a short stay in it and went back to England, carrying with him good wishes to all the colonists and a holy horror of the hot summers in Savannah. The most important and really the only notable act of his administration was the- establishment of the Church of England and the division of the State into parishes. There was in Georgia at that time Christ Church, in Savannah ; St. Paul's Church, in Augusta ; St. George's, a log church, in Burke county ; a. Lutheran Church, in Ebenezer ; a Congregational in Liberty county; and these were all the churches from above Augusta to Amelia Island. There was the rector of Christ Church in Savannah, and a missionary sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign parts, Mr. Jonathan Copp, whose home was in Augusta. These were the only Episcopal ministers in the colon)^ Mr. Osgood was the only Congregationalist and Mr. Bedge- wood the only Baptist, and he had no organized church to-

1754 177.") ] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 51

serve. The Lutherans had two pastors, Mr. Bolzius and Mr. Gronau, but they preached only in German. The Lutherans built them a small church in Savannah, which was supplied by these Ebenezer pastors.

There seems to have been little opposition to the estab- lishment of the Church, and it was after all a mere form of church establishment. It was abandoned in twenty years, and did not exist long enough to accomplish any noticeable results.

The parishes were: Christ Church, which included all of Chatham and the islands adjacent.

St. Matthew's, which included all of Effingham and much of Screven.

St. George's, all of Burke, Jefferson, and a part of Screven.

St. Paul's, all of Richmond, Columbia, McDuffie, and a part of Warren.

St. John's, all of Liberty.

St. Andrew's, all the section south of the Altamaha, near Darien.

St. Philip's, the section on the south side of the Ogeechee, west of Liberty.

St. James's, Frederica and the county south of it to the disputed line.

In 1765 four new parishes, St. Patrick's, St. David's, St. Thomas's and St. Mary's, were laid out in the section south of the Altamaha, and now contained in Camden, Charlton, and the adjoining counties. These parishes were not really organized, and were such in name only.

There was a feeble effort to build a church in each of these parishes, but save the log church in Augusta and in St. George's parish I can find no evidence that any others were built.

Governor James Wright, who succeeded Governor Ellis, was by far the ablest man who had ever been governor of

52

The Story of Georgia

[Chap. II.

PARISHES OF GEORGIA.

fhc State was laid off Into 8 pArlshM In 1T58, viz.: St. Paul, Si Grorgt, St. Matthew. CtiriM Chorct). St. Pbllip. St. John. St. Andrew and Sl Jamei. Four others were added In 176;. viz.: St. David, St. Patrick, St_/rhoma» ti»<J i)t. ^taryi.

This excellent map was originally prepared under the direction of the University Publish- ing Co., who published Evans's Historj', and was transferred from their book to the pages of the Constitution, which has kindly furnished it to me. G. G. Smith.

1754-1775 ] AND THE GEORGIA 1'eoPLE. 53

Georgia, and he has had no superior in that office since his day.

He was a South Carolinian by birth, and was a gentle- man of fine culture. He was a lawyer, as his father, Chief Justice Wright of South Carolina, had been before him. At the time he received his appointment as governor he was colonial agent ot Georgia in London. He was a man of large estate and great purity of character. He had a strong will and great common sense. The question of removing the capital from Savannah to the new city of Hardwick, which had been settled by Governor Reynolds and Governor Ellis against Savannah, he reopened and de- cided that the capital should remain where it was and where it had been in Savannah, and the scheme of the new city was abandoned.

Governor Wright found the civil government well organ- ized. The difficulties arising from the impracticable meas- ures of the trustees had now been removed, and there was a prospect of a prosperous and peaceful rule. He sur- rounded himself with a wise council and made himself fully acquainted with all the needs of the growing colony. The Indians had given some little trouble to the frontier people, but in the main were peaceful. He called the Assembly together in Savannah. It consisted of: Jos. Ottalenghe, Grey Elliot, Lewis Johnson, Jos. Gibbons, Christ Church; Wm. Francis, N. W. Jones, Abercorn; Wm. Ewen, James De Vaux, Ebenezer; Alex Wylly, Halifax, James White- field, St. George's; Edward Barnard, John Graham,

Williams, Lachlin McGilveray, St. Paul's; Elisha Butler, John Maxwell, Great Ogeechee; Thomas Carter, Parmenus Way, John Winn, St. John's; Robert Baillie, Jno. Holmes, St. Andrew's ; Lachlin Mcintosh, St. James's.

As will appear, the members of the Assembly did not always reside in the parishes which they represented. Hali- fax, in St. George's, a comparatively new section in what is

54 The Story of Georgia [Chap. ii.

now Burke and Screven, was represented by Alex Wylly, of Christ Church, and Wm. Ewen and James De Vaux rep- resented Ebenezer; while John Holmes, the Episcopal minister, represented St. Andrew's.

The Assembly seems to have been a harmonious body of able and intelligent men. The colony was now prospering. The wild schemes of raising silk and wine had been sur- rendered. The restrictions on land holdings and on slaverv were given up and everything promised well for the future.

Shortly after Governor Wright began his career as gov- ernor, the governors of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia met in Augusta and secured a cession of lands, and ten years after he purchased another body. As these two cessions were only ten years apart, and the sections purchased were contiguous, it is hardly necessary to consider them separately. The country first secured lay in the oak and hickory lands north of Augusta, in what is now Columbia county, and extended westward to what is now the west boundary of McDuffie county; in the second purchase m 1773 a body of land very much like this was also secured in what was afterward Wilkes county. This country was wonderfully beautiful and attractive. The land was mainly of two kinds, the oak and hickory lands and what was then known as the pine-barrens. There were no Indian settlements of importance in the section, and it was reserved by them as a hunting-ground. The first comers regarded the pine woods as uninhabitable, and set- tled along the creeks and rivers of the red lands. The In- dians came annually in large hunting parties to kill the game which was in such abundance, and every winter they burned the woods to provide for the growth of the wild pasturage.

There had doubtless been some intruders on these lands, and no doubt horses and cattle were being raised on the range by South Carolina ranchmen and Indian traders.

1754-1775.]

AND THE Georgia People.

55

There had been an effort to settle a colony on Little river in this section ten years before, but as we have seen it was broken up by the Indians. Now that this land was secured, and the Indians pacified, it was opened to settlement on

"7.

o

hi

>

•>5

most liberal terms. Any one who would file before a mag- istrate his purpose to settle in the land could get one hun- dred acres if he was single, two hundred if he was married, and an additional fifty acres for each child and each slave until five hundred acres were secured, at a nominal rental

56 The Story of Georgia [Chap. ii.

of two shillings a hundred acres. The offers of free farms were so generous that the tide of settlers poured in with great volume and covered the country. These people came from Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland, and settled on the banks of the Savannah river, the Kiokee creeks and Little river. In a study of the counties I have given a fuller account of the country and of the people. The tide of prosperity was rapidly rising.

When the Stamp Act troubles began there was but little excitement in Georgia outside of Savannah and Sunbury. In Savannah the young men paraded and burned in effigy obnoxious persons. The governor was furiously indignant, and in loud yet vain proclamation denounced the acts of the seditious.

The Liberty Boys were organized and the governor ordered out his little army of fifty-four men to take the stamps to the guard-house. The stamp-distributer came, and the intrepid governor protected him as well as he could, but he found himself unable to do so perfectly, and the English officer left the town. Governor Wright was menaced and the good and loyal James Habersham threat- ened also. Mobs gathered, a collision seemed imminent, but no further harm came than the burning of the governor in effigy. The stamps were in Savannah, but the people would not use them ; though much to the indignation of the sister colony. South Carolina, the governor did use them on the clearance papers of the seventy sail in port at that time. The governor had barely held his own when the Stamp Act was repealed, much to his relief. But it was only a temporary lull. The Assembly refused to grant supplies to the soldiers quartered among the people. The Assembly appointed a new London agent, which the gov- ernor denied their right to do, and thus the contest between him and his Legislature grew more violent. Then the Assembly wished to issue twenty thousand pounds paper

1754-1775.]

AND THE Georgia People.

67

money. The governor thought twelve thousand pounds sufficient, and the king agreed with the governor. The Assembly passed an act for the government of the negroes; the governor approved it, but the king vetoed it. The colony was in a bad humor with the whole British gov- ernment, and when Benjamin Franklin went to England to attend to the affairs of other colonies, Georgia appointed him to attend to her interests too, much to the disgust of the governor, who had but little use for the Pennsylvania printer. Then the Massachusetts colony sent out a circular

Benjamin Franklin.

letter, and Mr. Alexander Wylly, the speaker, replied to it, approving its contents. When the Assembly met, although the governor expressed his disapproval of the circular, the Assembly passed resolutions of approval. The governor was very much angered at this procedure and, coming in, dissolved the Assembly.

The Assembly, now at open war with the governor, had sent an address to Dr. Franklin to be delivered to the king, which address the king refused to receive.

Then the merchants and planters began to hold meet-

58

The Story of Georgia

[Chak ;i.

ings, and even Mr. Jonathan Bryan, one of the council, presided over their meetings; and Mr. Alexander Creigh- ton introduced a resolution forbidding any importation of taxed products. The king promptly displaced Mr. Bryan, and twice the governor dissolved the rebellious Assembly. When this body met again in 1770 Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones was elected speaker. This was a gross affront to the governor, who had little use for the rebellious doctor, and

Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones.

he ordered a new election. The Assembly held it and re- elected Dr. Jones, and as they would elect no one else the governor sent them home.

Then Sir James gladly took a respite from this incessant fight with his Assembly and went on a visit to England, and James Habersham took his place for the time being. Mr. Habersham was a man of remarkable probity, and while he sympathized with the colony to a great extent, he was loyal to the crown. The Assembly was composed of men with whom he had been associated from their first coming

1754-1775.]

AND THE Georgia People. 59

into the colony. He had been in the colony for nearly forty years, he had stood by it in all its struggles, he de- plored this conflict of opinion and sympathized with the colonists, but his duty was plain, and when the members persisted in electing Dr. Jones he promptly dissolved the Assembly. Then there was for a time quiet, and colonists continued to flock into the new lands on Little river and the Ogeechee.

There was no fairer land in Georgia than the lands in St. George's and St. Paul's parishes, which vyere now open to settlers. Along the clear streams, for as yet they were as crystal, there stretched great bodies of cane in which the bear found his home, and on the rich wild grasses the myriad of deer fed. The hills were covered with a mag- nificent forest. The undergrowth had been kept down by the Indians, who burned the woods annually that the grasses might flourish. The forests were like a king's park. Herds of deer, droves of turkeys, and great flocks of rich-hued birds were found in every part of the land. The cattle needed no pasturage that the woods did not furnish. There were thousands of streamlets and springs, and when the land was opened there was a rich reward to the tiller's toil. It was no wonder then that, as soon as the land was offered to the settlers, they came in such numbers. Life with them was at first hard. There were no roads, and they came with their small supply of needful things on pack-horses. They built their cabins of round logs and covered them with split boards. At the first the floor was of packed clay, and the great chimney, with its wide hearth, was made of clay and stakes. There were no glazed windows and the door was made of split boards. Oftentimes there had not been a single nail used in building the cabin. The saw and axe and auger and frow had been the only tools. There was a scant supply of furniture, and it had been made mainly by hand ; a three-legged

60 The SStory of Georgia [Chap. II.

stool, a puncheon bench, and, after the chair-maker came, a stout chair of hickory, with a raw-hide seat, were the con- veniences. The bedsteads were made by hand, and the cattail and the long moss, and sometimes the leaves and pine straw, provided a couch for the sleepers.

The frontiersman had no easy time in providing food supplies. A few cattle he brought with him. Deer were abundant, and he killed an occasional bear, while wild turkeys were so plentiful that they were caught in pens and their flesh was dried and used as bread.

^•iJV-'--.<. • j':-'k?a.:'.^>^*-^*^

Early Settler's Cabin.

There were some goods to be bought in Augusta at the stores of the traders, but there was little money on the frontier. By carrying peltry to the markets he secured powder and lead and salt. This was the condition of thinsfs on the frontier, but on the coast there was access to markets, and even at this early period comforts were com- mon, and in the cities there was much elegance and many luxuries.

The new immigration was very large. The first comers had reported so favorably of the land that great crowds of immigrants came from the older counties of Virginia and

1754-1775.]

AND THE Georgia People.

61

from middle and eastern North Carolina into St. Paul's, St. George's and St. Matthew's parishes. Many Scotch-Irish- men came directly from Ireland and settled in what is now Jefferson county, which was then St. George's parish. Many Marylanders came into the lands on Little river, and another body of Quakers came from North Carolina, led by Mr. Jos. Mattocks, and settled near what was known as the

Pioneers.

village of Wrightsboro. When the newly ceded lands in 1773 were opened for settlement there was at once a large immigration into that section, which was afterward known as Wilkes.

The tide of settlers was not checked by the beginning of the Revolution, for it was several years after the war had begun that these frontier people were at all disturbed.

The wondrous fertility and healthfulness of these lands drew at once a rush of settlers from the older colonies.

k

G2 The Story of Georgia [Chap. ]I.

The lands were given away, and, without waiting to secure headrights or patents, the new immigrant came into these woods to choose his home. He found the tract upon which he wished to settle, put down his stakes and began to build his cabin. It was only necessary for him to file with the governor's council an affidavit that he intended to settle in the colony, and an order was given to the surveyor to lay out for him two hundred acres of land as his head- right, and fifty acres additional for each negro he might bring with him.. These newcomers, while of the same transatlantic stock with the settlers in lower Georgia, were not their close kinsmen; they were, as their grand- fathers had been, native Americans. Mr. Anthony Stokes, who was judge of one of the king's courts, and wrote a book concerning Georgia, speaks of them as convicts and renegades driven out of the older States, but Mr. Stokes was a cockney who knew nothing of these people.

The early settlers of upper Georgia were not all of the same class, but they were much more homogeneous than the white people of the lower part cf the State. The low- country people were English, Scotch, and Germans, but the up-country people were all native Americans. The low-country English and Scotch people were much more under the influence of English traditions, and there was a wider division between classes than in the up-countrv. Among these up-countrymen there were not a few ignorant unaspiring people. They were not peasants; they lived in their own cabins, and worked their own fields. They had. never known anything of luxury and had a sovereign con- tempt for it. Their origin was probably an humble one. Their ancestors of three generations before had been brought over to Virginia by an enterprising ship-owner and' sold to a tobacco planter for five years, and received a peck of corn a week and two suits of plain clothing during the. year for wages, and after five years of servitude were freed..

1754 1775] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 63

When they were no longer in bondage they went out to the newer parts of Virginia and into North Carolina, and now their descendants came to Georgia. Some of them were thriftless and ignorant and degraded. That there were such among the early Georgians it would be folly to deny. The ubiquitous cracker we will never lose sight of, but it would be as untrue to history to put the mass of the u[)per Georgians among them, as to put men like James Habersham, or Noble Jones, or John More Mcintosh, or the Salzburghers among the English paupers, the German servants and the Scotch peasants who composed a part of the first immigration to Savannah. These up-country people were not many of them men of means at the first. They had but little education and were plain people in manner and plain in dress and surroundings, but they had never been in bondage to any man. Many of them sprang from the best yeomanry of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England, and many of them were direct descendants of the landed gentry of England. These were the first comers into upper Georgia. An examination of the minutes of the council gives us an insight into their circumstances. There was an Irish colony, as it was called, near what is now Louisville, a large settlement of Quakers near Wrights- boro and on Little river, and a constant influx of Mary- landers, Virginians and North Carolinians into the newly- ceded lands. There were quite a number of slaves brought into this section, but few of the settlers had more than three or four. There was no farming, all were stock-raisers. Horses and cattle were turned on the range and rapidly in- creased in number. The low-country was receiving settlers from South Carolina, who came with many slaves, and who lived in great elegance, but the up-country was still a land of pioneers.

Their fathers had continued the old English custom of bequeathing their landed property to the eldest son, and

64 The Story of Georgia [Chap. ii.

the younger children were compelled to seek homes in the lands of new Viro^inia and North Carolina. Thev had no opportunities to secure an education, and grew up with oftentimes no more than was necessary to enable them to read. Their children were given homes in Georgia if they would occupy them, and they came in large numbers. The headright of two hundred acres was free, and the settler had but to choose his land to have it granted to him. There was little in outside appearances to distinguish a man whose ancestry went back to the Conquest from the man whose ancestors had been serfs for generations. They dressed in the same garb and used the same dialect, com- mon dangers united all classes, and common interests caused them to blend. They married and intermarried, and soon they were by men like Sir Anthony Stokes grouped together as composing one class.

These various classes in after-times became to some ex- tent distinct, but up to the Revolution there was little to mark them. After the Revolution the lines were more dis- tinctly drawn. Every interest was advancing in the colony, and the enterprising Mr. Whitefiield projected another grand scheme. The orphanage which he had founded, and which was fairly opened in 1741, had been carefully watched over by him for over thirty years, and had been fostered by his constant care. As the prosperity of the colony during Governor Wright's time had greatly increased the means of the people, the necessity for a home for orphans dimin- ished. Mr. Whitefield then conceived the plan of establish- ing a college for the young men of the Southern colonies and of the English West Indies. He Jiad now about sixty orphans, one thousand eight hundred acres of land and thirty negroes, and the Legislature granted him two thou- sand acres of land additional on Turtle river, not far from Brunswick, for the endowment of the college. He proposed to go to England to collect funds, and invest five thousand

1754-1775.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 65

dollars in negroes to cultivate his newly granted rice land, near the Altamaha, but on his way to England, in Newberry- port, Mass., he suddenly died. Not long after the college buildings were consumed by fire. He had left the property to his friend and patron, Lady Huntington. She rebuilt the house, but it never was properly established as a college; and, as Colonel Jones, who has given so full a sketch of Bethesda, says, was in moribund condition when it came into her hands.* It never rallied. The troubles with the mother country came. Its great friend, James Habersham, died in New Jersey in 1775. The property was confiscated and passed into the possession of the State, and after sundry unhappy experiences it was finally sold in 1808, and the proceeds distributed among certain benevolent institutions in Savannah. In 1854 a society of benevolent men of all classes, known as the Union Society, bought the site again and established a home for orphans which abides to this day.

The moral sentiment of the colony, so high in the first years, was not lowered during Governor Wright's time. The influence of men like Mr. Habersham and Mr. Bryan, and especially Mr. VVhitefield, of the pious Lutherans, and now of the Puritans at Dorchester, all united to give to the colony a decidedly religious complexion.

Although the Church of England was established, an act was passed by which dissenters were not required to even take an oath before the courts in a way objectionable to them, and there was no interference at all with their relig- ious privileges. The most rigid Puritan could not have asked for laws which were more sweeping on the subject of gaming, lotteries, Sabbath observance, profane swearing, or horse-racing. The law against Sabbath-breaking made in 1765, and revived, with the exception of two features,. after

* See Stevens and Jones for fuller account. 5

6Q The Story of Georgia [Chap. ir.

the Revolution, required the most scrupulous observance- of that holy day. The law required every one to go to church, under a penalty, every Sunday, and forbade any work, trading, traveling, reveling, hunting, fishing, or gaming on that day. It required justices and town wardens to carry out the law, and that the act should be read yearly in every church. The act was modified, but not repealed, when the independence of the State was secured. The administration of Sir James Wright was a clean one, and the morals of his council were of the highest kind. The laxity of conduct found in the young State was not in the colony. There were schools in Savannah, Sunbury, and at Ebenezer, Bethesda and Augusta, and doubtless there were private tutors in the homes of the rice-planters on the Altamaha, and some schools in St. George's parish; but the settlers in the newer sections were as yet struggling with the question as to how they were to be fed, and their educational privileges were very few.

In material things the older part of the colony had very rapidly advanced, but nowhere had the advancement been> so great as in the Dorchester settlement. The marshes had been ditched and banked, rice-fields had been opened, and large plantations were made. Sunbury had become quite a populous little village of eight hundred to one thousand in- habitants, with a considerable trade from all the country about, and was exporting to England direct. The sea fur- nished rich supplies of fish and oysters, the woods were full of deer and turkeys; the bear and the panthers, or tigers, as the people called them, were in the swamps, and great droves of wild fowl came annually to lakes and lagoons. There was the church at Midway where the planters assembled for their weekly service, and the social life in so homogeneous a community was of the most de- lightful kind. The people of this community brought cul- ture, refinement and religion with them, and in this section.

1754-1775.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 67

of Georgia, where for countless miles to the westward there was a forest of pine woods unbroken save by a few Indian villages, there was a community rarely equalled for intel- ligence and piety, and in which was found solid comfort, and even elegance of living. The change in the condition of things on the Altamaha during the years since slavery had been allowed had been very decided. The people living near Darien were nearly all of them kinspeople. John More Mcintosh, who had founded the colony, had become a man of large fortune, and on the main on the rice plantations were a large number of his kinsmen'. The Scotchmen who came to New Inverness were now scattered all over the tide-water country and were prosperous stock- raisers. There were many Scotchmen engaged in mercan- tile business in Savannah and Sunbury, and who were in the Indian trade in Augusta.

The large incoming of new settlers brought a lively trade to the three main markets, and as the visionary schemes of raising silk and wine were given up the colonists gave their attention to corn, indigo, rice and cattle.

Negro slaves were very cheap, and they were becoming very numerous on the sea islands and the rice plantations. The sea island planters were large producers of indigo, while the rice plantations were above the salt water on the coast. The people in the interior gave their attention almost entirely to corn and live stock. There was some lumber cut by whip saws^ some crude turpentine and pitch and a large quantity of peltry of all kinds, myrtle-wax, hogs and cattle, which found a market in Savannah.

The counties below the Altamaha were very thinly peo- pled. Where St. Marys now is was a frontier post, and in the interior there were a few people on cattle ranches, but up to the Revolution the population was very small and the people very poor and very lawless.

The Germans were increasing. The new coming Ger-

68 The Story of Georgia [Chap. II.

mans brought in by Captain De Brahm and the Salzburghers had become one. They were of the same tongue and of the same faith, and naturally coalesced. These people were small farmers but very thrifty, and were constantly extend- ing their lines and improving their estates. They had good pastors and intelligent schoolmasters, and when the Revo- lution began no people could have been more thrifty.

Up the Savannah river above the pine forests of St. Matthews there was a large section of valuable land un- suited for rice planting, but very fertile. It was on the Savannah and Ogeechee rivers and the creeks flowing into them, and was included in St. George's and St. Matthew's parishes. It was known as the borough of Halifax. In that part of this country now known as Burke, Screven and Jefferson, as we have seen elsewhere, there had come a great many worthy settlers from Virginia and North Caro- lina, and in the western part of it, as we have already seen, there was a large settlement of Scotch-Irish people. The Savannah river for much of its course through these counties was bordered by a thick swamp of cypress and water-oaks, and great cane-brakes, but along Briar and Bark Camp, Mcintosh and McBeans, and Rocky creeks and the Ogee- chee river there were fine lands adapted to the cultivation of corn and the raising of stock. People of moderate means had come in numbers into this country where land was easily secured and preempted small farms, which in course of time became large cotton plantations. • But for the civil strife which the Revolution brought in, there would have been little disturbance to them during the war, but the Tories made sad ravages of these frontier homes.

