USA > Georgia > A standard history of Georgia and Georgians > Part 56
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On January 21, 1790, the spreading boughs of this magnificent forest giant formed the roof of God's first Presbyterian temple in the county of Wilkes. At this time the Presbytery of South Carolina sent commis- sioners to Washington for the purpose of ordaining Rev. John Springer, an educator of wide note in the early pioneer days. Either for the reason that enclosed quarters were not to be obtained in the town or because the balminess of the summer weather lured them into the open air, the Presbyters of South Carolina decided to hold the serv- ices of ordination under the branches of the great poplar. It was quite the common thing in pioneer days to hold religious meetings out of doors.
The statement is often made by partially informed people to the effect that the first Presbytery in Georgia was organized on this historic spot. No such body ever met here. The whole of the State of Georgia was at this time embraced in the Presbytery of South Carolina; and, while the commissioners from the other side of the river met to perform what was virtually an aet of the Presbytery of South Carolina, they did not constitute a meeting of the Presbytery itself. The historie associations which belong to the Presbyterian poplar proceed from the fact that it witnessed the first ordination ever performed in Georgia under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church. There were ministers of this denomination in Georgia prior to this time, but they were ordained before coming into the state.
Smyrna Church, a time-honored old house of worship, which stands in a grove of pines, on the Angusta road, six miles from Washington, was organized by this early evangel of the frontier.
John Talbot, the wealthiest land owner in Wilkes, was an elder in Smyrna Church; and, beside him, in the little graveyard at this place, sleeps his distinguished son, Matthew Talbot, a former governor of Georgia.
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Though a devout and faithful minister, Mr. Springer is best remem- bered as an edueator. At Walnut Hill, on the Mallorysville road, some four miles from Washington, he established a school of high character, which was known far and wide. Boys were sent to him from Augusta, when the old Richmond Academy there was flourishing in pristine vigor. John Forsyth, afterwards governor of Georgia, United States senator, and minister to Spain, was one of this number. Jesse Mercer, the great Baptist divine, also attended the school at Walnut Hill. Mr. Springer was at one time president of the board of trustees of the aead- emy in Washington. He taught school in various places before eom- ing to Georgia and was recommended for work on the frontier by Gen. Andrew Piekens, an elder in the church at Long Cane, South Carolina. He was a native of Delaware and a man in the prime of life when ordained to the ministry under the Presbyterian poplar. He lived only eight years after entering upon his labors as a minister. Mr. Springer died soon after preaching the funeral sermon of Hon. John Talbot. On account of subsequent changes in boundary lines to property in this neighborhood, the grave of Mr. Springer is supposed at the present time to underlie the main highway. He was originally buried in his garden at Walnut Hill. Mr. Springer was a man of gigantic stature, weighing over 400 pounds. In this respect he was rivaled by only two men in Georgia at the time of his death : Dixon H. Lewis and Sterne Simmons.
It may be stated in this connection that the separate organized exist- ence of the Presbyterian Church in Georgia began with the creation of the Presbytery of Hopewell on March 16, 1797, at Liberty Church, nine miles west of Washington. This ehureh was afterwards removed. It is today represented by Woodstock Church in the county of Oglethorpe.
But while Dr. Springer was the first evangelist to be ordained in Georgia, he was not the first evangelist to enter the state. We are now speaking of Presbyterians. This credit belongs to Rev. John Newton, who, in 1785, two years after the Revolution, organized the historic old Presbyterian Church of Lexington. This time-honored landmark is probably the oldest ehnurch in the Synod of Georgia." The name by which the church at Lexington was first known was Beth-salem ; and at the time of organization it was located some two miles distant from the present site. Mr. Newton, who was the first Presbyterian minister to preach the gospel on the frontier belt of Georgia, served the church as pastor for twelve years. When he died, in 1797, he was buried in the old churchyard; but, one hundred years later, in 1897, his body was taken up and reinterred in the Presbyterian cemetery at Lexington Mr. George C. Smith, the present clerk of the session, assisted Mr. New- ton's grandson in accomplishing this removal. The original agreement between pastor and people, exeented in 1785 when Mr. Newton first took charge, is still in the possession of the church. The munificent salary which the pastor was to receive, according to the terms of this contraet, was fixed at fifty pounds and twenty shillings per annum.