Of the history of Savannah and Augusta I speak more particularly elsewhere, and it is not needful to do more here than mention the fact of their rapid growth and great pros- perity. They were the chief commercial marts and were

1754-1775.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 69

largely peopled by cannie Scotch traders who drove a thrifty business.

The twenty years which had elapsed since the trustees had surrendered their charter had brought about great changes in the social life of older parts of the colony, in which now everything had taken shape. The removal of the restriction concerning slavery, the admirable adaptation of the lands on the Ogeechee and Savannah and the Alta- maha for rice culture, and the low price of negroes and the fact that the land was given away, led to the opening of large plantations and the establishment of homes of elegance in Savannah. The inventory of the property shows that before 1774 in Savannah and in Liberty county some of the planters had every elegance, even to phaetons and horses. There was a life of luxurious indulgence among the gentlemen, whether they lived on their estates or in their city residences. The importers brought into Savannah silks and satins from France, Madeira wine, cognac brandy, cases of Geneva gin, Jamaica rum, as well as the cheaper New England rum for the common people. In all the homes the decanter had a place on the sideboard, and was always brought out at every gathering. Society had taken a shape on the seaboard in 1774 from which there was little departure for over forty years, except during the Revolu- tionary war. The plain people of St. Matthew's, conserva- tive and thrifty, had now after forty years of careful industry surrounded themselves with many substantial comforts, and were independent and prosperous. The rice-planters of St. John's parish had but transferred the long-established homes in South Carolina to Georgia, and society in the Midway and Newport section had not had any infancy. There was a frontier in upper Georgia and in the country south of the Altamaha, and all the hardships which had been encountered by the first comers to Georgia forty years

70 The Story of Georgia [Chap. II.

before were encountered by the newcomers to St. George's, St. Paul's, and St. Andrew's.

An Independent Presbyterian Church, of which I speak more fully elsewhere, had been built in Savannah, and Mr. John Joachim Zubli, a Swiss, was the minister, and while the church people went to hear Mr. Haddon Smith read the service, and Governor Wright and Captain Tattnall, Judge Stokes, Messrs. Habersham and Bolton, and other old Englishmen had their pews in Christ's church. Sir John Grahame, Mr. Gibbons, and Mr. McGilveray went to the kirk to hear the sermon and sing the Psalms. The steady- going Lutherans had their churches at Ebenezer and Goshen. The Congregationalists went to hear Mr. Osgood, and now the Baptists came. Mr. Daniel Marshall moved into the Kiokee settlement, and did some wonderful work, and Mr. Bottsford organized some Baptist meetings on Briar creek, in Burke county, and a young Presbyterian licentiate was working in the neighborhood of the old church in St. George's and gathering the scattered Presbyterians together; but as a general thing these colonists had no one to preach to them, and no one to teach their children, save now and then a wandering Irishman, who taught a subscription school for a few months in the year. There was every- thing, however, to be hoped for in the future, when the events of which we shall speak in the next chapter occurred, and then for near a decade of years there was desolation.

The list of public ofificers in 1774 gives us a good insight into the colony as it then was. There were:

Sir James Wright, governor ; James Habersham, Lewis John- son, John Graham, Jas. Read, Clement Martin, Gray Elliot, Jas. Mackey, Jona Bryan, Jas. Edward Powell, counsellors; Noble Jones, Alex. Wylly, Jno. Adam Truetlen, John Mullryne, Patrick Houston, John Smith, David C. Braddock, Jno. Simpson, Geo. Mcintosh, Thos. Vincent, Thos. Moody, Wm. Ewen, Edward Barnard, N. Jones, Jona Cochran, Andrew Johnson, John

1754-1775.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 71

Milledge, Josiah Tattnall, Assemblymen ; Button Gwinnett, J. P. St. John's; H. Preston, notary ; C. Prest, attorney-general; C. Watson; M. Roche, provost marshal; Chas. Pryce, notary; David Emanuel, David Lewis, Thomas Burton, J. P. St. George's; Sam Bullock, J. P. Christ Church; James Brown, dep. surveyor; Wm. Graems, attorney ; Sam'l Farley, solicitor ; John Glen, lawyer and attorney-general ; L. Claiborn, lawyer ; Henry Y.onge, lawyer; Thos. Schender, lawyer ; John Smith, lawyer; Anthony- Stokes, lawyer and chief justice ; James Hume, lawyer. Savannah; Wm. Belcher, lawyer; Arthur Carney, justice of the peace for the four southern parishes and captain of militia; Reymond Demere, ditto; John Holmes, J. P. St. George's; Thos, Stone, J. P. St. Phillip's; Stephen Smith, J. P. St. George's; Thomas Ross, solicitor; Wm. Stephens, clerk Assembly, Savannah; John Hume, secretary and registror, Savannah ; Lewis Johnson, treas- urer. Savannah ; Wm. Stewart, N. P. ; Isaac Perry, dept. surveyor; Frank Bigbee, surgeon ; John Stephens, 3d lieutenant; James Whitefield, quartermaster ; Benj. Lewis, dept. surveyor; Richard Scruggs, J. P. St. Matthew's ; J. T. Russell, J. P. St. Andrew's; Jno. MacLean, J. P. Christ Church; John Dunbar, J. P. St. John's ; Sim'l Creswill, D. S.; Jos. Houghton, James Cosby, D. S. ; James Pannel, D. S. ; Basil Lamar, D. S.; John Dooly, D. S. ; Jona Sells, D. S. ; George Walton, solicitor ; David Tait ; Andrew Elton Wells, clerk of market and marshal; Geo. Barry, justice; Francis Arthur, D. S.; James Robertson, solicitor ; J. Pickens, D. S. ; Thomas Waters, J. P. ; Edward Keating, J. P.; J. Wood, J. P. St. John's; James Lucina, J. P. •Christ Church ; D. Frazer, Sunbury ; James Seymour, J. P. St. George's and St. Matthev^^'s ; Stephen Matthews; J. Waltbaur, J. P. St. Matthew's; Jno. Stirk, captain; Jas. Seymour; Quinton Pooler, captain 4th ; Philip Howell, J. P. St. Matthew's ; Samuel Strong, D. S. ; James Kitching, collector; Roberc Hamilton, solicitor ; James Peart, D. S. ; Elijah Lewis, D. S. ; James Cantey, deputy surveyor; John Graves; Thomas Chisholm, deputy surveyor ; Alex Wyly; Isaac Antrobus, deputy sur- veyor; J. Lewis, deputy surveyor ; Jos. Marshall, J. P. St. Georges; Jno. Douglass, deputy; Josiah Cantey, D. S. ; Isaac Antrobus, collector Sunbury ; Elijah Brazeal, J. P. St. George's parish; Rich Cunningham; Patrick Houston, J. P.; William

72 The Stoky of Georgia [Chap. ll.

Evans, lieutenant; Wm. McKenzie; Jos. Johnson, J. P.; Wm. Candler, D. S. St. Paul's ; Alex. Thompson, J. P. Christ Church ; James McFarlane, J. P. St. Paul's; Robert Baillie, D. S. ; Andrew Way, D. S. ; James Kitchings, collector ; Francis Paris, J. P. St. George's; Wm. Harding, D. S. ; Philip Young, solicitor; Wm. Haven, naval officer; Henry Yonge, solicitor; John Houston, solicitor; Wm. Sims, deputy surveyor; Alex Thompson; Jed Smith, deputy surveyor; Sanders Walker, deputy surveyor; Thos. Pittman, deputy surveyor ; J. P. Romans, J. P. ; Thomas Carr, collector Sunbury ; Francis Lee, naval officer ; Chas. Pryce, dep't reg. and examiner in chancery ; Jno. Simpson, clerk in the house; Wm. Brown, searcher for the port of Savannah; John Thomas, John Mann, militia officers Burke; Wm. Graeme, attorney-general ; Mat. Roche, provost marshal ; Isaac Ford, J. P.St. George's; Moses Nunez, searcher port Savannah; Alex. Findley, Jas; Seymour, schoolmasters; Jared Nelson, Benj. Stirk ; D. M. Neal, Wm. Barnard, deputy surveyors; Jno. Oliver, J. P. St. Paul's; James McFarlane, deputy surveyor ; R. Wylley, N. P. ; Wm. Harding, J. P. St. George's; Wm. McKenzie, comp. searcher and solicitor in chancery, Sunbury ; James Kitchings, collector Sunbury; James Maxwell, J. P. St. Phillip's; Elijah Lewis, D. S. Wm. Downs, D. S. ; Jno. Stuart, councilor ; Leon Marbury D. S. ; Ben Lanier, J. P. St. Matthew's; John Chisholm, D. S. Wm. Ewen, J. P. Chatham ; Sam'l Elbert, captain, Chatham Thomas Skinner, captain, Chatham; T. Netherclift, St. John's Alex Hogg, captain. The following were captains, of Chatham Jos. Habersham, Henry Yonge, Geo. Houston, Philip Morn Alex. Martin, James Roberson, Alex. McGorm, Jno. B. Randell Peter Bard, John Lucina, Wm. Stephens and Thos. Ross,

(

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 73

CHAPTER III.

REVOLUTION.

The Call for a Meeting of the Disaffected —Appointments of the Revolutionary Committee — Passage of Resolutions — Governor Wright's Counter Move- ment— Call of a Congress — Failure — Dissatisfaction of St. John's Parish — Lyman Hall — Increase of Excitement — Stealing Gunpowder — War Begun at Lexington — Call for a Congress — Members of the Congress — Archibald Bulloch the President — Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones, John Glen, John Hous- ton, Edward Telfair, Dr. Zubly, Wm. Gibbons, John Adam Truetlen, Geo. Walton — Organization of the Council of Safety — Governor Wright Virtually Deposed — The Formation of the Battalion of Georgia Troops — Lachlan Mc- intosh, Samuel Elbert, John Habersham, James Jackson — Mr. Bulloch Elected Temporary President — Convention Called — Expedition to St. Augustine a Failure — Peaceful Condition of Affairs in the Colony 1776-1778 — Constitu- tional Convention — List of Members not to be Found — Constitutional Provi- sions— Formation of Counties — Act of Confiscation and Amercement — Truet- len Elected Governor — Gwinnett's Duel with Mcintosh — Both Wounded — The War in Earnest 1779 — Triumphant March of the British — Capture of Sa- vannah— Flight of Legislature — Trouble with Tories — Capture of Augusta — Colonel Twiggs, the Fews, Wm. Candler, Elijah Clarke — Sir James Wright, at Home Again — Act of Proscription — The Battle of Kettle Creek — Defeat of General Ash — Exodeto North Carolina — The Itinerating Capital — The Loy- alists and the Tories — Bloody Days — The War Drawing to a Close — Return of the Government to Augusta — Governor Brownson— Assembly in Session — Act of Confiscation and Amercement — Condition of Things in 1783 — Religious Affairs — The Quakers — The Baptists — Marshall, Mercer, Bottsford — Charac- teristics of the People — General View of the Churches — Social Conditions just after the War.

Authorities : McCall, Stevens, Jones, White's Collections, Life of Wm. Can- dler, Life of James Jackson, Gilmer's Georgians, Lee Memoirs Ramsay, History of South Carolina, files of Georgia Gazette in Georgia Historical Society.

As McCall, Stevens and Jones have each given such a careful account of the difficulties' between Governor Wright and his Assembly and of the events of the Revolutionary war, I shall throw what it is necessary for my purpose into

74 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iti.

one chapter of moderate length, and refer those who are anxious to make a careful study of those times to these valuable works where, with painstaking care, and, as far as Jones and Stevens are concerned, with praiseworthy impar- tiality everything of importance is detailed. Major McCall was perhaps not free from the influence of personal resent- ment, and was, perhaps, not prepared to do strict justice to a people he so thoroughly detested as the loyalists.

Governor Wright had been very efficient as a governor, and was highly esteemed by all the people until the troubles resulting from the Stamp Act began. He was, while American born, an Englishman in every fiber of his being, and was in full sympathy with the Tory ministry and with its measures, but he found his Assembly sadly poisoned by what he thought was the virus of rebellion, and as we saw in the last chapter, he had at one time an open rupture with his Assembly, and went to England for a twenty months' stay. The storm, however, blew over; he returned to America and had good reason to hope there would be peace, but after a short respite from contention the Boston port bill was passed, and things began to look warlike in the northern provinces.

There was only one paper in Georgia at that time, the Georgia Gazette, and in that paper, on the 29th of July, 1774, only one 3'car after Governor Wright had made the great purchase from the Indians and opened a new world to Georgia, Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones, Mr. Archibald Bul- loch, Mr. John Houston, and Mr. George Walton called a meeting of the citizens of Savannah to meet in Tondee's Lonof Room and consider the situation.

The governor and several of these gentlemen had been at outs for some time, and Dr. Jones had been especially offensive, and the governor's indignation against these re- bellious subjects, of whom Dr. Jones was one, rose high. The convention met in Ausi'ust and considered the condition

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 75

of things, and a large committee was appointed, consisting of John Glen, John Smith, Joseph Clay, John Houston, Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones, Lyman Hall, of St. John's parish; Wm. Young Esquire, Edward Telfair, Samuel Farley, George Walton, Joseph Habersham, Jonathan Bryan, Jona- than Cochran, Geo. Mcintosh, Sutton Banks, Wm. Gib- bons, Benj. Andrew, of St. John's; John Winn, of St. John's; John Stirk, of St. Matthew's; Archibald Bulloch, James Screven, David Zubly, H. Bourquine, Elisha Butler, Wm. Baker, John Mann, John Bennefield, John Stacy, and John Morel, to prepare resolutions. The committee pre- pared resolutions which were all the Boston people could have asked, and another committee was appointed to secure contributions for the relief of the Boston poor, and it col- lected and forwarded five hundred and twenty-nine barrels of rice to Boston for their relief. The action of this con- vention did not meet the approval of the old and staunch friends of a king who had always been a kind friend to the Georgia colony, and when Governor Wright wrote a protest against these utterances, and sent his messengers through the parishes to secure signers to it, he had no difificulty in securing a large number who expressed most decidedly their dissent from the course of these Savannah agitators. Men who fought afterward long and bravely for the Amer- ican cause were found in large numbers among these signers.

The convention in Savannah could not see its way clear to the appointment of delegates to the Continental Con- gress, and much to the displeasure of the more ardent Sons of Liberty, and especially of those of St. John's parish, it adjourned and sent no delegates.

So another Congress was called to appoint delegates, but when the time came for its assemblage there were only five parishes represented. This meeting, insignificant as it was, still hoped to get the Assembly to appoint delegates to the

(

76 The Story of Georgia [Chap. III. !

Continental Congress, and it might have succeeded but i that the shrewd old governor dissolved the Assembly and ! checkmated it. The convention went through the form of j an election, however, and Mr. Noble W. Jones, Mr. Archi- | bald Bulloch and Mr. John Houston were selected as dele- gates to Philadelphia, but as they had no proper authority, ] and as the Georgia colony had not complied with the con- j ditions of membership in the association, the delegates did ' not go, but sent a letter. This conduct was displeasing to i the people of St. John's parish, who accepted all the condi- tions prescribed, and they sent Lyman Hall, a Connecticut i man who practiced medicine in Sunbury, as their delegate,, j and he went to Philadelphia and took his seat in the Conti- nental Congress, but did not vote.

Things were in a turmoil. The governor thought he had stamped out the fires of rebellion as they were kindled at j Tondee's tavern, but to his dismay and disgust those irre- j pressible rebels broke out again. Some of them were men I of years, for there was Mr. Jonathan Bryan, a staid, pious, j wealthy old man; Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones, who came to j the colony forty years before a child, who was now a i wealthy and well educated physician; Mr. Edward Telfair, '. a native Scotchman and a successful merchant, and among the young men were James Habersham and John and Joseph | his brothers, whose father was one of the staunchest friends of the king; these, as well as that young madcap, James ■ Jackson; the hot-headed youth, John Milledge, and that i Virginia adventurer, George Walton, were all in the con- | clave of rebels and were defying him. To crown all they j broke open the powder magazine in Savannah and stole the gunpowder, and soon after this Major Habersham, in con- j nection with the rebellious South Carolinians, captured a < ship-load of gunpowder and turned it over to the rebels. "'

The brave old loyalist was powerless. Nominally he was captain-general and commander-in-chief, but reall}' he was

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 77

a prisoner in his own home. The up-country parishes were, however, not disaffected, and he had good reason to hope this storm would blow over as the one raised by the Stamp Act had, and that he would be in power again, but matters, instead of getting better, grew worse. Men whom he thought he could rely on in the up-country were becom- ing disaffected. .

After Lexington and Concord the whole colony was aroused, and a convention was called to meet in Savannah July 4, 1775, and there assembled delegates from all the parishes. The delegates were:

From Savannah: A. Bulloch, Noble Wimberly Jones, Jos. Habersham, Jonathan Bryan, Ambrose Wright, William Young, John Glenn, Samuel Elbert, John Houston, Oliver Bowen, John McCluer, Edward Telfair, Thomas Lee, George Houston, Joseph Reynolds, John Smith, Wm. Ewen, John Martin, Dr. Zubli, Wm. Bryan, Philip Box, Philip Allman, Wm. O' Bryan, Joseph Clay, Seth John Cuthbert.

District of Vernonsburg: Joseph Butler, Andrew Elton Wells, Matthew Roche, Jr.

Acton: David Zubli. Basil Cowper, Wm. Gibbons.

Sea Island district: Colonel De Vaux, Colonel Delegal, James Bulloch, James Morel, John M. Giradeau, John Bar- nard, Robert Gibson.

St. Matthew's: Jno. Stirk, Jno. A. Treutlen, Geo. Walton, Edward Jones, Jacob Waldhauer, Philip Howell, Isaac Young, Jenkin Davis, John Morel, John Fieri, Charles Mc- Cay, C. Cramer.

St. George's: Henry Jones, John Green, Thos. Burton, Wm. Lord, David Lewis, Benjamin Lewis, James Pugh, John Fulton.

St. Andrew's: J. Cochran, W. Jones, P. Tarlin, L. Mcin- tosh, W. Mcintosh, George Threadcraft, John Wereat, Rod- erick Mcintosh, John Witherspoon, Geo. Mcintosh, Allen Stuart, John Mcintosh, Raymond Demere.

78 The Story of Georgia [Chap. III.

St. Philip's: Colonel Butler, Wm. Lecompte, Wm. Max- well, James Maxwell, S. Drayton, A. F. Brisbane, L. Mains, Hugh Bryan.

St. David's: Daniel Ryan.

St. Thomas's: J. Roberts.

St. Paul's: John Walton, Jos. Mattocks, Andrew Burns, Robert Rae, James Rae, Andrew Moore, Andrew Burney, Leonard Marbury.

St. John's: James Screven, Nicolas Brownson, D. Rob- erts, Jno. Baker, Jno. Bacon, J. Maxwell, E. Ball, William Baker, Wm. Bacon, Jno. Stevens, John Winn.

There had been very decided changes in the colony, and this Georgia congress had in it a number of able men of Georgia birth. Savannah was no longer a village. It had for the sixteen years of Governor Wright's governorship been continually advancing, and the South Carolina colony had given to Georgia some very valuable citizens, among them Archibald Bulloch, who was made president of this provincial congress. He was an ardent patriot, a man of great purity of character, and was so highly esteemed for his virtue and ability that he was chosen president of the Provincial Congress, and elected a delegate to the Conti- nental Congress, and when Governor Wright was deposed and fled the State, and a council of safety was appointed to take charge of things in the interim before the adoption of a constitution, he was selected as the president and com- mander-in-chief. He was in this position when the Declara- tion of Independence was made, and it was his office to read the document to the assembly of citizens, who with due honors celebrated the event in Savannah. He called the convention to form a constitution, and would doubtless have been elected the first governor of the State under it, but was taken ill and died before its adoption, and John A. Treutlen was chosen. It was while Mr. Bulloch was presi-

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 79

dent of the council that an abortive movement was made by General Lee on St. Augustine.

Mr. Jonathan Bryan, the son of Joseph Bryan, who had assisted Mr. Oglethorpe forty years before with his sawyers and carpenters, was himself a venerable man, a man of large means and a member of the council. His sympathies were with the Whigs and he became obnoxious to the gov- ernor, and when the governor threatened him with his dis- pleasure indignantly threw up his office and left the council. He was an ardent patriot to the last, and was captured by the British and imprisoned in a prison-ship until he was released. .

Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones was the son of Noble Jones, one of Mr. Oglethorpe's emigrants and a trusted man in the colony. Dr. Jones was himself an Englishman and could not have been less than fifty years old at this time, as he is mentioned as one who received the grant of a lot in 1733. He was a man of means, intelligence and character, and was a physician by profession. He was an ardent Whig, much to the sorrow of his excellent father, who was loyal to the last. He was obnoxious to Governor Wright because of his liberal views, and when he was elected speaker, as we have seen. Governor Wright dissolved the Assembly, and when he was again elected on its reassembling, James Habersham, acting governor, did the same thing.

Dr. Jones was elected twice a delegate to the Continental Congress, but did not go on account of his great respect for his aged father, who was, like his friend James Habersham, near the end of his life, and who died during these troubles.* John Glen was a prominent lawyer in Savannah. He was son-in-law of Noble Jones and brother-in-law of Noble Wimberly Jones. He was so obnoxious to Governor Wright that he was ostracized by his proclamation, and so moderate

* Stevens and Colonel Jones both pay a lofty tribute to this excellent man, and to his descendant, Mr. De Renne, to whom Georgia is much indebted for the recovery and reproduction of much bearing on her early history.

80 The Story of Georgia [Chap, hi.

in his Whigism that he was denounced by the Legislature of 1782 as a Tory. This censure was afterward, however, re- moved. Samuel Elbert, who rose to be a brigadier and governor, was the son of a Baptist preacher; born in South Carolina, he came to Georgia when quite young, married in Georgia, was captain of a volunteer company of grenadiers, and was selected as a field-officer in the first battalion of Georgia troops. He was captured at Briar creek, was ex- changed, re-entered the army and was at the surrender of Yorktown.

In 1785 he was elected governor of the State by an almost unanimous vote* and made a treaty with the Indians at Shoulderbone creek. Three years after he left the gov- ernor's chair he died.

John Houston was the son of Sir Patrick Houston, who was one of the first settlers in the colony. He was one of the leading patriots and was appointed as one of the first representatives to the Continental Congress, and in 1778 he was chosen as governor of the new state, and in 1784 was governor a second time. He was a commissioner for the settlement of the boundary line between Georgia and South Carolina. After a life of distinguished service he died in Savannah in 1796.

Edward Telfair was a Scotchman who came with his brother to Savannah when he was thirty-one years old. William, the brother, was a Loyalist, but Edward was a Whig. He threw himself fully into the ranks of the patriots, and was with Jones, Habersham, Milledge and Walton at the breaking into the magazine. He was governor for two terms and elected twice to Congress. He died in 1807. He was a man of fine business judgment, of large wealth, and of great intelligence and public spirit.

Wm. Ewen was an Englishman by birth and came to the colony a poor boy. He was a potter and became a man of

* White.

i

1776-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 81

substance and a lawyer. He took the side of the Ameri- cans, and was one of the council of safety and afterward president of the council.*

The Rev. Dr. Zubly was the first pastor of the Independ- ent Presbyterian church in Savannah. He sympathized, no doubt, sincerely with the first movements of the Whigs and Was sent as a delegate to Philadelphia. While there he became satisfied that the independence of the colonies would be declared. He was bitterly opposed to going so far, and when he was assured that the Congress would be satisfied with nothing less than independence, he divulged that fact to Sir James Wright in a letter. When it was discovered that he had done this he left Philadelphia hurriedly and fled to Savannah. The story of his treachery, as his course was called, followed him, and he was driven into exile and a large part of his property confiscated. He died before the war was over in South Carolina.

Wm. Gibbons was a prominent lawyer, whose family were leading and wealthy people in Savannah. He was very famous in after time as a lawyer and a man of large wealth and great enterprise.

John Adam Treutlen, the second of the name, descended from one of the Salzburghers, and the name is found among the deacons of the church. -j- He was possibly a son of the first Treutlen. He was elected governor at the first elec- tion by the legislature after the adoption of the constitu- tion of 1777. When Col. Wm. Henry Drayton was trying to arouse a sentiment in favor of a union of the Georgia and Carolina colonies, he said some things which irritated the fiery German, and he published a loud protest and offered $100 reward for the arrest of the "said Wm. Henry Drayton." He was killed by the British in South Carolina. ;|:

* White, 2.

■f See Strobel's History of the Salzburghers. t White. 6

82 The Story of Georgia [Chap. hi.

John Wereat was an Englishman of fine mind and exten- sive attainments. He was a leading man in the colony and the patron of James Jackson, whose father had been his friend in England.

George Walton was a Virginian. He was a member of an old and highly respected family in that State, but having lost his father and his estate being small, his guardian put him as apprentice to a carpenter. When his time was out he came to Georgia, where he had relatives, and resolved to study law, which he did with Colonel Yonge in Savannah, and began to practice there. He was heart and hand with the Whigs from the first, and was with the Savannah coterie in their daring measures. He was sent a delegate to the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independ- ence, was in the army as colonel and was wounded and taken prisoner. Was president of the council, governor, chief justice, and six times elected to Congress. He died in Augusta while judge of the superior court, in the early part of the century.*

These were some of those who were in this memorable

convention of 1775. Few bodies of men have ever assem-

• bled in Georgia of more ability. The convention represented

all parts of the young colony. At this time Georgia had

in it only 17,000 white people in all.-j-

The Assembly took charge of the government of the colony as the Long Parliament had taken charge of English affairs in the days of Charles I., and Governor Wright found himself powerless. He needed some troops to bring these recusants to order, and he wrote the British general and the British admiral to supply his needs, but the uncon- scionable rebels of South Carolina secured his letters and substituted others for them, telling the general and the ad- miral that all was well in the Georgia colony. The Assem-

* While, ■fjones.

1775-1782.]

AND THE Georgia People. 83

bly finally ordered his arrest, and Major Habersham did the work as gently as possible. The old governor was sub- jected to no indignity, but simply confined to his home. He was allowed to escape, and he left the colony, much to its relief and doubtless to his own, and went to England, where he was received with due honors. The Assembly appointed delegates to the Continental Congress, who were: Dr. Zubly, Dr. Jones, Arch Bulloch, John Houston and Dr. l.yman Hall; provided for the issuing of paper money, which soon became worthless, and proceeded to organize a battalion of State troops. The officers of the battalion were: Colonel, Lachlan Mcintosh; Lieutenant -Colonel, Samuel Elbert; Major, Joseph Habersham.

First Company: Captain, Francis H. Harris; First Lieu- tenant, John Habersham; Second Lieutenant, John Jenkins; Third Lieutenant, Ensign Rae, Savannah.

Second Company: Captain, Oliver Bowen, commodore; First Lieutenant, George Hanley; Second Lieutenant, John Berrien (afterward treasurer of the State, and father of John MacPherson Berrien), Savannah.

Third Company: Captain, John Mcintosh; First Lieuten- ant, Lachlan Mcintosh; Second Lieutenant, Francis Archer; Ensign, J. Morrison, Darien.

Fourth Company: Captain, Arthur Carney; First Lieu- tenant, Benj. Odinsell; Second Lieutenant, John Eman; Ensign, DeLaplaine, Liberty.

Fifth Company: Captain, Thomas Chisholm; First Lieu- tenant, Caleb Howell; Second Lieutenant, Daniel Cuthbert; Ensign, Wm. Mcintosh, St. Philip's.

Sixth Company; Captain, John Green, Burke; Lieuten- ant, Ignatius Few, Columbia.

Seventh Company: Captain, Chesley Bostwick, Rich- mond; First Lieutenant, John Martin, Jefferson.

Eighth or Rifle Company: Captain, Colson; First Lieu- tenant, Shadrach Wright; Second Lieutenant, George Wal-

84 The Story of Georgia [Chap. hi.

ton;* Chaplain, John Holmes, Episcopal minister, Wilkes county.

Lachlan Mcintosh, who was to command the battalion, was one of that famous clan who settled at Darien, the son of John More Mcintosh, the chief of the clan. He was himself born in Scotland, but had spent his early years in Georgia on the southern frontier at Darien, where his father kept the store of the trustees, and after that had a trading- post for the Indians and a rice plantation. In his youth he was in Charleston in a commercial house. He was a Whig from the beginning of the struggle, and when the First bat- talion was organized he was appointed to command it. He was a hasty, fearless Highlander, and became involved in a difficulty with Button Gwinnett in the early part of the war. There was a duel; both men were wounded, Gwin- nett fatally. Colonel Mcintosh then went to Virginia and had a command under Washington. He returned to Geor- gia and was in command of a brigade at the siege of Sa- vannah, and was captured at the surrender of General Lin- coln in Charleston. He died in Savannah in 1806.

Joseph Habersham, the major of the battalion, was the son of James Habersham, the staunch Loyalist. He was a native of Savannah, and was not twenty-five years old when the troubles began. He was educated at Princeton, and when only twenty-three years old was one of the committee appointed by the Liberty Boys. He was connected with the group who broke open the magazine and who captured the ship-load of powder. He was often in the General As- sembly, and at one time was Speaker of the House; after- ward he was postmaster-general of the United States. He died in Savannah in i8i5.f The First company was com- posed of Savannah people and was commanded by Captain

* This George Walton was George Walton of Wilkes county, a relative of George Walton the signer.

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 85

Francis Henry Harris, the son of Francis Harris, who had long been in the colony, and was one of its trusted officers. Young Harris was at school in Fngland when the war be- gan. He came home at once and entered the army. His career was a brief one. In 1782, when the victory was nearly won, while he was in the army in South Carolina, a Georgia refugee fighting against the common foe, he died.*

The officers of the battalion came from all parts of the State, and as there was no immediate call for active service the little army was not put into the field, and only a few of the officers selected won any laurels during the war.

Among the most ardent of the young Liberty Boys was James Jackson, a fiery young Englishman, whose name does not appear among them, for he was a comparative stranger and not yet of age. Young Jackson had been invited to Georgia by Mr. Wereat, his father's friend, and had been in the province only a few years. He was a law student when the war broke out, and sympathizing with the Americans he threw himself with his whole soul into the contest. He so distinguished himself in the first military movements in Georgia that he was given a command as captain. He was in Savannah when it fell, and fled with John Milledge to South Carolina to join the army there. He was put in command of some refugee troops and was at the surrender of Augusta and commandant there. Then he raised and commanded a battalion of cavalry, and when Savannah fell he was the officer to whom was delegated by General Wayne the honor of leading the first troops into the evacu- ated city.

He threw himself after the war into politics, and at one time opposed his old commander. General Wayne, for a seat in Congress, and up to his death in 1806 he was per- haps the most prominent figure in Georgia. He was a man

* White.

86 The Story of Georgia [Chap. hi.

of perfect fearlessness and exceedingly hasty temper, and in those days a word was followed by a blow and a blow by a duel. He fought a duel to the death during the Rev- olution with Lieutenant-Governor George Wells, who had affronted him, and fought several duels after that. He was intensely devoted to his adopted State, and there was no honor which she had it in her power to confer that she withheld from him. We shall see him often in the course of this history.

The council to whom all the matters connected with the government were referred consisted of George Walton, Wrn. Ewen, Step Drayton, Noble W. Jones, Basil Cowper, Edward Telfair, J. L. Girardeau, Jonathan Bryan, John Smith, Wm. Gibbons, John Martin, Oliver Bowen, Ambrose Wright,* Samuel Elbert, Jos. Habersham, Francis Henry Harris.

Of a number of these we have already spoken. Of some few of them we know little, and one of them was de- nounced in an after time as a Loyalist. John Martin, known by Governor Wright as black John from the northward, was afterward governor, and was in that position when the Legislature returned to Savannah. Ambrose Wright had been Mr. Whitefield's traveling companion and his trusted friend, who was in charge of his interests at Bethesda and received a generous bequest from him when he died. Oliver Bowen was the leading naval officer in Georgia.

The council elected Geo. Walton temporary president and commissioned the officers of the battalion, and elected Mr. Archibald Bulloch the first president of the council. Mr. Bulloch called a convention to form a con- stitution. It was duly chosen and a constitution was adopted, but all record of its members and of its doings have been lost. We have the constitution it formed, but no other trace of it. The constitution was adopted by the

*He was the ancestor of General Ambrose R. Wright of the C. S. A.

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 87

convention which met in Savannah in 1777 ; but President Bulloch, who called the convention and presided over its sessions, died soon after its adjournment, and Button Gwin- nett was chosen by the council to succeed him.

There was but little attention paid to the weak province of Georgia by the British during the years 1775, '76, '']'] and '78, and there were no military operations of any im- portance. There was a little skirmish near Savannah, dig- nified by Bishop Stephens as the first battle in Georgia. An abortive movement was made on St. Augustine in 1776, and a second of the same character in 1777. A successful campaign, conducted by John Jones, Captain Twiggs and Captain Marbury, from the new settlements, against the Cherokees, and loss of an insignificant fort on the Alta- maha, were about all the military movements of the first two years. The fact was, many denizens of Georgia did not know there was a war save from rumor.

There was so little trouble in Georgia that the conven- tion had an uninterrupted session, and in 1777, in the city ■of Savannah, adopted the first Constitution of the State of Georgia. It provided that (i) all persons who were elected representatives should be Protestants, and should have two hundred and fifty acres of land or two hundred and fifty pounds of other property. 2. That all voters must have ten pounds of property. 3. That delegates to the Continental Congress should be annually chosen. 4. The governor was to be chosen annually by the Assembly. 5. There should be a superior court in every county. 6. There should be a supreme court, consisting of a chief justice and three or more justices of the peace, in every county. 7. Estates should not be entailed. 8. Schools should be established in every county, supported by the State. 9. No clergyman should be a member of the House of Delegates.

It proceeded at once to disestablish the Church of Eng-

88

The Story of Georgia

[Chap. III.

land and to form the parishes into counties. These counties were all, save one, named in honor of those Englishmen who had stood by the colonies in Parliament. Christ

Church was called Chatham ; St. Matthew's, Effingham; St. Philip's, Glynn; St. Andrew's, Camden; St. George's, Burke; St. Paul's, Richmond; the new county west of north and west of St. Paul's, Wilkes; St. John's, Liberty.

Acting in accordance with this Constitution the Assem-

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 89

bly proceeded to elect a governor, and, as we have seen, elected Jno. Adam Treutlen.

The Constitution being adopted, the Legislature pro- ceeded to take severe measures against the Loyalists. Many of the worthiest men in the State were not in sympathy with these rebellious movements, and those who had ven- tured all had no disposition to show the laggards, or, worse, the enemies to the cause, any mercy.

It could not have been expected that all the people, or even a majority of them, would fall in with the measures of the Whigs. There were many of the people sincerely at- tached to the British government. They were among the most intelligent and the wealthiest, and were not to be classed at all with those brigands who were afterward known as Tories. They were, however, very obnoxious to the patriots, and the Assembly adopted severe measures against them. They were pronounced guilty of high treason and banished from the State and their property confiscated. The list of these attainted ones is found inWatkins's Digest and in that of Marbury and Crawford. Those included in the act were among the very best people of the State; they were men who had done faithful work in and for the colony. They had occupied leading places and were often people of large means and some of them of great intelligence. While one is not disposed to detract from the noble group who espoused the cause of the colonies, it is too late now to throw odium on these who were denounced by this first act of ostracism as Loyalists.

The names as given in the ofificial list are : Sir James Wright, R. Reed, Andrew Hewitt, Wm. Moore, Thos. Reed, Geo. Baillie, James Hume, Esq., John Bond Randall, Geo. Webb, Wm. John Yonge, Esq., H. Yonge, Sr., John Love, Charles W. McKennon, P. Yonge, Jos. Johnson, George Barry, Jas. Robertson, John Johnson, Alex Wylly, Jas. Brown, Wm. Love, Wm. Johnstone, D, Johnson, Chas. Hall,

90 The Story of Georgia [Chap. hi.

John Lightenstone, A. McGovvan, James Moore, John Mull- ryne, Wm. Sims, Wm. Colville, Josiah Tattnall, Sr., John Inglis, John Murray, Wm. McGilveray, P. Dean, Sir An- thony Stokes, J. J. Zubly, D.D., T. Johnson, John Wood, Geo. Kincaid, Henry Yonge, Jr., Chas. Wright, Geo. Bor- land, Jas. Downey, Thos. Eaton, John Graham, Wm. Frink- field, Jas. Ed. Powell, John Hume, Esq., Geo. McCauley, Gerymyn Wright, Jos. Farley, Esq., Jno. Jameson, Chas. Wright, Thomas Eaton, James Taylor, Geo. Finch, Philip Moore, Wm. Panton, John Simpson, Charles McCulloch.

This act of confiscation and amercement was passed very prpmptly by the first Legislature, but before it could be carried into effect the tables were turned, for Governor Wright was restored to his place, and a retaliatory act of attainder was promptly passed, and we may well judge with great heartiness, against the prominent Whigs.*

The campaign against St. Augustine was a pitiable fail- ure. There were great discord and contention in the Amer- ican ranks between the leading ofificers. A few small skirmishes, in one of which Colonel Elijah Clarke was wounded, and the British had the advantage; and then the Americans retired toward Savannah and abandoned the effort to invade Florida for the time. This was the first campaign of the Georgia forces, and its results were by no means encouraging. Then the British began to move northward, and the attempt to resist the advance of their forces in the latter part of 1778 was a gallant but fruitless one. At Midway church there was a sharp skirmish in which the brave General Screven was killed, and in which young James Jackson, then a lieutenant, distinguished himself; but the British troops reached Savannah, and after a sharp engage- ment, in which the Americans, badly handled, were routed, the city fell again into the hands of the British.

The only relieving feature of the dark time was that

'*" The list of the proscribed Whigs is given on pp. 93-95.

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 91

Colonel John White, for whom White county was after- ward named, with a small body of militia succeeded in cap- turing, on the Ogeechee, five armed vessels and one hun- dred and five troops.

The account of the capture of Savannah has been fully given by McCall, Bishop Stevens and Colonel Jones, and we have little more to do with it than to recognize the fact.

As soon as Governor Wright was reinstated he called a Legislature together. The members of it were:

Savannah — Samuel Farley, James Mossman, John Simp- son, and James Robertson.

Little Ogeechee — Wm. Jones.

Midway — ^Jno. Irvine, Jos. F"ox.

Ebenezer — Alex. Wright, Basil Cowper, Nathaniel Hall.

Acton — David Zubly.

Wilmington — Philip Yonge.

St. Andrew's — Robert Baillie. James Spalding.

Frederica — Wm. Panton.

St. David's — Sam'l Douglas.

St. Patrick's — Robert Porteus.

St. Thomas's — Simon Paterson.

St. Mary's — Wm. Ross.

Halifax and St. George's — Alex. Wylly, John Henderson.

Of these, however, only fifteen qualified.*

Although the war had continued for nearly four years from its first beginning at Concord and Lexington, there had been but little disturbance in upper Georgia up to this time. The Indians were somewhat menacing, but they were a considerable distance from the remotest settler. People from North Carolinaand Virginia came without fear into the new country above Augusta in the early years of the war. The people from Liberty and the counties below had some of them been forced to take refuge in parts of the State more remote from the coast, and there was little

* Jones, Vol. 2, 419-

92 The Story of Georgia [Chap. III.

change in the condition of affairs in any other part of the State ; but in the latter part of 1778 and during the whole of 1779 war with all its horrors swept over Georgia. No part of it escaped, and no State save South Carolina was so devastated.

After Savannah was captured and General Howe had retreated to South Carolina, the British column almost without resistance marched northward, and there was a battle or skirmish with a body of Tories near where Waynesboro now is. In this fight Twiggs, Few and Inman, Whig captains, won the field. McCall says that Cap- tain Inman, who was doubtless a kinsman of the captain of the same name who fell at Kings Mountain, killed three Tories with his own sword. This skirmish did not interfere with the progress of Colonel Campbell to Augusta. He captured that then little village without any difficulty, and then marched on through the upper part of Richmond county to the extreme limit of the white settlement at Fort Charlotte, where Petersburg stood and where the Broad river joins the Savannah.

The few partizan troops in Georgia had gradually fallen back before the advancing British column until they formed a junction with a column of troops under Colonel Pickens, who had crossed the river from South Carolina. These troops pursued a body of Tories under command of Colonel Boyd, a gallant British officer, who had gone into the new county of Wilkes and taken position on Kettle creek, near Washington. There were eight hundred of them, and the troops under Pickens, with Dooly and Elijah Clarke, attacked Boyd and won. a decided victory.*

* In the battle Boyd was mortally wounded. General Pickens treated him with great kindness, and when the Briton was in his last hours he gave his watch and other valuables to General Pickens to be sent to his wife. This the chivalric Irishman did. Years after, when Mrs. Boyd died, she bequeathed that watch to the family of General Pickens, and they have it now.

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 93

The Tories in the up-country were now so disheartened by this defeat that they fled the country. The British troops then returned from the up-country and Augusta came once more into the hands of the Americans. General Ashe now crossed the Savannah river into Georgia and with quite a considerable force took position on Briar creek, in what is now Screven county. He was attacked by the British under General Prevost and signally defeated* and his army was broken to pieces. Many very severe things have been said of this brave and patriotic North Caro- linian. It is not my ofifice to exonerate, or condemn him. His case was brought at his instance before a court of inquiry, and he was fully vindicated from all other charges than the one of handling an army so large without proper caution. His forces were mere militia from different States. They were poorly equipped and badly disciplined. It is certain that the defeat was an entire and a crushing one, and destroyed the last vestige of hope that Georgia was likely to be recovered from the clutches of the British.

When Governor Wright was placed in his seat again he called a meeting of a loyal assembly, and they at once retaliated on the Whigs by passing an act of attainder and confiscation. This roll of honor has been preserved and is herewith given. It aimed to take in all those who were obnoxious to the crown, and contained the names of sundry persons who were afterwards denounced by the Georgia Legislature of iy82 as Tories. These men were :

John Houston, governor; Noble W. Jones, speaker; John Adam Treutlen, counselor; M, Sheftall; Lachlan Mcintosh, general; Wm. O'Bryan, treasurer; George Walton, member of Congress; John Wereat, counselor; Wm, Stephens, attorney; Ed Telfair, member of Congress; John McClure, major; Ed Davies, assem- blyman; John Clay, paymaster; Samuel Elbert, rebel general, Sa- vannah; Seth John Cuthbert, major, Darien; W. Holsendorf, coun-

* For a very full account of this engagement see Jones, Val. 2, 348-352.

94 The Story of Georgia [Chap. hi.

selor, Darien; R. Howley, governor; George Galphin, superin- tendent Indian affairs, Silver Bluff; Andrew Williamson, rebel gen- eral; John White, colonel; N. Wade, treasurer; John Twiggs, col- onel, Richmond; Wm. Few, rebel counselor, Columbia; E. Lang- worthy, rebel delegate; Wm. Glascock, counselor, Richmond; Robert Walton, commissioner, Richmond; Jos. Wood, clerk; Pig- gin, colonel; Wm. Hornbay, distiller; Pierce Butler, rebel officer^ Darien; Jos. Wood, member of Congress; Rev. Wm. Piercy; Thos. Savage, planter; Thos. Stone, councilor; Benj. Andrew, councilor, Liberty; John Baker, colonel, Liberty; Wm. Baker, rebel officer, Liberty; Francis Brown, planter. Liberty; Nathan Brownson, member rebel Congress; John Hardy, captain; Thos. Morris, of- ficer; Thos. Maxwell, planter, Liberty; Jos. Woodruff; W. Le Conte, counselor. Liberty; P. Chambers, shopkeeper; T. Wash- ington, rebel officer, died in Charleston; C. F. Chevalier, coun- selor, French refugee; E. Maxwell, planter, Liberty; Thos. Max- well, mayor of Sunbury, Liberty; Wm. Gibbons, Jr., planter. Sa- vannah; Wm. Davies, officer, Burke; Jno. Graves, yeoman. Lib- erty; Charles Kent, counselor; Jno. Bacon, mariner. Liberty; N. Saxton, tavern-keeper; P. Lowe, officer; S. Spencer, mariner; Jno. Winn, Sr., planter, Liberty; Dev Jarrett, assemblyman, Richmond; S. West, gent.. Liberty; J. Dupont, planter; Frederick Pugh, planter; James Rae, planter, Richmond; James Martin, planter; John Martin, sheriff, Jefferson; Thos. Pace, officer, Richmond; Benj. Few, officer, Richmond; D. Wright, planter, Richmond; C. Bostick, shopkeeper, Richmond; L. Bostick, planter, Rich- mond; L. Marbury, officer, Richmond; Jno. Sharp, planter, Rich- mond; Jno. Mcintosh, colonel, Liberty; James Houston, surgeon, Chatham; James Habersham, Jr., merchant, Savannah; Jno. Hab- ersham, major. Savannah; John Milledge, assemblyman. Savan- nah; Levi Sheftall, butcher, Savannah; P. J. Cohen, shopkeeper, Savannah; Jno. Sutcliff, shopkeeper, Savannah; Jonathan Bryan, counselor. Savannah; John Spencer, officer. Savannah; Rev. Jno. Holmes, chaplain, Burke; Wm. Gibbons, Sr. , counselor, Savan- nah; Sheftall Sheftall, officer. Savannah; P. Minis, shopkeeper. Savannah; C. Pollock, shopkeeper, Savannah; R. Hamilton, at- torney. Savannah; Benj. Loyd, officer. Savannah; J. Alexander, officer, Savannah; John Jenkins, assemblyman; S. Stirk, secretary, Effingham; P. Densler, yeoman; H. Cuyler, officer, Savannah:

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. y&

Jos. Gibbons, assemblyman, Savannah; Ebenezer Piatt, shop- keeper, Savannah; M. Griffin, planter; P. De Vaux, gentn.. Sa- vannah; John Gibbons, vessel master. Savannah; John Smith, planter; Jos. Oswald, planter; Josiah Powell, planter; Samuel Sal- tus, planter, Liberty; John Sandeford, planter; Peter Tarling, officer, Savannah; Oliver Bowen, commodore. Savannah; Lyman Hall, member of Congress, Liberty; Andrew Moore, planter;. Joshua Inman, planter, Burke; John Dooly, colonel, Wilkes; Jno. Glen, chief justice. Savannah; Rich VVyley, member council, Sa- vannah; A. F. Brisbane, counselor, Savannah; Shem Butler, as- semblyman. Savannah; Jos. Habersham, colonel. Savannah; Jno. Stirk, colonel, Effingham; R. Demere, general, Darien; C. Odingsel, captain, Effingham; Wm. Peacock, counselor. Liberty; John Bradley, sea captain; Jos. Reynolds, bricklayer; Rudolph Strohaker, Chas. Cope, Lewis Cope, butchers, Savannah; Hep- worth Carter, captain, Jefferson; S. Johnson, butcher; Jas. Harris, planter; Henry Jones, colonel, Burke; Hugh McGee, captain; John Wilson, gent., Richmond; George Wyche, officer, Rich- mond; Wm. Candler, officer, Richmond; Z. Fenn, planter, Rich- mond; Wm. Mcintosh, colonel, Darien; Dr. Brydie, surgeon. Savannah; A. MacLean, merchant, Augusta; Pat Houston, baro- net. Savannah; McCarty Campbell, merchant, Augusta; James Gordon, planter; Jno. Kell, gent., Darien; John McLean, planter; John Snider, planter, Effingham; Jno. Elliott, officer; R. Swinney, yeoman; Hugh Middleton, officer; Joe Pray, mariner; J. McLean, planter.

The French allies, assisted by the Americans, made an effort to recapture Savannah in September, 1779. Count D'Estaing, the French commander, directed the move- ments. He was wounded, and Count Pulaski, a Pole, who was an American ally, was fatally wounded. The battle was a fierce one and the loss of the French and Americans con- siderable. The victory of the British was complete, and they were the masters of the whole of Georgia.

Early in 1780 the British forces reoccupied Augusta and strengthened their works. They were attacked by Elijah Clarke and Major James Jackson, but they resisted the as-

96 The Story of Georgia [Chap. III.

sault successfully and the Americans suffered greatly ; and McCall says, what Brown indignantly denied,* that Brown was guilty of great cruelty to the helpless captives, hang- ing a large number. Brown admits there were some fifteen persons hung, but says they were atrocious criminals, who were hung for their murders and thefts. • He denied the charge of Ramsay that he had allowed any cruelty from the Indians, and denied that there was any committed. The fearful story of the massacre of the prisoners rest on McCall alone, who gives as his authority certain let- ters from some unnamed British ofificers, who he says gloated over it. General Lee makes no mention of it, and it is probably not true. Governor Wright says "thir- teen of the prisoners who broke their paroles and came against Augusta have been hanged, which I hope will have a very good effect. "■j- Governor Wright had reached Sa- vannah in July, 1779, and finally left there in the spring of 1782. He had the title of governor-general, but his rule was after a short time almost entirely confined to the limits of the garisoned city of Savannah. Here his Rump Par- liament assembled and passed sundry laws that they could not execute. He was the most detested of the British officers, and the partizan troops took great pleasure in swooping down on his large estates and burning his barns. He says he had nine burned. He did his best to carry out the decree to confiscate rebel property, but he was handi- capped and thwarted on every hand. The tide of disaster to the Americans reached its flood when Count D'Estaing failed in his attack on Savannah. When Lincoln fled Corn- wallis swept victoriously over South Carolina, and Camp- bell subjugated all upper Georgia. In 1781 the tide began to turn and the staunch old governor began to see the end of his sway, and called lustily for help, which never came.

* See White's Historical Collections, Richmond county. tSee Governor Wright's Letters, Georgia Historical Collections, Vol. 4.

1775-1782,] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 97

He was game to the last, and had regular sessions of the courts and the Assembly, and the lawmaking body gravely passed its sweeping acts and observed all the forms of a peaceful government, even though the governor could see from his upper windows the smoke of his burning barns, fired by that pestiferous young Englishman, James Jack- son, whose legion was making havoc in the loyal province. But this was in 1782. Nothing could have been blacker than the sky in Georgia from 1779 to 1781 was for the Whigs.

The State authorities had been driven from Savannah and Ebenezer to Augusta, and there was in the times of confu- sion no possibility for observing the forms of law. Trivial disputes divided the disorganized Whigs, and Wereat, Wal- ton, Wells, Howley and Heard acted as governors during one year. While Heard was acting as governor at Heard's fort, Howley, with his council, was in South Carolina. Everything was in confusion. John Milton had fled with the archives of the State to Charleston; thence he conveyed them to Newbern, N. C, and finally lodged them in Balti- more, from whence they were returned to Georgia several years after the war ended. Farming was impossible, cattle were driven off, and starvation was threatened to the up- country people. The great-hearted Clarke and Wm. Can- dler gathered the women and children and led them over the mountains to the Holston country, where they were fed till the war ended.

But despite all these adversities the Whigs were unsub- dued, and again Augusta was attacked, and successfully. General Lee had come, and Clarke, Jackson and Dooly were there, and at last Brown surrendered to the Ameri- cans. There had been little quiet in Georgia from early in 1779 to the spring of 1781, and the saddest feature of it all was the bitter strife between the Whigs and Tories. As 7

98 The Story of Georgia [Chap, hi.

we have seen, many of the best people in Georgia were Loyalists. They had every reason to love the king for whose- father the colony was named. Georgia had been the petted child of the crown. There was nothing England could do for her that she had not done. No young colony had ever been more prosperous than she had been since the crown had taken charge of the government, and the substantial old Englishmen who had always loved the king refused to follow the lead of these hotheads, as they called those who brought on the war; and now, after these disasters had. come in such succession to the Whigs, others doubted the wisdom of any further resistance and were disposed to ac- cept the terms proposed by the British, and thus increased, the number of the disaffected. Taking advantage of this turmoil, the lawless and rapacious on both sides began a war of unrelenting severity and of unbridled robbery. The Loyalist from principle and devotion to his parental; government and the Tory brigand were very different people, but they were soon classed together. The loyal Highlander, who was true to his king and was anxious to fight for him, and the quiet German who only wanted peace, were put in the same category with the robber Tory. It was a war to the knife. There was no pity on either side. John Dooly, the father of Judge Dooly, had been mur- dered in his own home by the Tories, and when nine Tories had been captured by a band of Wilkes county Whigs the furious sons of th e murdered man slaughtered them all.* Grierson was shot to death after his surrender in Augusta, and Patrick Carr in cool blood shot an ofificer to death as he was handing his sword to Colonel Jackson. There had been developed a number of brave partizan leaders. John Twiggs, a Marylander, was always in the field and never defeated in the fray. He came with his kinsmen, John and David Emanuel, and was a young mechanic. He was first

* Gilmer's Georgians.

1775 1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 99

a captain and rose to the post of major-general. He chas- tised the Cherokee Indians, and protected the frontier on the Ogeechee from the Creeks. He was nearly always in partizan service and proved himself a soldier of the highest merit. He became the founder of a distinguished family, who have been an honor to the State of his adoptioiT.

Jno. Jones, who is generally found in connection with Twiggs, was the son of a wealthy and prominent man in Vir- ginia, and one of a number of brothers who came to Georgia just as the Revolution began. He and his brother James were members of the second Constitutional Conven- tion, and his brothers Abram and Seaborn were both famous for their mental ability and warm patriotism.

Wm. Few, Benj. Few and Ignatius Few were three brothers who had settled in Columbia county just before the Revolution. They were of Welsh origin and were people of intelligence and wealth, and Wm. Few was, as we shall see, one of the leading men in civil life in Georgia. His brothers Ignatius and Benjamin were with Twiggs in his forays and stood by the struggling State till the hour of victory. From this family sprang the dis- tinguished lawyer and preacher, Dr. Ignatius A. Few, who was the first president of Emory College, and connected with them was Wm. Candler, who was among the most dis- tinguished men of this period, and one of the best edu- cated men then in St. Paul's parish. He was a native Irish- man, who came from Belfast, Ireland, to North Carolina. He came to St. Paul's parish as soon as it was opened for settlement, and was an officer of the militia under Sir James Wright. In common with all the citizens in the Wrightsboro neighborhood he was opposed to the first movements of the Liberty Boys, but when the war was fairly on he took his place with the Whigs. He was forced to flee to South Carolina, and there formed the refugees into a regiment of which he was the commander.

206104

100

The Story of Georgia

[Chap. III.

He was one of the escorts for the fleeing Georgians who went with Colonel Clarke to the Holston country. He did good service in the upper Carolina army after that, and as soon as the Georgians could again reach their homes, he came to his Georgia home and was selected as probate judge and was a member of the first Assembly after the war. He died in 1784. He was the progenitor of a very dis- tinguished family of Candlers and Fews, for his daughter was the mother of Ignatius A. Few, the distinguished

founder of Emory College, and his descendants of the Candlers have been noted for their ability in almost every walk of life — distinguished as teachers, jurists, soldiers, congressmen and divines, and one of them is now governor j of the State of Georgia at this : writing (1900). :

But perhaps the most active ! and intrepid and untiring man of | the partizan leaders, who was I long the idol of the common I people of Georgia, was the rugged Elijah Clarke. He was, if not a native born Scotch-Irishman, but once re- I moved from it. He came to Georgia on the first opening . of the upper country. It was a wild country then and j demanded strong men to subdue it. He had no wealth ' and no education, and no concern for the refinements of ' life. Born a freeman, he revolted at the idea of any re- ; straint, and, devoid of fear, he went into the struggle for , liberty with all ardor. He soon evinced the fact that he was | a born soldier, and at the battle of Kettle creek he showed his qualities as a commander. When the war was over he settled on a large estate granted him by the Legislature and

Elijah Clarke.

177.5-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 101

Wilkes county. He was an impetuous, intrepid patriot. The Indians were troublesome and he was always ready for a foray. They invaded Georgia, instigated by McGilveray. Clarke pursued and defeated them. They were the last formidable body of Creeks who raided eastern Georgia.

In 1792 the French Republic commissioned him a brig- adier, whose work was to invade Florida. He became in- volved in trouble with the State government in 1794 by making a settlement on the Indian lands, of which I speak more fully elsewhere. He died in 1799.

Colonel Wm. Glascock, whose name appears so often in the history of Georgia, was a gentleman of culture and wealth, who settled an estate near Augusta before De Brahm made his first map, probably before 1760. He was an old man when the Revolution began, and his son Thomas was a lieutenant in the army in Virginia and after- ward in Georgia. Judge Glascock, for he was one of the first lay judges in Richmond county, was a vestryman of St. Paul's church, a trustee of Richmond Academy and of the State University. He died in Richmond in 1795,

His son Thomas, who was afterward general of the militia, was not the General Glascock who was in active service in the Indian war of 18 18, and was a member of Congress. General Glascock the first was as intense a Federalist as his son Thomas was a pronounced Democrat. He was a bold operator in finances and left a large estate.

Colonel Stephen Heard was one of a large family of seven, who came to Georgia and fixed their homes in the ceded lands. Here on the frontier a fort was built, known as Heard Fort. He was a gallant soldier, and being a man of more than usual education for those days, when the disasters of 1779 had driven the seat of government from Augusta, he was elected by those who fled to the West nominal governor. He was afterward prominent in public life in Georgia, being often in the legislative councils.

102 The Story of Georgia [Chap. hi.

The whole American cause in Georgia was in an ahnost hopeless condition, and the older colonies were seriously discussing some plan of settlement that would leave poor Georgia overrun and occupied by the British forces in the hands of the English Government. But brave George Walton and the members of the Continental Congress from Georgia united in an earnest remonstrance. It might have been of little avail, however, if France had not consented to interfere and if the tide of victory had not turned. This remonstrance of the Georgia delegation has been pre- served by Mr. Geo. W. Jones-De Renne, and is found in a pamphlet published by him and reproduced in White.

After Augusta was evacuated the wandering State gov- ernment returned to its old quarters there, and Dr. Nathan Brownson, a Liberty county man who had been a member of the Continental Congress, was elected in August, 1781, as governor for the unexpired term. He held the office less than six months, and was succeeded by John Martin, whom Governor Wright called " Black Jack from the Northward."

The legal capital was Savannah and the Legislature met at Ebenezer, the nearest point to it, and in July, 1782, after the city of Savannah was again in the hands of the Amer- icans, the Assembly adjourned to meet there. It was in so hilarious a mood when it reached its old quarters that it instructed Governor Martin to buy, for the use of the executive, the council and Assembly, twenty-three pounds of coffee, three hundred and seventy pounds of sugar, sixteen bushels of salt and forty-two gallons of rum. (White.)

While the Assembly was in Augusta, before the evacua- tion of Savannah, a sweeping act of attainder and amerce- ment was passed. It would seem from the published record that this act, which was enacted in May, 1782, was

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 103

passed in Savannah. As Savannah was not evacuated till July, it must have been passed in Augusta. It was the act •of five years before with the number of the denounced largely increased. Without giving the accused a hearing, merely on a suspicion of their disloyalty, or because of a rumor that they had not been true to the American cause, they were sentenced to the penalty of confiscation and banishment.

All debts due British subjects were sequestered. All (bequests made to British subjects were taken by the State. The act was to go at once into effect. Many innocent persons were included in it, and for several years following there were numerous acts, passed for the relief of those iinvolved. There were, however, many cases of great hard- ship and injustice.

Poor Sir Patrick Houston was attainted by Sir James Wright because he was a rebel, and then by this act be- cause he was a Loyalist. The same was true of sundry •others, and many who were found in this list aspersed as Tories are found afterward to be leading men in the coun- cils of the State.

Special acts were passed for the relief of some of those mentioned, and as will be seen elsewhere, Josiah Tattnall, whose large estate was confiscated and who was banished from the State, twenty-five years after this act was passed, when his son was governor, was relieved of the penalties it inflicted.

This act was passed in May, 1782. Those denounced in it were:

Sir James Wright, Geo. Houston, Sir John Grahame, P. Delegal, Alex Wright, P. Delegal, Jr., Lachlan McGilveray, Jno. Glen, Jno. MuUryne, John Boyd Randal, Josiah Tattnall, Sr., Jas. Mossman, Basil Cowper, J. C. Lucina, Wm Telfair, N Hall, Alex McGown, T. Gibbons, Thos. Talraash, Jno. Fox, Samuel Douglas, John

104 The Story of Georgia [Chap, hi

Simpson, L. Johnson, Sr. , M. Stewart, L. Johnson, Jr., Jno. Sut- cliff, Wm. Johnson, B. Farley, Thos. Johnson, Thomas Rosse, Samuel Farley, J. J. Zubly, James Alexander, David Zubly, Jo- seph Spencer, Geo. Baillie, James Butler, Wm. Wylly, John Wood, Campbell Wylly, Robert Reid, John Starr, Levi Sheftall, Thomas Reid, James Harriot, Samuel Moore, R. Porteus, John Hubbard, Alex Creighton, Matthew Marshall, R. Moody, Joseph Marshall, Wm. Clark, Thomas Brown, James Chapman, Thomas Scott, Charles Watts, Wm. Frazer, Wm. Bosomworth, Timothy Hollingsworth, Sampson Williams, Val. Hollingsworth, G. Van- sant, Wm. McDonald, George Vansant, John McDonald, Daniel McGirth, John McDonald, James McGirth, Wm. Ross, George Proctor, Daniel McLeod, James Shivers, Alex Baillie, John Spear, Alex McDonald, John Marten, David Ross, John Frost, Daniel McDonald, Wm. Frost, Roderick Mcintosh, Cornelius Dunn, Angus Bacon, John Dunn, Thomas Young, John Pettinger, Simon Munroe, Robert Abrams, Simon Patterson, Joseph Raines, Wm. Lyford, Basil Cowper, Robert Baillie, Thomas Stringer, James Kitching, John Hopkins, Robert Kelsall, William Oldes, James Spalding, James Hume, Alex Inglis, Charles McDaniel, John Hume, James Brisbane, John McDonald, Thomas Goldsmith, William Miller, William Mcintosh, Major James Wright, William Moss, Donald McDonald, James Robertson, Philip Moore, Dan'l McLeod, Henry Young, William Panton, Daniel Mcintosh, Jos. Farley, Thomas Skinner, John Fowles, I. M. Tattnall, John Pol- son, Thomas Fleming, C. McKenney, Wm. Ross, Alex Thomp- son, Alex Ross, John Wesley, R. McCormick, Charles Wright, John Shave, Thomas Forbes, Robert Porteus, Richard Shave, '^Colonel Thomas Brown, Jermyn Wright, A. Carney, Jas. Thomp- son, Charles Wright, Wm. Davidson, William Irvine, John Mc- Gilveray, Charles Watts, George Kincaid, Tim Barnard, James Carson, William Knox, Isaac DeLeon, William Clark, John Murray, Peter PMwards, Sir Pat Houston, Geo. Cuthbert, Samuel Langley, John Martin, William McGilveray, Samuel Early, John WiUiams, Wm. Stephens, Roger Kelsal, R. Demere, Benjamin Wilson, Thomas Young, John Proctor, Peter Dean, Simon Mun- roe, George Fox, Henry Muirel, D. McGerth, Moses Kirkland, James Spalding, George Aarons, John Lightenstone, R, Baillie, Wm. Willis, Wm. Lyford, A. Creighton, Andrew Menery, An-

1775-1782.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 105

drew Hewitt, Rory Mcintosh, Henry Cooper, John Johnson, Thomas Waters, William Calker, Henry Williams, Ed Corker, John Douglas, William Mangum, William White, James Douglas, Samuel Williams, Wm. Durgin, John O'Neal, James Hunt, Aving- ton Perkins, John Young, Daniel Philips, Robert Tilman, James Gordon, Wm. Young, Abram Wilkins, Math Moon, Samuel Wil- kins, Henry Sharp, Jonathan Wilkins, Jacob Sharp, Luke Binow, Cordy Sharp, Wm. Tidwell, Wm. McNott, Reuben Sherral, Saul Montgomery, James Gordon, Ed Pitcher, Benjamin Brantley, Colonel James Grierson, Henry Overstreet, Andrew Moore, Elias Bonnell, John Howard, Wm. Brown, Benj. Howard, Aug. Auden- tood, Thomas Howard, Absalom Wells, And. Robertson, John Ferguson, David Cameron, Wm. Reid, John Jameson,^ Thomas Beaty, Wm. Gates, Benj. Lanier, Robert Walsington, John Boykin, W. Tucker, Joshua Pearce, John McCormick, William Pierce, Paul McCormick, Philip Dill, R. Henderson, James Dill, Lew Mobley, John Goldwire, James Herbert, James Pace, James Moore, Rev. C. F. Triebner, Samuel Moore, S. Dampier, Joseph Cornells, P. Blythe, R. French, John Blythe, William Balfour, Samuel Cooper, Isaac Daronny, George Weekly, Isaac Eaton, W. Gruber, Andrew McNiely, Joseph Johnston, Jas. Robertson, John Johnson, James Lyle, Wm. Powell, Jos. Marshall, William Love, John Peg, John Love, John Brown, John Thomas. Thomas Rutherford, Daniel Russell, Cader Price, Matthew Lyle, John Hammett, Robert Miller, David Grimes, John Robertson, Philip Helverton, Daniel Howell, Wm. Hammond, Alex Carter, George Johnson, Thomas Scott, Richard Baillie, John Coppinger, Thos. Manson, Jacob Watson, Andrew Johnson, Charles Weatherford, John Furlow, James Jackson of Augusta, Wm. Johnson, Francis Folliot, Dr. Taylor, Simon Paterson, Thos. Polhill, Nath'l Pol- hill, John Maxwell, Samuel Kemp.

It will be seen that this act was but the act of five years before repeated, with the addition of many other names. Many of those attainted were not Tories or Loyalists and escaped the penalties of the act, and many were pardoned by special statute, and in many cases while the father was a Loyalist the son was a Whig, and so the property involved did not really pass from the family.

106 The Story of Georgia [Chap. hi.

So much attention has been given to the Revolution by McCall, Stevens, and especially Jones, that there is nothing more to be said, and as their narratives are too extended to be repeated here I have contented myself with merely giving a short history. It will be seen the number engaged was not large. In all there were but about three thousand five hundred, and the battles fought, except that of Sa- vannah and Briar creek, of but little importance. There was much courage displayed and much self-sacrifice made, and no men could have been truer than the Georgians were to the cause of the Continental Congress. There were comparatively few arms-bearing men in Georgia when the Revolutionary war began, but of those few much the largest number were in the war.

Up to 1779 everything in upper Georgia had been so peaceful that there was a steady flow of newcomers from North Carolina and Virginia. These years of war had, however, desolated all the new settlements, and when the war was over there was much to do to repair its ravages. There were cabins to rebuild and deserted fields to be once more brought into cultivation. The stock had been driven off, and the negroes had many of them escaped, but by 1782 things began to settle down.

The social condition of the Georgia people just after the Revolution was just such as might have been expected when everything had been overturned. The people had all suffered; none had escaped. From the Florida line to the limits of the Cherokee nation, and back to the last line of western settlements, the country had been ravaged. The hardships of the first frontier were reproduced in all the rural districts, and the villages, for there were no cities, were devastated. The first section to rally was the south- ern, and that too little known but remarkale man, John VVereat, who had a plantation on the neck in what is now Bryan county, loaded his flat-boats with rice and other

1775-1782.]

AND THE GeOKGIA PeOPLE.

107

supplies and had them poled up the Savannah river as far as he could go to relieve the destitution of the people of Wilkes and Richmond. The country, however, was so fer- tile that the pinching poverty of the people was soon at an •end, but it was several years before there was comfort, much less luxury. The coast country had been devastated, and for several years there was almost the same condition which -was found on the frontier. Our chapter of the cities will show the two villages, Savannah and Augusta, came out of the war almost in ruins.

%^ i B E A » E H t« rfT

/t)^ONE Spanish MIL

\^

ONE DOLLAR

ONE Spanish MILL ED DOLLAR, or I6t ,,r [iaive iherta/tn Cold «"")Ky

ftluiM of COUCPESSi ^0^ a/ Philadelphia! No'/rmbcr »9. 177 J.

Continental Scrip.

There was no money. Georgia scrip was worthless, and Continental money was about as bad. There was nothing for market when the ports were again open, except some peltry, and for some years there was but little commerce.

Society was in a fearful state. When human life was held at so cheap a rate and when brutal courage was at such a premium; when men had no compunction about getting drunk, if rum could be had; when it was no rob- bery to take all a Tory had, and no murder to hang him; when children grew to manhood who had never spent a month in the schoolroom, and who had never heard a ser- mon, it was not to be expected that the morals of the people would be high, or their manners refined, or their in- telligence considerable.

108 The Story of Georgia [Chap. III.

There was much lawlessness; there were neither judges nor courts; but there was no lapse into real savagery. There was still much among the rudest of the people which was praiseworthy. There was a scorn for lying, duplicity, and above all, for cowardice. There was a boundless hospitality, a kindness to all comers except Tories, a chivalric treatment of women, a genuine sympathy for the weak, and an unquestioning faith in the truths of religion.

The up-country people, mainly newcomers from Vir- ginia and North Carolina, soon after the Revolution ended, took into their hands the government of the State. Many of the best people on the coast had been true to the crown and were now in exile, and those who stood for the cause of Independence were not numerous enough to overbalance the vote of the up-country.

In the first census, in 1790, of the eighty-two thousand people, black and white in Georgia, thirty-two thousand were in Wilkes county alone, and perhaps not an adult among them had been born in Georgia. There was an ele- gance and high culture in the few gentlemen planters, law- yers, and counselors of the coast who had been members in the old Assembly, that was not to be found in the sturdy men who had come into the wilds of upper Georgia — men who could barely write their names, who had always lived in log cabins, and worked with their own hands, but who had fought the Tories at Kettle creek and rode with Clarke and Twiggs, and Candler and Dooly on many a foray, as well as men like Few and Candler, and Walton and Glascock, father and son, who were equals in all respects to any in Georgia. These were prominent in the up-country at the end of the war, but the ruling element was still on the tide-water.

There had been no possibility of carrying on any schools^ and those children who grew up during the war never en-

1775-1782.]

AND THE Georgia People.

109

tered a schoolroom. The larger number of persons from the better classes who could not write, who were found in Georgia in the early years of the nineteenth century, both men and women, grew up at this time, when there were neither primary schools nor academies.

>^^

Seal of the State of Georgia.

The war was virtually at an end in the early part of 1782, and with a devastated territory, an empty treasury, and a heavy debt, with an imperfect constitution and a dis- cordant people, Georgia began her career as a free and in- •dependent State. There hrfd been seventeen thousand white people when the war began,* and probably, despite the ravages of the war, there were as many at its close.

There was from 1777 to 1783 almost a complete suspen- sion of all the religious work in the new State, The Rector of the Episcopal church in Savannah was a Loyalist. Mr. Triebner, the Lutheran, was a Loyalist and a fugitive, and the church in Ebenezer had been used as a stable. The Reformed Presbyterian minister in Burke, now Jeffer-

* Jones.

110 The Story of Georgia [Chap. in.

son county, was a Loyalist, and had fled the country. St. Paul's church in Augusta and the church at Midway had been burned. The Baptist preachers, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Bottsford, and Mr. Mercer, had been driven from the State, and there was no resumption of regular religious work until after the war had nearly ended.

The Quakers had been so persecuted in Georgia by the Whigs that they left the State and never returned to it.

1782-1789.]

AND THE Georgia People. Ill

CHAPTER IV.

1782 TO 1789.

Georgia a Free and Independent State — Governors Houston, Elbert. Hand- ley, Telfair, and Mathews — Gloomy State of Affairs — College Projected — The Decision to Remove Capitol to Louisville — The State Government Temporarily in Augusta — Military Land Grants Issued — Rapid Settlement of the State — Indian Troubles — Oconee War— Paper Money Issued — Call for a Convention to Form a more Perfect Union — Delegates Appointed — Ratification of the Constitution of the United States — State Conventions — History of the Counties of Chatham, Effingham, Burke, Richmond, Liberty, Camden, Wilkes, Franklin, Washington, and Greene.

Authorities : Stevens, Jones, Sherwood, White's Statistics and Historical Col- lections, Chappell's Pamphlets, Watkins's Digest Georgia Laws, Marbury& Crawford's Digest, Madison Papers, Gilmer's Georgians, Files of the Geor- gia Gazette, and Personal Researches into County Records.

The war was virtually at an end when Cornwallis surren- dered at Yorktown, and the last British soldier had been re- moved from Georgia and the State government fully rees- tablished for a year before the news reached Savannah that Georgia was recognized as a free and independent State. When this news reached Savannah, John Houston, whO' had been one of the four who called the first Revolutionary meeting, was governor, and the city in which that meeting was held was the recognized capital of the new State.

After Governor Houston's term expired, General Samuel Elbert, whom we have seen was the lieutenant-colonel of the first battalion of Georgia troops, and who was so true a soldier to the end of the war, was elected by an almost unanimous vote of the Legislature as governor. In 1786 Edward Telfair, the wise and wealthy Scotchman who had been so faithful to the cause of independence, succeeded him. Governor Telfair was followed by General George

112 The Story of Georgia [Chap. IV.

Mathews. General George Mathews, while not born in Ireland, was a full-blooded Scotch-Irishman. He was born in Augusta county, Va., in the days when Indian forays were fearfully common. He became an Indian fighter in his boyhood, and distinguished himself at the battle of Point Pleasant. When the Revolutionary war began he threw himself ardently into it. He was made colonel of a regi- ment, and was at Germantown and Brandywine. He was wounded, captured, and then exchanged. He came to Georgia with some Virginia troops toward the close of the war. He was a shrewd speculator, and he bought at a bar- gain a claim to a large body of land known as the Goose Pond tract on Broad river and decided to move to it.* He brought in the famous Broad river settlers, of whom we shall hear more. He was a rough, quick-tempered, unedu- cated Irishman, thoroughly fearless and impetuous, and sundry stories are told of his want of culture, of his impet- uous temper, which are not sufficiently authentic for these pages. He was a man of strong common sense and ster- ling honesty of purpose.

General Jackson was elected to succeed Governor Math- ews, but declined the office, and Governor Handley, an Englishman likewise, was chosen and served the term. The condition of things was far from cheerful. The sup- plies of food were insufficient, there was no money in the State treasury, and there were heavy debts to be provided for. Many of the best citizens of the State were proscribed and were in exile, and their property ordered to the block. There was discord in the public councils. The Legislature was unwilling to comply with Governor Houston's urgent request that it should levy a tax for what he said were im- perative demands, but gloomy as matters were a body of intelligent men secured from the Legislature a grant of ten

* Gilmer.

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 113

thousand acres of land for a college, to be located at some place to be afterward selected.

The Legislature had its sessions in Savannah from July, 1783, to the spring of 1786, when an act was passed pro- viding for the selection of a place for the capital, which should be in twenty miles of Galphin's old town, which place should be called Louisville, but in the meantime the Legislature would meet in Augusta. The times even then were so disturbed that a guard was called for from each county along the route to see the body to its destination.

The State had much land and but a few people, and many of those who had been faithful to the cause of inde- pendence were now to receive a generous grant as a reward for their military services. In addition to these grants, in order to secure immigration, the State proposed to all new- comers to give them from two hundred to five hundred acres of land as headrights. Of these military grants there were five different classes of warrants issued.

First. Those citizens who bravely remained in Georgia during the struggle and served in the militia when called for were to have two hundred and fifty acres. There were 2,923 persons who received grants under this head.

Second. Refugees who fled the State, but fought in the American army ; there were six hundred and ninety-four of these.

Third. Those who were not in active service, but were en- rolled as minute-men ; there were five hundred and fifty- five of these.

Fourth. Citizens of other States who came to the help of Georgia as continental soldiers ; there were two hundred of these.

Fifth. To those who had served in the navy; to these only nine land-warrants were issued.*

* See Appendix for full list of grantees. 8

xt^

114 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv..

These military warrants were mainly to be located in the- newly opened territory which was included in the two im- mense counties of Washington and Franklin. In addition to these grants, which were to classes, there were special grants made to certain individuals, one to General Greene of the Mulberry Grove property, near Savannah; one to General Wayne, and twenty thousand acres ganted to Count D'Estaing.*

The headrights were many of them granted before the Revolution by the colonial government, but many more were granted to the newcomers as soon as the war ended,. A land-ofifice was opened in Augusta and Bishop Stevens,, who had access to the private papers of Mr. Jos. Haber- sham, who was one of the comm.issioners for issuing these warrants, gives a somewhat lively picture of the disorder- in the land-office when the warrants were called for. The larger number of claimants were from the newly settled, lands of now Columbia and Wilkes, who, becoming impa- tient at the necessarily slow progress of the commissioners, and perhaps a little too much under the influence of the tafia so abundant in Augusta, broke into the office and. snatched the warrants from the table and made off with them. Many of these abstracted warrants were returned,, and many were not recognized.

When the war ended, as v/e have seen, the counties in: \W^ Georgia were Camden, Glynn, Liberty, Chatham, Efifing- hamT^Burkey-nd Richmond, and to these were now added Franklin and Washington, which included the new ceded

lands. UjvV-

Up to the war of the Revolution there had been no seri- ous disturbance with any of the Indians in Georgia. The ruling tribes were Creeks and Cherokees and in that contest

* This large estate was given by the count to a relative who married Colonel De Lapraier of the French army. His descendants still own a part of the- land.

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 115

both sided with the English, and against the Cherokees an expedition under Colonel Twiggs had been sent out early in the war. As soon as peace came the Georgians took advantage of the victory won and coerced the Creeks into a cession of all the land which lay between the Ogeechee and Oconee rivers, and the Cherokees into the ceding of a considerable strip of their territory, and this new country was now divided into two great counties, Franklin and Washington. The Creeks were by no means reconciled to this seizure of their land and went upon the war-path, and there were frequent raids into the country taken possession of by the whites.

For several years the war known as the Oconee war raged between the Creeks and the Georgians. Forts and blockhouses were built in all the border counties, and the Creeks made a formidable invasion into the country east of the Oconee, and Elijah Clarke, with his forces, had a sharp fight with them as they retreated in what is now Walton county, at a place known now as Jack's creek, said to have been so called in honor of the courage of young Jack Clarke, who distin- guished himself in the battle (Chappel). The Creeks gave the early settlers a great deal of trouble and the new village of Greensborough was burned by them. These troubles continued for nearly ten years, and after the formation of the Federal Union the United States troops garrisoned the frontier until the final settlement made by the general government, after which there was peace for near twenty years.

Georgia was now an independent State and as the land was given away, immigration came in a rapid tide into all parts now opened for settlement. The immigrants were of the same class we have already seen as coming into Burke and Richmond. They were mainly from Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland. Some of them were men of prop- erty, but the larger number were in very humble circum-

116 The Story of Georgia tChap. IV.

stances. They began life in a very primitive way. The houses were almost universally at this time of logs, and nearly all consisted of but a single room. There were as yet few stores in which merchandise could be bought; there were but few sawmills and even grist-mills were few. In the low-country rice and corn were the staple articles, and they were prepared for the table by being beat in a mortar, and in the up-country, where ashes were abundant, the corn was made into lye hominy. There was along the whole frontier, from Camden to Franklin, a constant menace from the Indians, and men, as in the early days of New England, were required to take their arms with them to church ser- vices. Troops of horsemen were organized in every county to be ready at any moment to pursue the marauding bands of savages who were likely to dash into the remote settle- ment to rob and murder.

We have seen in other chapters of the coming of the different churches into the province, and now we have the coming of the first Arminian Methodists into the State. In the year 1786 John Major and Thomas Humphries, two itinerant preachers from Virginia, at the instance of Bishop Francis Asbury, came into Georgia. The Methodists dif- fered from any other denomination in some of their doc- trines and most of their usages. These first preachers were from Virginia, and the good Virginians who had been brought up in the church of England found in these itine- rants, preachers who were nearer akin to them than any other, and they gave them a cordial welcome to their homes, and many of them adhered to the societies the preachers established. The itinerants had no churches, but went from cabin to cabin and held services every day in the week except on Monday. The preachers were peculiar men in every way. They dressed like Quakers, in straight-breasted cutaway coats of brown homespun, wore white cravats and broad-brimmed hats. They sang lustily, preached boister-

1782-1789.] AND TUB Georgia People. 117

ously, wept and stormed and exhorted, and were intensely in earnest. They preached a full and free gospel and a salvation possible to all men ; they went everywhere and success attended their efforts. They began their work in Wilkes and extended it into Burke, and gathered quite a membership during their first year.

In 1788 there came to Georgia a Methodist preacher who was to have much to do with the future of the State, and whose descendants have been among its most honored children. This was Hope Hull, born in Worcester, Md.; he was a soldier in the Revolution before he was of age, and a Methodist preacher when he was twenty-one years old. He was a man of handsome presence, of fine intellect, of fluent and eloquent speech, and of broad views. After he located in Wilkes county he established the first high school in the county and employed a Presbyterian minister to teach it. He was a trustee of the State University and an ardent friend of that institution from its foundation.*

There was now in Georgia one organized Episcopal church, the one in Savannah, and several organized Presbyterian churches in Burke and Wilkes and one in Savannah, a Luth- eran church in Effingham, and a Congregational church in Liberty. There were few church buildings, and in the rural districts religious services were held in private houses.

During Governor Telfair's term business began to revive and there was a crying need for a circulating medium. He addressed himself to the work of providing a currency for the State which would be trustworthy and hoped he had accomplished it by adopting, with certain careful restric- tions, the usual resource of States, issuing promises to pay and making them a legal tender. The result was, as it has always been, the paper currency was first at par and then

* In my chapter on Rel gion in the Colony and the State I have given a fuller account of Methodism in Georgia.

118 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

declined more and more rapidly until it was worth only four to one.

During his governorship Nathan Brownson, Wm, Few and Hugh Lawson were commissioned to select a place for a State capitol and to provide for the erection of a building for the various departments and for establishing a State university. The capitol and university were to be in twenty miles of Galphin's old town, and the town was to be called Louisville, and ;^2,000 from the sale of confiscated property was to be appropriated for the building of the new State house. The place was selected, the town was laid out and in 1795 it was made the seat of government and continued such for nearly ten years, when the capitol was removed to Milledgeville.

The confederated government had secured large loans, based upon its confidence that the States would cede to the government their wild lands. This had been done by all of them except Georgia and North Carolina. The leading people in the new State were newcomers, mainly from Virginia. The State was young and feeble and penniless. A large debt which it could not pay was due to the Con- federacy, and it had only this land to pay it with. It made some rather hard stipulations, which the confederated States thought were too rigorous, and it refused to accept the State's tender on such grounds, and the cession was not made.

The question of title, which was raised between Georgia and South Carolina as to the title of Georgia to the almost unknown land beyond the Chattahoochee, and as to where the eastern boundary of the new State really was, had been settled at Beaufort by commissioners in 1785, and so the free and independent State had a clear title, save as it was menaced by the Spanish claims, to all the territory included now in Georgia, Alabama and Mis- sissippi.

1782-1789.]

AND THE Georgia People. 119

The very unsatisfactory condition of things for the five years after the Revolution, when the old confederation was going to pieces and the Continental Congress had lost all hold on the various States, led the leaders of Georgia to fall readily into the scheme for a convention of all the States to form a new constitution and a closer union, and during Governor Mathews's time delegates were appointed to go to Philadelphia and take seats in the convention.

Wm. Few, Abraham Baldwin, Wm. Pierce, Wm. Houston, Georofe Walton and Nathaniel Pendleton were selected as the delegates. Of these Few, Baldwin and Houston took part in the convention, but Mr. Few was the only one of the delegation who signed the original Constitution.* When the Assembly in Philadelphia adjourned •!• the Geor- gia Legislature called for a convention to meet in Augusta and ratify the new instrument, and on the second day of January, 1788, this convention did "fully and cordially assent to ratify and adopt the proposed Constitution."

The convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States and made the first draft of a new Consti- tution for the State, which was adopted in May of the next year, consisted of :

John Wereat, Wm. Few, Jas. McNeal, Wm. Stephens, Jos. Habersham, Edward Telfair, H. Todd, Geo. Mathews, Florence Sullivan, John King, James Powell, Jno. Elliot, James Maxwell, George Handley, Christopher Hilary, J. Milton, Jared Irwin, Jno. Rutherford, Joshua Williams, Jos. Carmichael, Henry Carr, Jas. Seagrove, Jas. Webb, Henry Osborne, Robert Christmas.

There was no hesitation, and no stipulations were made by Georgia, and no debate concerning the propriety of rati- fication was engaged in. Georgia was the fourth State to

* See Madison Papers. f Appendix.

120 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

other States, as it was in October, she became a member of the Federal Union. There was no submission of this rati- fication to a popular vote, but the free and sovereign State, acti?ig as a State in convention, without any dream that she was surrendering anything more than was delegated to the general government, became one of a Federal Union of thirteen sovereign States.

It is now my purpose to give a bird's-eye view of each county as it was established, giving a larger amount of attention to the parent counties, and not confining myself to the limits of time I have fixed to the general history, but bringing the history of the counties as such to the present time (1900), avoiding, however, all allusion to the part borne by the county during the great war between the States.

CHATHAM.

This county was named for the Earl of Chatham, and was the earliest settled of any portion of Georgia. It has the Savannah river on the east and the Ogeechee on the south and west and includes the islands adjacent. On these two rivers are some fine rice lands, but away from the rivers the land is mainly marsh or sterile pine woods. The agricultural resources of the county apart from its rice lands are not considerable. The river bottoms upon which rice was grown were magnificent estates before the war ; and even since it ended, although the slaves have been freed, there have been some very extensive planta- tions, and though some of them have been worked for over a century they are still planted profitably. Many of these rice plantations have, however, been abandoned, and where there were in the beginning of the century well-kept fields there are now only marshes. Some of these old rice plan- tations are now market gardens, where great quantities of early vegetables are grown for the northern markets; but

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 121

many of these fine old places are simply abandoned. Raising vegetables for the northern markets is carried on in the county very extensively. Some of the swamps around the city have been drained by canals and ditches and there is much land now arable which was waste, and many of the freedmen have gone into these low places and bought small tracts and now make a scanty living by planting small crops.

There are some famous plantations near the city. Mul- berry Grove, where General Greene died, is a market gar- den. Bonaventure, where the Tattnall family had their home, is now a famous cemetery. The Hermitage, the seat of the McCallisters, with its magnificent avenue of live-oaks; and Beaulieu, the seat of Governor Stephens; Whitefield's Bethesda Orphanage ; Jasper Springs, where Jasper captured the British guards and released the pris- oners, are places of interest in the county. The history of Chatham is so interwoven with the early history of Georgia, and especially that of Savannah, which is given at length elsewhere, that it is not necessary to say much of the county in this place.

There is a comparatively small white population outside of the city and the various suburban villages. Thunder- bolt, Tybee, Isle of Hope and White Bluff are on the sea- shore, and Pooler and Monteith and a few other small vil- lages on the lines of railway. There are few schools and churches save for the negroes in the country districts around Savannah, but the villages are well supplied. In 1790 there were only twenty-five hundred white people in the county. Savannah included, but there were eight thou- sand two hundred slaves on the plantations and the sea islands. The sea islands* were famous for the homes of planters who resided in the city during the winter and on their estates during the summer. They were not adapted to the production of rice and were devoted at their first

122 The Story of Georgia [Chap. IV.

settlement to indigo culture and stock-raising. They were congenial homes for the Africans who were imported in large numbers and who, when they were placed on the islands, rapidly increased. Before the Revolution there was much wealth and much luxurious living on these islands. The planters, after they gave up indigo culture, began to raise sea-island cotton, and as this staple was very high in price, they had large returns from their crops and increased in wealth very rapidly. The sea island planter in Chatham and along the Georgia coast presented much the same features as is pictured elsewhere in people of the wealthy class of planters. Their situation was an exposed one, and they suffered during the Revolution and the war of i8i2. They rallied from these losses at those times, but from the disasters of the war between the States there was no recovery, and the islands are now largely peopled by negro tenants who make their living by fishing and oyster- ing.

EFFINGHAM.

As we have seen elsewhere this county, which took the place of St. Matthew's parish, was settled mainly by Ger- mans, and in the account of the German settlement we have already had a picture of the natural features of the county and of the people. In common with all the parts of the tide-water country this county suffered greatly during the Revolution. The bulk of the people, speaking only the German tongue and concerned only about their small farms and domestic interests, knew little and cared less about the issue between the colonists and England. Most of them desired to hold a neutral place. Some of them, however, were loyal to the king, and some of them were sympa- thizers with the colonies, and one of them, John Adam Treutlen, was a Georgia governor, and pronounced a rebel by Governor Wright. They were thus sadly divided and

1782-17S9.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 128

suffered on all sides. Their villages were occupied at dif- ferent times by both armies, and their church was desecrated and defaced, for though their pastor took the side of the British and invited the English troops to Ebenezer, the rude soldiers turned their revered church into a stable. The whole country was desolated by the repeated raids of the soldiers on both sides, but the people were industrious and thrifty, and after peace came the herds of cattle on which they largely relied were soon replenished. The church was at once repaired, their schools were reopened, and the fields of the farmer put once more into cultivation, and though for the two years after the close of the war they had no pastor, they then secured a pious man from Ger- many to take the place. In 1790 there were 2,420 people in the county, of which only seven hundred and fifty were slaves, and in 1830, fortv years afterward, there were only five hundred more inhabitants. The proximity of the county to Savannah, and its want of any commercial ad- vantages, prevented its having towns of any considerable size, and yet gave it a fine position as a place for gardens and dairies. Its climate was excellent, and when the Cen- tral railroad traversed it some residence villages sprang up, and Guyton and Marlow have become favorite places for the country homes of Savannah merchants.

Springfield is the county site, and while it is a small vil- lage, it has been famous in days gone by for its excellent schools and the high character of its people.

Ebenezer, of which we have so often spoken, which was at one time a thrifty village, has long since ceased to be a place of any importance, and is now unpeopled. The old Lutheran church, famous as the first church in Geor^Tia, still stands and has a congregation and a pastor.

The county, being originally peopled by Germans, has many of their descendants still in it. They are good people, honest, thrifty and religious. There are Luther-

124

The Story of Georgia

[Chap. IV.

ans and Baptists and Methodists in the county, and good churches and good schools are found in all parts of it.

There are few sections in Georgia where there is a better type of plain, good, contented, pious people than in Effingham, and their descendants are found in all sections of the low-country of Georgia, and wherever found are recognized as among the worthiest of the people.*

RICHMOND.

/

Richmond was named in honor of the Duke of Rich- mond. It was originally- St. Paul's parish, and when it was made in, 1777 it included all of Columbia and parts of McDuffie, Warren and Jefferson counties. As these counties will come under our survey in the proper time, it will only be necessary now to give attention to Rich- mond as it stands.

In the early parts of this history and in the chapter on Augusta nearly everything of interest connected with this county, up to the Revolution, has been narrated, and in the historv of Augusta much of the after revolutionary history is given. Richmond is in the main a county of rather sterile pine woods, save on some of the creeks and on the river, where the land is a rich, alluvial which at one time was very productive. Before

St. Paul's Church.

* In the first chapter of this History, in the account of the German settle- ment, the early history of these people is to be found.

1782-1789.]

AND THE Georgia People. 125

the lands on the river above Augusta were cleared of their forests the river-bed was deeper and the stream more rapid than it is at this day, and the freshets which come now almost annually were infrequent a hundred and twenty years ago. Then these lands were considered very valua- ble, and wealthy planters had large plantations in the swamps which brought a rich return. They are now turned largely into hay farms and are still valuable. The pine lands were for a long time esteemed only for their timber and as a range for cattle. There was some of this land, however, which had a good subsoil of clay which was, when manured, quite productive, and while it was not esteemed as first-class land, it repaid the tiller's toil, and even much of the land which was very sterile when well fertilized produced fine crops of melons and vegetables.

The rural population of Richmond, save on the river and on Rae's creek, were plain, poor people who ran small farms. There was quite a settlement of well-to-do Vir- ginians some distance north of Augusta which was called Bedford, probably after the Virginia county from which they emigrated, and quite a settlement of Burke county planters in the healthy pine woods near what is now Heph- zibah. A college was projected in the early part of the cen- tury, called Mt. Enon, which was to be located in the southern part of this county and opened as a Baptist col- lege; but a charter was refused and it became the first Baptist high school in Georgia.

There was a fine water-power on the creeks, which, rising in the pine hills, ran into the river; and one of the most successful country factories was built on Spirit creek long before the war, and another known as Schley's, at Bellevue where the shrewd old governor had his country home.

The building of the railway from Augusta to Sanders- ville opened up the lower part of the county, and there is

126 The Story of Georgia [Chap. IV.

a considerable village known as Hephzibah, where the Baptists have a school.

The county had been well supplied with Methodist and Baptist churches, and the school facilities had been mod- erately good; but the establishment of the public school system after the war provided all classes with excellent educational advantages.

Among the oldest Methodist and Baptist churches in upper Georgia are the Baptist church at Hephzibah, formerly Mt. Enon, and the Methodist church at Liberty, which an- tedate the beginning of this century.

Among the industries which have made the county famous the celebrated nurseries of the Berckmans are very notable.

Dr. Berckmans, an intelligent German, was struck with the great advantages of the climate and soil near Augusta for the raising of fruit trees and flowers, and he began his nurseries on a very extensive scale over forty years ago, and from them the most beautiful flowers and the finest fruits have been distributed throughout the land.

The fine climate of the Sand Hills, which stretch through the northwest part of the county, has invited sum- mer residents, who have beautiful homes, chiefly at Grove- town, sixteen miles from the city.

The county is so linked with the city that it is not pos- sible to separate them, and I shall in a future chapter de- vote a considerable space to Augusta, and as Columbia county includes much of what was historic Richmond, it is not needful to say more of the county as it is at present.

BURKE.

Burke county was formed from St. George's parish, and was named Burke in honor of Edmund Burke, the great statesman who stood so firmly for the colonies.

There were doubtless a few whites in this section before

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 127

Oglethorpe came, for the Indians who lived in this county complained to Governor Glen of South Carolina, that the whites, among whom were John Jones and John Whitehead, were making inroads on their hunting-grounds. It is cer- tain that George Galphin had a trading-station at Galphin- ton, on the Ogeechee, when Fort Augusta took the place of Fort Moore in 1733. The settlements in South Carolina reached to the Savannah river, and it is hardly probable they stopped there. Before the parish of St. George was laid out the borough of Halifax sent two representatives to the Assembly of Governor Reynolds, and in the grants made by Governor Reynolds are sundry grants to persons who were found in Burke, Jefferson and Screven counties. After St. George's parish was made Burke county, it gave off Jefferson and Screven, leaving it still a large county. It was at its first settlement a county of wonderful fertility and sufficiently undulating to secure good drainage, except where there were deep depressions and ponds. It had in it no very lofty hills, and being possessed of a tenacious limestone soil, the rains and floods left it uninjured.

The Savannah was on the east, the Ogeechee on the west, and the great Briar creek traversed the whole county. Bark, Camp, Buckhead, Rocky, Mcintosh, Beaverdam, and Wal- nut creeks were all considerable streams. Along the banks of each was a large strip of oak and hickory land. The great pine forests, valued only for pasturage, filled up the area unoccupied by the oak and hickory forests. There was beneath the surface an inexhaustible deposit of rotten limestone which now and then cropped out on the surface. The land was very productive, and there came into it as soon as it was opened for settlement great crowds of im- migrants.

On the Ogeechee river, and on the various creeks flow- ing into it, as well as on the Savannah and its tributaries, there were many settlers before the Revolution. There

128 The Story of GEORaiA [Chap. IV.

was in 1774 six justices of the peace in the parish, and where Waynesboro now is there was a prison known as Burke jail.

In 1774, when the Liberty Boys began their rebellion, as it was regarded by Governor Wright, he received a very decided protest against their course from this parish, among others, and we find the names of:

George Wells, afterward lieutenant-governor; Peter Shand, James Doyle, S. Barrow, Dan'l Thomas, Gideon Thomas, John Thomas, Robert Henderson, F. L. Frier, John Red, James Warren, Jas. Williams, Sam'l Red, Alex. Berryhill, Ed. Hill, Charles Williams, Thos. Pennington, John Rogers, John Ander- son, John Catlett, David Green, Jno. Pettigrew, Wm. Catlett, Jno. Rotten, Jno. Frier, James Davis, Wm. Milner, Elijah Dix, Sam'l Berryhill, Thos. Red, John Bledsoe, James Rae, Jos. Gresham, Wm. Doyle, Jos. Tilley, Job Thomas, Drury Roberts, Joel Walker, Jas. Red, W. McNorrell, Jno. Kennedy, F. Stringer, P. McCormick, H. Williams, J. Greenway, R. Blaishard, H. Irwin, T. Carter, J. Brantley, W. Weathers, W. Moore, W. Godbe, R Cureton, W. Cureton, P. Helvestien, Elias Daniel, E. Odom, B. Brantley, T. Gray, J. Brantle}', John Greene, John Burnside, S. Jordan, P. Dickey, Zach Wimberly, S. Lamb, B. Warren, Sol. Davis, Jno. Gray, Frank Hancock, Pleast Goodall, Wade Kitts, Dan'l Logan, Myrick Davies, John Roberts, R. Douglas, Jesse Scruggs, Henry Mills, Jos. Moore, Amos White- head, John Robinson, John Thomas, Sr., Wm. Younge, E. Benniefield, Jacob Sharp, C. Yarborough, J. Hunt, B. Lamb. S. Slockcumb, L. Hobbs, Jno. Forth, N. Williams, Ed. Walters, Jno. Stephens, F. Francis, M. Davis, Arthur Walker, A. Davis, Allen Brown, Joseph AUday, Jas. Douglas, L. Ashberry, C. Golightly, John Howell, Bud Cade, J. Moore, John Whitehead, John Sharpe, T. Odom, W. Hobbs, R. Cade, John Tillman, C. Whitehead.

Many of these names belong to Virginia and North Car- olina, and some are evidently Scotch-Irish in their origin. These constituted a small part of the heads of families in the at present three counties, but serve to give us a little

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 129

insight as to whence the Burke people came and who they were. White gives another list at a later day (1792) of the officers of the first battalion of Georgia militia.

During the Revolution the patriots of Burke had consid- erable trouble with the Tories, who made repeated raids into the county. While many of the people were not in the army, they were patriots, and were in danger all the time.

The first settlers of Burke were not large slaveholders, nor was there a large influx of slaves until after the inven- tion of the cotton-gin. It is likely that among the first cotton-gins ever put into operation in the world was the one set up in Burke county. Before Whitney secured his patent he put up one of his machines, as they were called, in Burke county, and ginned what cotton was brought him from all quarters. The wonderful value of the cotton lands in this county, low price of negroes, and the depres- sion of the tobacco and indigo culture caused cotton plan- tations to spring up as soon as the gin was invented.

The oak and hickory section of the county when opened soon became quite unhealthy, and the white people were forced to the pine woods in the malarious seasons, and many of the smaller landholders sold their holdings in Burke and went farther west, and large plantations became the rule.

Waynesboro was laid off in 1783 and was named in honor of Madam Anthony Wayne, who was a great favorite in Georgia. The Legislature incorporated an academy and granted two thousand acres of land as an endowment, and incorporated the village with Thomas Lewis, Sr., Thomas Lewis, Jr., Jas. Duhart, Edward Telfair, and John Jones as commissioners. Two hundred lots were to be sold and the proceeds were to be devoted to paying for the public build- ing. The academy was among the first houses built and the court-house was soon erected. The town grew and 9

130 The Story of Georgia [Chap, iv,

there was a race- course near by, and the famous comedy "The Wax Works " of "Georgia Scenes," was acted in this village. There was no church, however, for many years, and the only preaching was an occasional sermon in the court-house; but in the early part of the century two Presbyterian churches, one of which had been organized at Walnut Branch and the other at Old Church, united and built a small Presbyterian church in Waynesboro, which was served by a pastor who in winter preached in Burke, and in summer to the same people who went to the village of Bath, in the pine woods of Richmond.

A Methodist church was built near where the cemetery is now soon after the Presbyterian church was built. The building was very inferior and the congregation very small. It has long since given way to what is now an elegant building with a large congregation. Six miles from Waynesboro was an old church which was built before the Revolution, and long used as a Methodist church, and in the east of the county is Bottsford Baptist church, one of the first Baptist churches in Georgia. The Baptist churches at Rocky Creek and Bark Camp and Buckhead were famous churches in the beginning of the century and for fifty years afterward.

The county of Burke became early in the century a county of large plantations and wealthy planters. Some of these lived in beautiful homes on their places during the winter and in summer went to the pine woods. Haber- sham, Alexander, Summerville, Bath and Brothersville were each piny wood villages, to which the planters re- paired before the sickly season set in. There was much comfort and fine taste in these ante-bellum winter homes, and the hospitality of the planters was boundless. The villages to which they repaired during the summer time afforded a delightful social circle, and the commodious winter homes were filled with guests from the cities and

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 131

the neighboring plantations. Nowhere was old Virginia life of a century gone by so reproduced as in Burke sixty years since. The large plantation was under the manage- ment of the overseer. The factor in Augusta or Savannah cashed the drafts of the planter and supplied his larder with such luxuries as he might desire from the city. His carriages and his horses were of the best order, and he sup- plied his library with the best books and periodicals. The wealth he enjoyed he had inherited, and he was often de- pendent upon the sagacity of others to keep it from leaving him. This was one kind, and the number was not large, of Burke county planters, and there were a few in all the neighboring counties of the same class. Then there were others much more numerous who had made their fortunes by hard work, and who, while they gave their children all that wealth could secure in the way of luxury, were them- selves hard-working, close-trading men, who read no books and put on no style, but who knew how to manage negroes and make cotton. Then there was a class of poor plain people who lived in the pine woods, few of whom had any slaves. They lived in log cabins on small bodies of land, and lived by their own labor. They rafted ranging timber down the Savannah river, made shingles in the cypress swamps, and raised some cattle and sheep. They had little to do with the wealthy people of the oak woods, and knew but little of them. There was no county in the State be- fore the war began in which there was a worthier, more contented or more prosperous people than the people of Burke county.

The wonderful cotton-producing quality of the land turned the county into one great plantation, except in the pine woods. Negroes increased in numbers, and men who began life with a few found themselves the owners of scores. They put a high estimate on negro property and did all they could to increase the number of their slaves. They

132 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

neglected their lands, incurred large debts, and when the slaves were freed many were bankrupt.

Burke sent forth a large emigration, and the descendants of the people who came from Virginia and North Carolina, and from the north of Ireland, and settled in St. George's parish, have been scattered over all western and southern and southwestern Georgia. The smaller landholders from the oak and hickory country gave way at an early time to large landholders, and great bodies of negroes under the charge of an overseer were the sole inhabitants of some parts of the county during the summer and fall. When the rich cotton lands of the newer part of Georgia were opened the Burke planter removed a part of his force to them and opened a new plantation there. Much of the land was turned out and grew up in old field pines. A planter owned sometimes what had once been the separate homes of twenty sturdy frontiersmen. When the war ended and the negro was a freeman, the negroes were found in far greater numbers than the white people, and the few whites who lived on their estates came to the county town, and Waynesboro, from being a deserted vil- lage, became a flourishing little city. The plantations were left in the hands of negro tenants. The old field pines were cut down, and while the white people in Burke are no longer distributed over the county, but are concentrated in the villages, they are in larger number than in the older day. Where there was for many years a mere railroad sta- tion, the junction of the Augusta & Savannah railroad with the Central, Millen is now a prosperous little city. Mid- ville, Herndon, Munnerlyn, and Perkins are all villages of some importance, and there are sundry hamlets in other parts of the county.

In the pine woods, where for many years the chief re- source was ranging timber and cattle, there are now many small well-cultivated farms, where there are good substan-

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 133

tial prosperous farmers. There are good schools and churches and a contented, well-to-do people,

I have devoted some care to this account of Burke, since it was one of the oldest counties, and its history is found largely reproduced in the other large cotton-produc- ing counties of Middle Georgia. The people of Burke have always been noted for their hospitality and generosity. They have been, as a rule, plain, unpretentious, religious people. The population of this county in 1790 was 9,467, of whom only 2,392 were slaves. It then included Screven and Jefferson counties. In 18 10, 6,166 whites and 4,691 slaves; in 1850, 5,268 free and 10,832 slaves. The popu- lation of whites is greater now than it has ever been, and the negro population is not diminished,*

This county has had its share of distinguished men. Ly- man Hall, David Emanuel, Edward Telfair, Herschel V. John- son, John Martin, all governors, lived in Burke. The Hon. J. J. Jones, S. A. Corker, R. E. Lester, congressmen, were from this county. The Shewmakes, legislators and jurists, and Judge Lawson, a prominent democratic politician, were from this county. Colonel T. M. Berrien long lived here, Edward Byne and the Kilpatricks, famous as Baptist preachers; Professor James Elmore Palmer, noted as an educator and long a professor in Emory College, and many others have cast luster on this good old county; but the county has been chiefly famed for its great planters, who have been noted for their intelligence and enterprise.

WILKES.

Governor Wright in 1773 made a purchase from the In- dians of a large tract of land north of Little river and stretching westward to the Ogeechee. It was while he

* The court-house in Burke has been burned and all the records which ante- dated the war are destroyed, but in the Appendix may be found a list of the first comers to the county.

134 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

was in office known as the ceded lands. By the Constitu- tion of 1777 all this section was included in one county, called Wilkes in honor of the reckless John Wilkes, who had distinguished himself as the friend of the colonies. It was a section of great fertility and beauty, possessing the features which we have found in Burke and Columbia counties.

The people from the older colonies speedily found homes in this newly-opened territory and, as we have seen before, in 1790, when Georgia had in it only eighty-two thousand people, Wilkes had thirty-six thousand in its boundary. These people were nearly all native Americans. They came mainly from Virginia, though there were a number of North Carolinians. Governor Gilmer gives in his "Georgians" a racy description of some of the first comers who settled in the county at that time. He says:

" On Long creek and extending southwardly from Sa- vannah river a settlement was made before and during the Revolutionary war by the Clarkes, Doolys, Murrays, Wal- tons, and others. They were from Bertie and adjoining counties of North Carolina and were all connected by blood or intermarriage. These North Carolina settlers lived upon game and the milk of the cattle they carried with them in their emigration. Hogs, sheep, and poultry were not to be had except in the fewest numbers. A suffi- cient supply of these indispensables for a new country could only be obtained from South Carolina, whither the people went for that purpose when they had sufficient money to purchase. Many years passed before they owned hogs and sheep enough for bacon and clothing. It was a hard time when the breakfast of a family depended upon catching an opossum over night or a rabbit in the morn- ing. The range was so unrestricted that the cows often wandered away beyond returning or finding, so that the children had no milk to wash down their otherwise dry

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 135

bread. The horses that did the plowing had to be turned on the wild grass to get their food. They strayed away beyond finding if their legs were not fastened together, so that the art of hobbling was as important as the black- smith's. Bells were put upon them for the purpose of indi- cating their whereabouts, and then the Indians, if on the frontiers, carried them off. It was difficult to clear of its timber enough land for corn and tobacco. The term patch was for a long time used for land sown in wheat, because only a small quantity was allotted to that grain. Even these patches were not seen for years after the settlement began, so that flour could not be had for love or money. It was a long time before the children had more than one biscuit apiece on Sunday mornings. Traps, snares and other contrivances were resorted to for catching rabbits, birds and turkeys.

There were no tanneries or well instructed shoemakers. Skins were hung in running streams till the hair could be slipped off, and then they were tanned in a trough. Most went without shoes the greater part of the year.

The first houses were log cabins with dirt floors and clapboard coverings. Toads and serpents were often found crawling over the floors. The rattle of the rattlesnake and the cry of the panther often sent the children home in a hurry when hunting the cows. After working all day they sat around the hearth at night picking the lint from the cottonseed. Their only fruits were wild haws and grapes.

In speaking of their social pleasures he said : " The great pleasure indulged in was dancing. The men went to musters, shooting matches and horse-races. The whisky bottle was always drawn out by the hospitable settler. The clothing of the girls was provided by their own weav- ing. Hollow trees provided cradles for their babies." The old governor gives an inventory of some estates, in which

136 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

we get an insight into the prices of things and the general condition of the people just after the Revolution :

One negro boy, ^50; i bed, 7s.; i pail and i piggin, 4s.; I wash-tub, 2 keelers, 4s.; i horse, ;^24; i saddle, 00; i razor and 2,000 acres of land in Richmond county, ;^50; I old gray horse, 5s.

Another appraisement shows :

One sorrel mare, ;:^6; i mare, ;^i; i horse, ;^3; i horse colt, :C4\ 6 head cattle, ;^20; i negro boy, ;!^20; i negro girl, ;^30; i axe, frying-pan and pothook, 5s.; i linen wheel, 5s.; old pewter, 15s.; butter-tub, 2s.; 5 old feather beds, £y, i pot, los.

Another estate was :

Four negroes, 3 ould basins, 7 plates, i frying-pan, i pig- gin, I earthen plate, 2 chairs, i table, 2 sides leather.

Another was :

Thirteen negroes, 6 horses, 7 sheep, 60 hogs, 23 cattle.

And another :

Sixty hogs, 8 sheep, 10 cattle, loom, knives and forks, flax wheel, turkey feather bed, 9 plates.

In 1795 an inventory calls for :

Eleven negroes, 29 hogs, i still, 30 pounds pewter.

Up to this time the only well-furnished house is that of a physician in Washington, and the only library is that of Mr, Wm. Rogers, a teacher. The condition of the roads and the difficulty of transportation forbade anything like the complete furnishing of any home, but, as is seen, a few years after the Revolution there was a great abundance of the necessaries of life.

These inventories give a better insight into the domestic affairs of the first settlers than any general description. They show that the first comers were men of some prop- erty, who had but few comforts and fewer of the luxuries of life. The description of Governor Gilmer of life among the first North Carolinians who came to Georgia and settled

1782-1780.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 137

in Wilkes is borne out by the inventories of the first estates, but belonged to all the first comers. There was, however, immediately after the Revolution a large influx of Virgin- ians who were in better circumstances, and who brought with them in their large wagons from Virginia a supply of better furniture, and furnished their tables more bountifully. As illustrative of this we have the inventory of John Wing- field, or as he is written, John Winkfield, who died in 1798, and whose inventory is elaborate and extensive. He had, besides a sufficient supply of plain household and kitchen furniture, some articles mentioned in no other inventory up to that time. They were bacon, sugar, turkeys, a riding- chair, some books, some lard, and some table-cloths. He had twenty-seven negroes, the largest number reported up to that time.

The land was generally secured by headright, or if pur- chased cost about two shillings per acre for the best quality. These Virginians, who knew the value of good land, bought large bodies and laid the foundations for the great estates their children had in after time.

There was no court-house till 1785 and court was held in private houses. The jury sat on a log and consulted on their verdict. Governor Gilmer says the jury saw a fleeing Tory and left their log and gave chase. "Prisoners," he says, "in the absence of a jail, were bound with hickory withes, and confined occasionally by putting their heads between the rails of a fence, and sometimes putting them in pens." The Tories had little chance for fair trials. In 1779 seven were condemned at one court. One man was indicted for treason, hog-stealing, horse-stealing, and other misdemeanors. While those tried for treason were con- victed, I doubt their being hung, as I find men of the same name afterward in the county. If one was acquitted and the mob thought he was guilty his chance of escape was slim. Even after the war, when a man who was accused

138 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

of stealing a horse from General Clarke was acquitted by the jury, the old soldier arrested him and marched him to a convenient tree and was about to hang him anyhow, when Nathaniel Pendleton, a distinguished lawyer, succeeded in begging the poor fellow off. The old governor gives some extracts from the presentments of the grand jury, as follows: "We present Hezekiah Wheat for profane swearing, and Thomas Brooks for profane swearing, also Wm. Vardeman for profane swearing, also Andrew Frazier, also John Par- ham, also Thomas Osborn, also Wm, Osborn, also Moses Harris, also Peter Carnes, also Wm. Moor, also Jeffry Early, also Wm. Thornton, also Grant Taylor, also Richard Powell, also Samuel Creswell, also Daniel Young, also Pe- ter Stubblefield, also Jos. Cook, also James Stewart, also B. Smith, also Jos. Spradling, also Jno. Bragg for fighting and gambling, Jos. Parham for gambling. Grant Taylor and Wm. Osborn for fighting, Jos. Ryan for profane swearing, Daniel Young for gambling and suffering it to be done in his house, Peter Stubblefield for gambling, Dan'l Terondit for gambling, Owen Shannon for swearing, Thos. Shannon for gambling, Frederick Lipham for suffering gambling to be done in his house. The magistrates knowingly allow the Sabbath to be broke by merchants dealing with ne- groes and others, playing fives and other vices, in particular the magistrates about town who see it frequently, Micajah Williamson, Wm. Moor, and Henry Mounger, Esqs.; also that the militia officers in different districts do not keep up a patrol, from which the inhabitants suffer great damage by negroes riding horses at night, and many other mischievous acts; also that people are suffered to gallop and run horses through the streets of Washington."

These copious extracts drawn from Governor Gilmer's invaluable book give us a little insight into the beginning of the great county of Wilkes. The most of the earliest comers to every new country are poor. People in easy cir-

1782-1789.]

AND THE Georgia People. 139

cumstances are not willing to endure the privation of a frontier life, but these first settlers are soon followed by those of larger means who enter into their labors. And so those who came first, bringing no property and settling on land granted to them by the State, who came without slaves or furniture, were soon followed by those who had both.

This immigration of people of means from Virginia and North Carolina came very rapidly after the Revolution. While, as the census will show, a very large number had no negroes, there were quite a number of slaves in this section soon after the war.

These slaves and those of the low-country planters were a very different class. They were Virginians by birth, though Africans by lineage. The negroes were not many in any family. In looking over the tax-lists in Wilkes there is not a slaveholder who has over thirty negroes up to the beginning of the century, while on the coast there were not a few slaveholders who had largely over one hun- dred.

The country in Virginia was much impoverished, and the prospect of finding good tobacco land in Georgia drew larofe colonies from all the central and tide-water counties of that State. The larger part of the immigration to Geor- gia had been from Dinwiddie, Prince George, Henrico, Hanover, Goochland and Halifax, and now there came a large colony from Albemarle led by Colonel George Mathews, afterward governor. He had served in Georgia during the Revolution, and had visited the new county of Wilkes on a prospecting tour. He was delighted with the land, so like the Piedmont country in which he lived, and finding that he could buy a large tract of preempted land at a small price, he bought what was known as the Goose Pond tract in then Wilkes, now Oglethorpe, county. He persuaded some of his neighbors to return with him to

140 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

Georgia and spj- out the land. They, too, were delighted, ' and they formed a colony known afterward as the Broad river colony, and settled near together on that river. These Broad river people were well-to-do, who brought with them from their homes a few negroes and such furniture as could be brought in wagons, and their live stock. They found excellent land and a fine range and were soon independent, and many of them became quite wealthy. They were a people of great worth, and their descendants have been dis- tinguished for their public services. Governor Gilmer, in his "Georgians," enters with interesting particularity into the family history of this remarkable colony. While these people preempted the rich valley of the Broad river, there were a number of other families of the same class who settled on the Little river. They were originally from Vir- ginia, but some of them came directlv from North Carolina. Among these comers were David Merriwether and Daniel Grant, and his son Thomas Grant, The Grants had one of the first mercantile establishments in middle Georgia, and built the first Methodist church in the State, and the second Methodist conference was held at their home. Daniel Grant was the first man in the State from conscientious motives to emancipate his slaves.

The country was very rapidly settled, and in 1790 there was in its then boundaries 24,000 free and 7,268 slaves. In 1810, when the county was divided, 7,603 free and 7,248 slaves; in 1830, 5,227 free and 8,960 slaves, while in 1850 there were only 3,826 free and 8,261 slaves. The en- tire population had declined 3,000 in twenty years.

Washington was selected as the county site. It was Heard's fort during the war, and was not laid out till 1783. The lots were to be sold, an academy and a court-house were to be built. It was the first county site called Wash- ington in the new republic. At Judge Walton's instance the name was changed to Georgetown, but it held the name

1782-1789.]

AND THE Georgia People. 141

only for a little while, and the only evidence that it ever bore it is found in the Georgetown road from Louisville, and a record in Warrenton. It was soon settled by intelligent and well-to-do people, and was for years the leading county town west of Augusta. It had large commercial establish- ments, branch banks, an academy and handsome resi- dences, but up to 1822 it had no church, and many of its leading citizens were noted for their skepticism and immo- rality. There were some leading people among them who were Baptists, and some Presbyterians and Methodists, but they had their membership in the country churches. In 1822 the Methodists built a church in the village, and soon after the Baptists and Presbyterians had each a place of worship.

Jesse Mercer, the most progressive and influential Bap- tist in Georgia, married a lady in Washington and settled in the village in a comfortable and handsome old-time resi- dence. He here published one of the first hymn books ever printed in Georgia, "Mercer's Cluster of Sacred Songs," and established one of the first newspapers among the Baptists in the South, TJie Christian Index.

In the beginning of the century a hymn-book was pub- lished in Washington for the Methodists by Hope Hull, which was the first ever printed in Georgia.

When the tide of settlement moved westward Washinof- ton began to lose its prominence, and after the railroads were built it became a quiet, dignified, elegant old town with but little commercial importance, not even command- ing the trade of its own county; but after the war a new era came and a new prosperity, and it has more than trebled its population and has become one of the most attractive of central Georgia towns. One of the first, if not the first, female academies in Georgia was established in Washimrton by Madame Dugas, and it had for a longtime an important

male school. In has now a graded school which has a v

o'

'ery

142 The Story of Georgia [Chap, iv..

handsome house well equipped. The attractive homes and. beautiful oaks and elms make Washinorton one of the most

O

charming cities in the State.

It was here that the Cabinet of the Confederate States held its last session, and from this historic town the Presi- dent of the Confederacy, with a few of his Cabinet, rode out to what he hoped would be exile, but which was to be- captivity and a dungeon.

Wilkes had at the beginning of the century a newspaper published by David Hillhouse. He not only published a newspaper, but had the first job printing-ofifice in the then interior of Georgia. He was an enterprising and successful northerner. He died in 1804 and his wife took charge of his newspaper and job office and successfully conducted them. Once she published the laws of Georgia, being the first and only woman who was ever State printer.

The county of Wilkes is most of it very hilly, with many streams and narrow valleys. It was a fine stock-raising country, and was admirably adapted to tobacco and cotton^ Up to 1800 no cotton was grown for market. After that the planting of cotton became a prominent industry, and as new lands opened for the stockmen the farms were sold and great plantations absorbed them. It was not in Wilkes as in Burke that the planter was nearly always forced to employ some one to see after his interests while he fled from the malaria to a piny woods village. The Wilkes planters lived on their plantations and the country homes were commodious and elegant, but as in Burke the planta- ti'ons absorbed the farms, and the war found Wilkes with but few white people in the country sections. The land was wretchedly worn, the homes in many cases dilapidated, and the yard full of little negroes. The result was as in Burke, but perhaps in no other middle Georgia county was the recovery from the evil effects of the war more rapid. The negroes were freed, but the planter found it cheaper

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 143

to pay them wages than to hold them as slaves and support their dependents. The negroes clung to their old homes, and often to their old masters. The old fields which had grown up in second-growth timber and Bermuda grass were brought into cultivation. Pastures v.^ere made where the Bermuda grass had grown at will, and while there were sad reverses, perhaps the general prosperity of the county is beyond that of any period in the last fifty years.

The people of Wilkes have always been noted for their high religious character. While it could not be claimed for the early comer that as a rule he was very moral, it is certain he had great respect for religion and his house was open to the preachers. He was ready at any time to fight for the church, and there were prosperous churches in the county from the earliest settlement. The Baptists were in the adjoining county before Wilkes was settled, and as soon as it was laid out they had an organization in it. Many of the early comers were Presbyterians from North Carolina, and some of the earliest teachers were Presbyterian minis- ters. The first presbytery in Georgia was organized under an oak in the town of Washington. The Methodists, as we have seen, came in 1786, and the Roman Catholics came in 1794. The first Catholic church organized in a rural part of Georgia was in Wilkes, the first Methodist song- book in Georgia was published in Wilkes, and the first Bap- tist song-book and Baptist newspaper were published in Wilkes.*

The county of Wilkes during the Revolution and for some years afterward was on the frontier, and while what is now Wilkes was protected to some degree by the cordon of settlers who were nearer the Oconee, it was always in danger of Indian raids until the Creeks were at last subdued.

To merely mention the men of distinction who have

*See Chapter XIV., Religion in Georgia.

144 The Story of Georgia [Chap. IV.

come from this famous old county would take much more space than we can give to any one county.

Here Elijah Clarke, who shared with Twiggs the place of highest honor as a partizan chief, had his home, and here John Clarke, his famous son, who was afterward twice governor, was brought up.

Matthew Talbott, for so many terms a member of the Georgia Legislature, and governor during one term, lived here.

Peter Early, the distinguished judge, and afterward gov- ernor, who died in Greene, began the practice of law in this county when he came from Virginia.

The celebrated Nathaniel Pendleton once lived in Wash- ington, and Peter Van Allen, who was killed by W. H. Crawford in a duel, lived in this county.*

David Meriwether, the sterling Virginia soldier and Georgia statesman, lived here.

Duncan G. Campbell, one of the most gifted and astute of early Georgia politicians, and his gifted son, John A. Campbell, long judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, lived here.

Robert Toombs was born in this county and lived in it all his life, and died in the home of his youth in Wash- ington.

Jesse Mercer, the wise philanthropist, was born in this county and died in it.

Hope Hull, one of the most valuable men of early Geor- gia, as we have seen, had his home near Washington.

The famous Bishop James O. Andrew was born in this county.

Daniel Grant and his son Thomas, noted for their ad- vanced views, large wealth, and philanthropy, lived in this county.

[Note. — I have given much more attention to Wilkes

♦ Van Allen married a sister of Lorenzo Dow. See Dow's Journal.

1782-1789.] • AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 145

than I can give to any other county of middle Georgia, but it was a parent county, and in giving its story I have told the story of others in this part of the State. I am very much indebted to that enthusiastic antiquarian, Miss Eliza Bowen, whose careful researches into the early history of the county ought to be carefully preserved and pub- lished. I have had furnished me by her the newspaper clippings from which I have gathered much information.]

LIBERTY,

St. John's, St. Andrew's and St. James's parishes were thrown into a county which was called Liberty. This county adjoined Chatham on the north and Glynn on the south, and its western boundary reached to the Altamaha. I have already given an account of part of it and a glimpse of the people in writing of the Dorchester settlement.

There was little of internal strife in this section during the Revolution. The Dorchester Puritans, who were the main body of the people, were almost universally Whigs, and the Tories gave little trouble; but the county was the most exposed part of the colony to the British ships, and being on the direct line of march from Savannah to St. Augustine, and from St. Augustine to Savannah, suffered much from the ravages of war.

Whether the army is a hostile or a friendly one, the people among whom it moves are always sufferers. Three times the American troops had marched into Liberty, and then came the British. There was a sharp conflict at Mid- way, the church was burned, the country devastated. The invaders carried off the negroes, burned the houses, broke the rice dams, drove off the cattle, and left the country desolate. As soon as peace came the planters who had fled to the back country returned and began life over again. They had scarce begun to recover from the ravages of the

10

146 The Story of Georgia [Chap. IV^

war when the Creek Indians went on the war-path and made frequent and disastrous forays into the settlements^ murdering the whites, stealing the slaves and cattle, and rendering it dangerous for the people to go to church un- armed. Despite all these difificulties and drawbacks the thrifty people in the Dorchester settlement continued to improve their condition, and one of the most delightful chapters in Colonel Jones's history of Georgia is the ac- count he gives of this part of Liberty after society had settled down again in the last year of the old century and the first in the new. He says: "Ordinary journeys to church and of a social character were performed on horse- back. When he would a wooing go the gallant appeared mounted upon his finest steed and in his best attire, fol- lowed by a servant on another horse, conveying his mas- ter's valise behind him.

"Shortly after the Revolutionary war stick-back gigs were- introduced. If a woman was in the vehicle and unattended the waiting-man rode another horse, keeping alongside and holding the check-rein in his left hand. When his master held the lines the servant rode behind. Men went often armed to church for fear of the Indians.

"The country was full of game, ducks and wild geese in innumerable quantities filled the rice-fields, wild turkeys and deer abounded, bears and beavers were found in the swamps, and buffalo herds wandered northward and south- ward. There was no lack of squirrels, opossums, raccoons, rabbits, snipe, woodcock; wild-cats were the pests; the- rivers teemed with fish."

The planters had their homes in summer at Sunbury, where they had schools and where they had all the privi- leges of cultured society. Sunbury, after Dr. McWhir took charge of the academy, became the educational center of lower Georgia. While there was much culture and elegance in one part of the county, there was another in

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA TeOPLE. 147

which it was not to be found. In the pine woods rice could not be planted, and rice culture demanded such an outlay that when a man had nothing, or had very limited means, he went from the swamps to the pine-barrens and began to gather his flocks and herds about him. These two classes of citizens, the rice-planter and the inland stock- raiser, were widely separated and hardly knew each other. The Liberty county rice-planters were in the main the Mid- way Congregationalists. They had removed from South Car- olina together. They were many of them kinsmen, and they were generally in independent circumstances. They lived near each other, sent their children to the same school, and worshiped at the same church. Their slaves were gen- erally recently imported Africans, and were at first exceed- ingly ignorant and degraded, but the planters did much to improve them. The owner of the plantation grouped his negro cabins together on some high spot on his plantation, generally in a thick wood. The overseer was a white man and the driver was a trusty negro slave. The overseer gave the laborer his task and the driver saw to it that the slave did his work. The discipline of the plantation was very rigid. The negro was fed on rice and potatoes, and his work, except for a few times in the year, was very light, then it was excessively heavy. He had little to do with his master, and was responsible only to the driver and the overseer. The rice-plantation negro was content with no other place, and while he was perhaps the lowest sp.ecimen of his race in America, he was the most contented. The house slaves of the rice-planters were generally of a dif- ferent class from the field hands and superior to them. These house servants were better fed, better clad, and had more civilizing influences around them.

The white man who lived in the pine woods has already been pictured in the account of Burke. There was but little difference in the life of the piny woods denizen as he

148 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

was found in all this coast country. He had few or no ne- groes, and while an independent man lived a very plain life. As yet his timber was of but little value to him, and he de- pended on the cattle on his range, his sheep, his goats, and sometimes on some tar and pitch he carried to the market at Sunbury. He had no taxes to pay, no school bills, or store bills. He built his cabin with his own hands, and raised on his farm all that was necessary to supply his simple needs. In describing him I describe the men of his class as they appeared until the middle of this century, for no people ever presented fewer variations than the piny woods people of lower Georgia, until the railroads reached them over forty years ago. Then a great change passed over them, and a greater passed over the rice-planters. '

Up to the beginning of the last war there were two dif- ' ferent types of southern life side by side in this county, but ' when it ended there was but one. The elegance and cul- ■ ture and wealth, not at all overstated by Colonel Jones, dis- % appeared as if it had been a dream. The negroes came back to their old homes, but the master did not. The rice- fields were marshes again, the homes were deserted or burned, the old Midway church was given up to the negroes, and the people who had worshiped there found homes in other sections of the State. The pine woods were brought into market by the building of the railways. Turpentine farms were opened, mills were set up, and lands which had been considered worthless were found to be of real value. The culture of long cotton, of sugar-cane and of upland rice gave profitable employment to these small farmers, and there are few sections of the State where there is more solid comfort than is now to be found in what was considered at one time the barren lands of Liberty.

Along the line of the Savannah and Florida railway flour- ishing villages have sprung up, and the white population is

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 149

considerably increased. The population of the county in 1790 was 5,355, of whom 4,025 were slaves; in 1810 there were 5,828 free and 4,408 slaves; in 1850, 8,000, of whom nearly 6,000 were slaves.

The account given of the Dorchester settlement has ren- dered an}' further account of Liberty needless, and the his- tory of Midway church told elsewhere is a part of early Georgia history. While the Congregationalists were nom- inally in charge of the pulpit, the Presbyterians were really the preachers. There was virtually the same congregation, but there were really two organized churches of this denomi- nation, one at Midway and one at Walthourville. The Methodists have been in Liberty since the latter part of the last century. The Baptists have a considerable follow- ing in the county.

No county has sent forth more distinguished sons than Liberty. Especially has it been famous for distinguished preachers who have gone from the Midway neighborhood.

CAMDEN AND GLYNN.

The county of Camden was on the extreme southern border of the State, and was at the time it was made a county very sparsely settled and by very poor people. In 1790 there were in the large area which was then embraced in it two hundred and thirty-five white people and seventy negroes. Many of those who were scattered over these pine hills were that class who were impatient of the re- straints of civilized life and had gone into the wilds for greater freedom. There was not a church south of the Altamaha, and not a single public school in the beginning of the century in all the section. There were doubtless in the homes of the Spaldings, the Mclntoshes and the few families of wealth around Darien, St. Marys and on the islands, private tutors; but the people who were scattered through the pine forests were without any religious an J

150 The Story of Georgia [Chap. IV.

educational privileges, and when in 1799 the Methodists decided to establish a mission at St. Marys, and Jesse Lee rode from Charleston to that village on horseback to see after the mission, he said:

" The country is very level and very poor except near the watercourses, being mostly a low pine-barren, and almost covered with what is called saw-pimento; but on the river Satilla and a few other places the land is good. The county is no doubt very sickly, except on the Satilla and at St. Marys, which is open to the sea and situated on a dry, sandy bluff. The country is very good for cattle, but it is at present a poor place for piety or morality, few people making any profession of religion and many who are addicted to bad habits find a dwelling in these parts. Drunkenness is very common amongst the people. Persons who violate the laws of their country find it convenient to flee from justice, either to the Indians on the west or the Spaniards on the south, and thus get out of the laws of the United States. I heard of some people in those two coun- ties, Gleftn (Glynn) and Camden, that were grown up, and some had families who had never heard a sermon or a prayer in all their lives till last summer, when George Clark first came among them."*

This picture of an expanse of country which stretched back from the coast as far as the Georgia line extended was a true picture of much oi all this section for years after this. The inhabitants were cattle-raisers, who drove their cattle to the little city of St. Marys, whence they were shipped to the West Indies.

When Dr. Lovick Pierce was quite a young man he was presiding elder in this section, and such was the state of society that he found a local preacher of mature years who had never been married legally to the mother of his chil- dren. There were neither magistrates nor parsons in these

* Thrift's Life of Lee. 2i;7. 2S8.

1782-1789.]

AND THE Georgia People. 151

wild woods, and young people, ignorant of the laws requir- ing a license to marry or the need of an officiating priest, paired like wild doves.

The rich lands on the rivers were opened early in the century, and the sea islands were planted in cotton and there were rice plantations on the main, and nowhere was there to be found a society more elegant than was to be found in this section near the seashore.

St. Marys, in Camden, has a commanding position, as it was the extreme southward town on the Atlantic coast, only separated from Florida by a river. It has had varied fortunes. Sometimes it was a place of importance, and then declined and then revived. For years it was an im- portant shipping point for lumber, and at one time it com- manded a large trade in hides, tallow and wax, which came to it from the pine woods lying west.

General John Floyd, the famous Indian fighter, lived in Camden, and General Duncan L, Church, a candidate for governor, had a rice plantation in this county. The county has never been thickly settled, but in St. Marys there have been good schools and churches for over a hun- dred years.

Glynn, apart from the sea islands and Brunswick its chief city, has never had any marked features. The land is low and very poor and the inhabitants few. The sea islands, which before the war between the States were the homes of men of means, were abandoned during the war, and after the overthrow of slavery were not reoccupied, and were no longer cultivated on any considerable scale; and one entire island, Jekyl, has been purchased by a body of wealthy men of the North as a seat for a club-house and as a great game preserve. Brunswick has, however, become a city of very considerable importance. The country tributary to it has been very rich in its pine forests, and great quantities of lumber and ship stores have been

152 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

shipped from this port to North American and European cities.

There have been in Glvnn and Camden from the first settlement two very different classes of people — the poor and the wealthy; but the wealthy have been very few, and the entire population at no time has been considerable.

FRANKLIN.

Franklin county, which was laid off in 1784, named in honor of Benjamin Franklin, embraced a very large part of upper Georgia, extending from the borders of what is now Rabun and Towns counties to Clarke, from the Savannah river to the Oconee in Hall and Jackson.

It is still quite a large county of high hills and narrow valleys, lying along the base of the Blue Ridge, with some large and fertile valleys along the Tugalo and the Savannah. The county site, Carnesville, was laid out in 1805, and was named in honor of Thomas Peter Carnes.

Franklin has sent forth into other parts of Georgia many most excellent people. It was for a long time by its loca- tion shut out from the 'world, but since the building of the Southern railway and the branch to Elberton it has been brought into close contact with other parts of the State.

The people generally have been people of moderate means, but famous for thrift, plainness and independence. It adjoined Anderson district in South Carolina, and as Scotch-Irish people came from Pennsylvania into western North and South Carolina their children came to Franklin in Georgia, but with them came many of pure English origin. The Cleveland, Humphreys, Gorham, Payne, Har- den, Echols, Watson, Little, Chandler, and Blair families are all Scotch-Irish; while Wilkins, Sewell, Epperson, Rucker, Terrell, Hooper, Shannon, and Stovall are names of English people who came to this country from Virginia or North Carolina.

1782-1780.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 153

Lands were given away to actual settlers. They were ])roductive, the health of the people good, and the popula- tion rapidly increased.

The Presbyterians, who came into Franklin at a very early day, organized several churches over a hundred years ago, which are still in existence. The Rev. Mr. Cartledge, who resided in Franklin, was pastor of one church for fifty years, having the longest pastorate ever held by a preacher of any name in Georgia.

The Methodists and Baptists came into the county at an early day and are very strong in the county. There are two famous camp-grounds belonging to the Methodists in the county where meetings have been held annually for many years. There has always been a good high school in Franklin, and good common schools are found in every neighborhood.

Franklin was very thinly settled for a considerable time after it was laid out, and in 1790 there were only in all the vast area which it covered 1,041 people, of whom 156 were slaves. When it was much reduced in size in 18 10 there were 9,156 free and 1,056 slaves; in 1830 there were 10,107, of whom 2,370 were slaves.

There was up to 1792 great danger from Indian forays, and the scattered inhabitants lived much of the time in blockhouses. Near this period the Indians massacred a family of nine persons at one time, but after the formation of the Union in 1789 the troubles with the Cherokees were largely settled, and there was but little disturbance after that time.

The county is now much worn, and the people are gen- erally in moderate circumstances, many of them quite poor, but the population is still considerable, being in 1890 over fifteen thousand of all classes. The people are entirely de- pendent on agriculture but are very industrious and moral, and are a happy, independent people; and while there is

154 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

little attention paid to the higher education, there is a gen- eral attention to the fundamental branches of English.

WASHINGTON.

Washington in 1784, when it was first laid out, was a county of immense area, including what is now Greene, Hancock, Washington, Johnson, Montgomery and a part of Laurens and Oglethorpe, but the account we give now refers merely to that part of the original county which bears the name. It is very near the center of the State and is a still a county of large size, of which the flourishing little city of Sandersville is the county site. It includes in its boundary a section of what is known as the rotten lime- stone country, and is famous for the fossiliferous deposits belonging to the tertiary period. This limestone exists in such quantities that good lime has been made from it for market.

On the Ogeechee, the Buffalo and Kegg's creeks and Williamson swamp, and on the oak and hickory hills north of Sandersville the land at its first opening was very fertile, but the pine woods, which included much the larger part of the country, were in the early days of the century looked upon as of no value. The early comers took the oak and hickory lands, and the pine woods were thinly settled. The county was much exposed in its early settlement to Indian forays and was settled slowly.

The State had devoted a large part of Washington and Franklin for bounty land to its soldiers, and it was granted in lots of two hundred and fifty acres free from taxation for some years, and if one preferred to pay taxes he was to have two hundred and eighty-seven and one-half acres. Much of this land was of the best quality and many people came to the land granted them and made homes, though not a few sold their warrants. The long list of grants found

1782-1789.]

AND THE Georgia People. 155

in the Appendix does not show the settlers of Washington alone, but belongs to many who never came at all.

There was but little to attract to this dangerous frontier before the end of the Indian war, but although the danger was great the lands on the creeks and rivers and the oak and hickory lands north of Sandersville were so fertile that they drew many daring settlers, who had received their warrants from the State, and the population grew steadily, if not rapidly, for some years. In 1 790 there were in all the country originally Washington 4,500, of whom only 649 were slaves; in 18 10, 6,427 free and 3,313 slaves; in 1830, 6,000 free and 3.909 slaves; in 1890, 25,237 of all classes.

The first settlers as given by White were : Alexander Irwin, John Rutherford, Wm. Johnston, Jared Irwin, Wm. Irwin, Elisha Williams, Jacob Dennard, J. Beddingfield, P. Franklin, A. Sinquefield, Jos. Avant, John Sheppard, John Thomas, John Daniel, John Martin, B. Tennille, J. Burney, Hugh Lawson, John Shellman, Wm. Sapp, M. Murphy, John Jones, John Montgomery, John Stokes, M. Saunders, Geo. Galphin, Jacob Dennis, J. Nutt, D. Wood, W. War- then, Jacob Kelly, Wm. May.

Many of these names are of Scotch origin, and many of these first settlers came from North Carolina, where a large colony of Scotch-Irishmen had settled. There were some of the settlers from Burke, Effingham and Wilkes and a few Virginians among the first comers. There were some slaveholders who had a small number of slaves, but the bulk of the people were poor and the fortunes possessed by them in after years were of their own making.

There was for twenty years after the settlement of Wash- ington little to induce wealthy people to emigrate to it, but the land was so cheap and so fertile that those who came into the woods poor soon became independent and were rich in herds and flocks. There was no market nearer than Augusta, and there was but little to be sold and but little

156 The Story of Georgia [Chap. IV.

was bought. The houses were log cabins and the people were generally dependent entirely on their own labor, but the cotton machine was invented and one was brought to the county, and cotton planting began on a considerable scale after the century opened.

The tide of settlers came rushing in. They came with slaves to open new plantations. The poorer stock-raisers gave way and large plantations in the better lands became the rule, and by 1830 in the richer sections negro laborers had entirely supplanted the white yeomanry. This was, however, true only of the richer lands; there was much of the country occupied by the pine woods people, and there was among them the same condition of things that we have alluded to as belonging to the settlers in Liberty. There were a few very wealthy people in the county and a great many in moderate circumstances, and only a few who were very poor. The people as a rule lived plainly, and, while not famous for culture, were highly valued for their thrift and honesty.

The county site was not fixed until 1796, and the courts were held near what is now Warthen's. Saundersville, as it was first written, was named in honor of a Mr. Saunders who had a plantation on the place selected as the county site. It was in the center of the county near the pine belt, though in the oak woods. It was for many years an insig- nificant town, deriving its importance from its being the county site. It was incorporated and had an academy.

The academy at Sandersviile was endowed by the State with the usual benefaction of one thousand acres of land, and afterward of an annual appropriation, and in addition to this it was allowed the privilege of running a lottery which was to be for the benefit of the academy. The lot- tery was in existence for a long time, as by the provisions of its charter it could continue until a certain sum was real- ized. The lottery and the endowment disappeared with

«

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 157

the end of the war, and now the Washington county acad- emy is merged into the graded school at Sandersville.

The Central railway passed directly through the poorer part of Washington, within three miles of Sandersville, and before the war much of the best retail trade of the county went to that city, but after the war the trade was given to the near-by villages of Tennille and Davisboro.

Sandersville began to improve rapidly and has continued to grow up to this time. It was surrounded by a wealthy country, and was for many years noted for its disregard of religion and morality. The leading citizens were avowed infidels, and the lives of many of them openly profligate. There was but one apology for a church in the village, a dilapidated, unpainted shell of a house on the outskirts of the town. There was occasional preaching in the village, and no Sunday-school, but a change for the better set in about 1858.

The epicureans, who gave tone to society, either left the county or died, and a new and better class of men took their places. A neat church was built by the Methodists, then one by the Christians, and then one each by Baptists and Roman Catholics. Now in all these churches there are regular services.

The old uncomely academy has long since been aban- doned, and one of the handsomest school buildings in the State has been erected.

The Federal army burned the court-house with its valu- able records, and its place was taken by another, which is now being replaced by a very handsome and convenient edifice.

While there was little attention paid to religion in the first settlement of Washington, there were a few log churches both among Baptists and Methodists before the beginning of the century. Bishop Asbury mentions in his Journal preaching at Harris meeting-house and on Williamson's

158 The Story of Georgia [Chap. YV,

swamp. The Baptist church Bethlehem, near Warthen's, has a history going back to the early settlement of the county.

For many years after the county was settled all the wild revelry of frontier life was freely indulged in by the people. They drank almost universally, and often to excess, raced, gambled, and there was fair play given to all who chose to settle their quarrels in the ring. On court days and musters as late as 1850 there was fighting and drinking and gaming without any vigorous restraints, but now the county has the prohibition of the whisky traffic, and Sandersville and Ten- nille city governments, a law-abiding people, good schools and good churches.

Tennille, from being a mere station known as No. 13 on the road, has become quite a little city. The Central rail- road, the Wrightsville and Tennille road, the road to Augusta and the short line to Sandersville give to the county all needful railroad facilities. Governor Jared Irwin, so famous in the early history of this county, lived and died in it, and his monument erected by the State stands on the public square in Sandersville.

GREENE.

Greene was formed from Washington in 1785. It was named Greene in honor of General Nathaniel Greene, and was composed of what is now Greene and Hancock and a part of Taliaferro, Oglethorpe and of Oconee. It was a magnificent county. The Oconee and Apalachee rivers and several large creeks ran through it, and the bottoms were wide and fertile. The larger part of the county was forest-covered hills of rich red land. The lower part, toward Hancock, was a fine gray land which was covered with a growth of small oaks, and at the first settling of the county was regarded as the least desirable part of the county, but is now the most thickly settled and prosperous part of it.

I

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE. 150

The first settlers, as Mr. White gives them, were: Thos. Haines, D. Gresham, W. Fitzpatrick, H. Graybill, Oliver Porter, John Bailey, Chas. Cessna, T. Baldwin, M. Rabun, Jno. George, Alex. Reed, M. Rogers, D. Dickson, W. Harris, Peyton Smith, E. E. Parks, Peter Cartright, G. W. Foster, Jno. Armour, Dr. Poullain, Jesse Perkins, Joel Newsome, James Armstrong, Major Beasly. To these might be added the Abercrombies, the Dales, Fouches, and Brewers.

These names are nearly all Virginia and North Carolina names. Greene was largely settled by people from these States and had in it a very few people from any other sec- tion. The list which is given by White includes many whO' were afterward in Oglethorpe and Hancock.

The first settlers lived on the creeks and near the river, and for their own protection in close proximity to each other. A blockhouse was generally built at a convenient distance, and the families upon the approach of the Indians fled to it for protection. The men left their families in the blockhouse and went into the fields to cultivate the corn patches from which they hoped to make their bread. Until the cessation of the Oconee war there was constant peril and the immigration of people of means was small; but by 1790 there were five thousand four hundred and five people in the several counties then known as Greene, of whom one thousand three hundred and seventy- seven were negroes. There was constant apprehension of Indian forays and troops of soldiers were kept under arms.

In 1794 there was a troop of dragoons commanded by Captain Jonas Fouche, of which we have a roster in White's collections. These dragoons were:

Captain Fouche, Peyton Smith, Geo. Phillips, William Browning, Chas. Harris, John Young, S. B. Harris, Wm. Heard, S. M. Devereaux, John Harrison, Abner Farmer, Isaac Stocks, Samuel Dale, Josiah McDonald, Douglas-

160 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

Watson, Jesse Standifer, Wm. Scott, Arthur Foster, Wm. George, John Capps, R. Patrick, J. Jenkins, Chas. Watts, T. Byron, Jos. White, R. Finks, Geo. Owing, Wm. Coursey, Jos. Shaw, Jno. Pinkard, L. B. Jenkins, P. Watts, T. Scott, R. Walron, H. Potts, D. Lynch, S. Standifer, Jos. Heard, Jas. Moor, H. Gibson, R. Grimatt, George Reed, M. Wall, Jas. McGuire.

The militia districts mentioned were: Armour's, Brown- ing's, Taylor's, Beard's, Melton's.

Although the county was organized in 1786, the first court does not seem to have met until 1790. The first estate is appraised in 1786, It consisted of:

Fifty bushels corn, i bay mare, i cow and calf, i heifer, some hogs, an ax, a hoe, a linen wheel, a brass kettle, a tea- kettle, a wash-tub, churn, candlesticks, bottles, slaye, tea- pots, bole, mugg; 200 acres land, £']^.

The first will is that of Jos. Smith, a surveyor, made in 1786. His estate was, 17 cows, surveying instruments, 4 horses, 3 Bibles, 3 Testaments, 3 sermon books, 4^ yards gray cloth.

The first grand jury was: Thos. Harris, David Love, Walton Harris, David Gresham, Jno. A. Miller, Wm. Fitz- patrick, Wm. Heard, Moses Shelby, James Jenkins, Joseph White, Robert Baldwin, Wm. Shelby, Jesse Connell, Joseph Spradling, Wm. Daniel.

The grand jury presents as a " greate greavance " that these were more land-warrants than there was land.

The judge prescribes as a rule for lawyers that: " For the sake of a decent conformity with an ancient custom, and of a necessary distinction in the profession, that attorneys shall be heard in a black robe, but this rule was not to be enforced till the next session."

The cases in the early courts were largely for assault and battery, and when parties were convicted the fines were generally from three to ten dollars. One who had been

1782-17S9.]

AND THE Georgia People, ItU

convicted of manslaughter was sentenced to be branded on the left thumb with the letter M, and four convicted of forgery were to be hung.

The court-house in 1798 was a very inferior building, and the jail was a mere hut. As late as 1798 the United States soldiers were still quartered in the country to protect the settlers from Indian raids, for, though the Indians were nominally peaceable, they were likely at any time to give trouble. Despite the dangers from Indians and the hard- ships of the frontier immigrants poured in from North Carolina and from Virginia. Many of the North Caro- linians came from Rowan and Mecklenburg and settled on Shoulderbone creek in Hancock. The Virginians came from Franklin, Brunswick, Prince George, Dinwiddie and Prince Edward and settled on the Apalachee and Oconee. The first comers to Greene were, as they were in Wilkes, generally men of small means. They were industrious and thrifty and prosperous. The tide of settlers was very con- stant and very full. At first nothing was produced but food crops, principally corn and cattle and hogs, but there was a large quantity of these. The range was wide and cattle and hogs fattened in the woods. A little tobacco was raised for market, but there was but little to sell and few purchasers for anything. The people lived within them- selves. They made everything needful for comfort, and up to the war of 18 12 Greene and Wilkes and Hancock were filled with plenty. The county produced everything needed for man or beast. There was corn, barley, rye, wheat, hogs, cattle, horses. There were few people of large wealth in the county up to 18 12, and none who were squalidly poor. There were a few people like old Joel Early, who kept up the style of an old English baron, but the larger part of the people lived in solid comfort and made no pretenses. Living was exceedingly cheap, and board was 11

162 The Story of Georgia [Chap. iv.

two to four dollars per month. Unfortunately the drink- ing habits of the people were universal, and brandy and. whisky were freely used, and they were distilled in quan- tities. Life in all this middle Georgia belt was so much, the same that the story of one of these counties is the- story of all.

The people of all these counties came from the same sec- tion and had the same features. They were, as far as- education was concerned, beyond their children, who grew to manhood on the frontier, and who twenty years after- ward settled in Jasper, Morgan or Jones. Most of those who signed deeds in Greene could write their names, but it was- not so twenty years afterward. Those who grew to man- hood during and just after the Revolution had scant oppor- tunities for learning even elementary branches.

After the bringing in of the cotton-gin in the first years of the century, and as the country on the west of the Oconee was opened, the men who had small farms and raised pro- vision crops entirely began to seek other homes and the farms were absorbed by the plantations.

After the war of 1812 wealth very rapidly increased in Greene and cotton planting was vigorously pressed. As was the case in Wilkes and Columbia negroes began to take the place of white people, the plantations of farms, and cotton of grain.

The effort of the planter from 181 5 to 1850 was to raise all the cotton possible. Grass is the deadly foe of this textile plant, and now the Bermuda grass was brought into Greene. Mr. John Cunningham, a merchant of Greensboro in the early twenties, told the author that he brought the- first small tuft of this grass to Greensboro and planted it in his garden. The garden was soon covered, the farm was next to follow, and the pestiferous grass, as it was regarded, spread so rapidly that in some cases the fields were simply surrendered to it and the planter counted his plantation as-

1782-1789.] AND THE GEORGIA PeOPLE. 163

ruined. With the new lands opening, the Bermuda grass spreading, the fields once so fertile becoming washed and worn, the planters of Greene began to seek fresher lands in the west, and as in Wilkes the farms were absorbed by the plantations. The after history told of Wilkes and Burke is true of Greene.

It is now no longer a county of planters, but is a county of villages. The owners of the land reside in the small towns and the negro tenants work the fields. But while this is the fact now, it has been a fact to some extent for over forty years. Save that the freedman has taken the place of the slave, it is as it was when the overseer con- trolled the plantation before the war. This is true of the red lands, but not true of poorer lands in other parts of the county. Here there is improvement in every line.

The Presbyterians and the Baptists came into Greene with the first settlements and organized churches before they had meeting-houses. The Baptists had churches at Scull Shoals and Bairdstown shortly after the county was settled, and occupied jointly with the Presbyterians the building called Siloam meeting-house, then on the hill overlooking Greensboro. Here Mr. Ray had an academy, and for its support an appropriation was made by the Leg- islature.

The Methodists entered the county as soon as they came into Georgia, and soon had a number of preaching places. Bishop Asbury preached at Little Brittain, and at Bush's, now known as Liberty, and the South Carolina Conference was held at this church in i8o8. Asbury and McKendree were both present. Lovick Pierce was ordained an elder and Bishop Wm. Capers was admitted into the connection as a preacher on trial. There was a famous camp-ground at Hastings, where the people of Greene used to assemble annually for religious meetings. One of the most remark- able revivals of religion ever known in Georgia reached

164 The Story of Georgia [Chap. IV.

Greensboro in 1827, when Judge Longstreet and many of the most prominent men in the county were converted. Greene is now well supplied with churches and school- houses, and while the country neighborhoods have de- clined, the villages of Greensboro, Union Point, White Plains, Penfield, Woodville and Veazy have grown up, and the people of the county have religious and educational advantages beyond those at any previous time; and while much of what was once the most fertile land in Greene is not now productive, the average of production per acre is perhaps greater now than at any time since 1820.

Greensboro was selected as the county site as soon as the county was laid off, and an academy was provided for. The trustees were granted one thousand acres of land for its endowment. Commissioners were appointed to lay off the town and build the academy and repair Siloam meet- ing-house. The Rev. Jas. Ray was appointed rector.

Greensboro drew to it from its first settlement a fine class of citizens and soon became famous for its culture and refinement. It was the county site of a wealthy county, and while in the early days the planters mainly lived on their plantations, the lawyers and doctors, preachers and teachers, as well as the court officers, nearly all lived in the town. Here Dr. Lovick Pierce practised medicine during the time he was a local preacher, and here Dr. Adiel Sherwood, the great Baptist preacher, lived, and while living here in 1829 he published the first book, "Gazetteer of Georgia," which attempted to tell of the resources of the State. Here Judge Longstreet began the {practise of law and became famous as a wit and jurist. Here he married and as has been seen became a Christian and Methodist preacher. Here Wm. C. Dawson, long time senator and one of the most popular of Georgians, had his home and practiced his profession. Thomas Foster,

1782-1789.]

AND THE Georgia People. 165

the genial and gifted young Congressman, practised law in this village.

John Bethune and Vincent Sandford, each clerks of the court and men of position and influence, lived here. Near here the great Georgia bishop, Geo. Foster Pierce, was born, and here he spent his childhood, and from Greens- boro he went to college at Athens. Here he decided to enter the Methodist itinerancy, and laid down his law books and entered the ministry.

The eccentric but sterling Governor Peter Early lived in this county, and is buried on what was his manor. His father, Joel Early, came from Virginia, and purchased a very large body of land on the Oconee river, where he lo- cated what he called Early's Manor. His will is on record and is a striking document. It gives direction not only as to the distribution of his property, but as to the methods of pruning his apple orchards and resting his fields. He be- queathed his land to trustees to be given to his favored sons when they were thirty-six years old. Two of his sons he disinherited, one for extravagance, the other for disre- spect. The descendants of the Greene county people are found in all sections of the Southern country, and they have been among the most useful and distinguished of the people.

166 The Story of Georgia [Chap, v,

CHAPTER V.

1789 TO 1800.

George Walton Governor — Convention 1789 — Some of its Provisions — First General Thanksgiving Day Observed — Governor Telfair — General Wash- ington's Visit to Georgia — Governor Mathews — New Counties — Educational Advancement — The Old Field School — Shooting Matches — Gander-pulling — Dancing — Fighting in the Ring — Horse-swapping — Drinking Habits — General Character of the People — The Yazoo Troubles — General Jackson's Course — Rescinding of the Act — Convention of 1795 — Convention of 1798 General Jackson Governor — Pine-barren Frauds — History of Elbert, Columbia, Screven, Oglethorpe, Hancock, Bulloch, Bryan, Mcintosh, Jack- son, Montgomery, Lincoln — Georgia in the Federal Union.

Authorities : Stevens, Vol. II., White's Statistics, White's Historical Collec. tions, Sherwood, Chappel's Pamphlet on the Yazoo and Pine-barren Frauds, Jackson's Letters of Sicillius, State Papers Quoted by Chappel, Watkins's Digest, Marbury & Crawford's Digest, Clayton's Compilation, Campbell's Georgia Baptists, Smith's History of Methodism, Wilson's Pres- byterian Necrology, Georgia Scenes, Georgia Gazette, Georgia Chronicle, Cranch's Reports U. S. Supreme Court, Vol. VI.

Georgia ratified the Constitution early in 1788, but it was late in the year before the needful nine States had acted and the Union formed. George Walton, of whom we have spoken elsewhere, was governor when the Constitution was ratified. He had been of the four who called the first meeting of the Whigs in Savannah. He had signed the Declaration of Independence, had been a member of the Continental Congress, a member of the Council of Safety, and ofificer in the army, and one of the first of the Georgia judges. His published charges are not the best specimens of clear expression and of faultless English, but they are vigorous and sensible. Walton has not received his just meed from Georgia historians. He did not get on well with General Mcintosh or Edward Telfair, who were Scotch

J 789-1800.]

AND THE Georgia People. 167

(lairds both, and rich men, and clashed with the independent Virginian, but he was in great favor with the common people. In May the convention met again. Its members were :

Chatham — Asa P2manuel, Justus H. Scheuber.

Greene — Jos. Carmichael, Henry Carr.

Effingham — Benj. Lanier, Jno. Green, Nathan Brownson.

Burke — David Emanuel, Hugh Lawson, Wm. Little.

Richmond — Abraham Marshall, Wm. F. Booker, Leon- .ard Marbury.

Wilkes — John Talbot, Jeremiah Walker.

Liberty — Lachlan Mcintosh.

Glynn — Alex Brisett.

Washington — Jared Irwin, John Watts.

Franklin — Joshua Williams, M. Woods.

This convention was called merely to review and, if it saw fit, to accept the Constitution which had been prepared for its revision by the convention of January. The Consti- tution submitted was a carefully prepared document and provided for two Houses, a Senate and a House of Repre- sentatives. Senators must be twenty-eight years old, and have ^250 in property, and members of the House ^^150; no clergyman should be a member of either House; repre- sentation was to be equalized as far as possible; the Senate should elect the governor on a nomination from the Lower House; the requirement of the former Constitution that one should be a Protestant in order to hold office was abrogated. This Constitution was accepted and remained in force for near ten years.

It was in full force in October, and the first Assembly held under it met in November. Seaborn Jones was Speaker of the House, and ex-Governor Brownson Presi- dent of the Senate. The House, as required by the Con- stitution, sent to the Senate the names of two candidates to be voted for for governor. Ex-Governor Houston and ex-

168

The Story of Georgia

[Chap. V.

Governor Telfair were the parties nominated. When the vote was counted it was found that each had the same vote. On the next ballot Governor Telfair was unanimously chosen.

The first Thanksgiving Day ordered by the United States authorities came while the Assembly was in session, and one of the first acts of the new Legislature was to provide for the observance of this day.

The church in Augusta had now been made habitable, and was being supplied for the time by Dr. Palmer of the

Richmond academy. He was requested by the Leg- islature to provide a form of prayer and to preach a Thanksgiving sermon, which he did to the great satisfaction of the body, who very decorously at- tended service, and who the next day returned thanks to Mr. Palmer for his well-adapted sermon.

Georgia had already elected her two senators, and now made provisions for electing the three members of the House.

General Washington, who was making a tour through the United States, came to Augusta from Savannah and was re- ceived by the governor with due formality. The president always fixed his quarters at a public house, and positively refused to be entertained privately, but accepted the civili- ties which were always extended, so he had his dinings and the inevitable ball, attended the commencement of the Richmond academy, and gave the young students sundry

George Washington.

1789-1800]

AND THE Georgia People. 169

copies of the classics, which had been offered as prizes, with his autograph in them.

There had been up to this time no great deal of political strife in Georgia. The bitter antagonisms of the past had been personal rather than political, and the sectional feel- ing had not been as yet manifest. Savannah and the low- country had ruled the State from its first settlement without resistance or protest, but it now became evident that the people of the up-country were not to be ignored or over- shadowed by the wealthy and cultured men of the low- country. These educated low-country men were all Demo- crats in public life and aristocrats in their social affinities. They were bitterly opposed to Federalism and sympathized with the French, and so when Mr. Telfair of Burke, for- merly of Chatham, offered for governor the second time he was defeated by the rugged and uneducated Federalist, Colonel Geo. Mathews, who had only been in the State ten years, and who had been governor for one term already.

While Governor Mathews was in office that irrepressible old soldier, Elijah Clarke, decided the time had come to take possession of the Indian lands on the west of the Oconee, and so gathering a body of daring spirits about him they went together into the wilderness. Governor Mathews ordered him to withdraw, but he refused, and only after the militia was ordered out would he return.

It was during this period that Georgia became greatly excited by what many Georgians have always called the Yazoo fraud. Such was the extent of the angry feelings aroused by the act thus characterized that anything like a calm consideration of the matter was impossible then, and for fifty years afterward there was but one side of the case looked at; and such is the verdict of history even now, that I may find it difficult to make a fair, calm and judicial statement of the facts concerning the sale of the western lands.

170 The Story of Georgia [Chap. V.

The English colonial office before the Revolution, against the protest of South Carolina, recognized the colony of Georgia as having the title to all the lands lying west of Savannah river, containing what is now Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and when England recognized the State of Georgia as free and independent, she gave to this State, composed then of less than thirty thousand people, a clear title to all that land. That part of this territory beyond the Chattahoochee was claimed by two separate parties. The Spanish claimed it by right of conquest

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