Mr. Smith is the eustodian of a precious keepsake in the nature of a little book, containing the texts from which this pioneer divine preached while pastor of Beth-salem Church, from 1785 to 1797; and
* Ibid., pp. 26-28.
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he also treasures a record of baptisms, to which great value attaches. Both of these genuine relics of the early days of Presbyterianism in Upper Georgia were sent, through Mr. C. A. Rowland, of Athens, to the Jamestown Centennial Exposition, where they attracted much interest.
It was at Lexington, in 1828, that the Presbyterian Theological Semi- nary, now located at Columbia, South Carolina, was first established, and the house in which this famous school of the prophets was organized was still standing in 1912-after the lapse of eighty-four years.
Presbyterianism, with its rigid system of Calvinistic theology, was a splendid discipline for pioneer days. But allied to Scotch-Irish thrift, on the one hand, and to Huguenot exclusiveness, on the other, it en- countered some difficulty in making its peculiar doctrine of election popular. Moreover, its style of preaching was coldly intellectual. It possessed little emotional warmth; and, notwithstanding the decline of Episcopacy, with the outbreak of the Revolution, the Presbyterians, while reaping a substantial harvest out of these conditions, still left a rich virgin field in which Baptists and Methodists at a later period were destined to gather golden sheaves.
The Lutheran Church was planted in Georgia by the pious Salzburg- ers at Ebenezer in 1733. Here, at the outbreak of the Revolution, there was a strong church. Likewise, in Savannah, we find a congregation of Lutherans during the Colonial period. The Moravian Church was brought to Georgia in 1735 by a colony of Moravians, under the pious Dr. Gottlieb Spangenberg. These colonists made a settlement at Irene, between Savannah and Ebenezer. More than any other religious sect, the Moravians were successful to a marked degree in missionary activi- ties among the Georgia Indians. There are still to be found in Murray County the relies of an old mission established by the Moravians among the Cherokees, before the close of the eighteenth century; but like the Cherokees themselves, these gentle evangels of peace have long since disappeared.
We have already given an extended account of the first settlement in Georgia made by the Jews.
Congregationalism entered the state in 1752 when the Dorchester Puritans settled at Midway, on the rich alluvial bottom lands of the Georgia coast. But while the church at Midway was Congregational in form, it became a germinal center of Presbyterian activities; and not until a much later day did Congregationalism as such acquire a foothold in Georgia. But while the church at Midway became a nursery of Presbyterianism, unsurpassed not only for the number of its contribu- tions to the Presbyterian pulpit but for the high intellectual and moral character of the men who bore its religious impress, this historic old plant was nevertheless a Congregational church. It was due entirely to environment that its fruitage was gathered by Presbyterians. As we have already seen, the church at Midway indoctrinated a community in which the Revolutionary fires were first kindled in Georgia; and from which governors, United States senators, congressmen, educators, scien- tists, diplomats, missionaries and divines have sprung in numbers equaled nowhere in America by a community of like size and character. There is an explanation for this failure of Congregationalism to propa-
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gate in Georgia as in New England. So closely allied in theological doctrine are Congregational and Presbyterian churches that the two orders seldom flourish in the same locality, and where Presbyterianism is strong Congregationalism is usually weak.
To find the beginning of Methodism, we naturally go back to the Wesleys, from whom in after years this great religious organization re- ceived its quickening impulse, but the Wesleys at this time were only its forerunners. It was not until they returned to England that the Methodists ceased to be a religious society within the pale of the Epis- copal Church and became an independent religious organization. Even Whitefield, who touched elbows with the Wesleys in this society of Meth- odists at Oxford, was an out-and-out Calvinist, most decidedly at vari- ance in his theology with the Methodists of a later day, whose creed was distinctly Arminian. It was not until after the Revolution that Meth- odism acquired a foothold in Georgia. Eventually its clear note of evangelism, its emotional style of preaching, its freedom from all rit- ualistic forms and ceremonies, and its broad invitation to converts, unre- stricted by the doctrine of election, were destined to bring a multitude of converts to its banners. But the history of Methodism in its pioneer days was a struggle for existence against seemingly overwhelming odds ; and for years, like a fragrant flower of the wilderness, it blossomed in obscure places, ofttimes in deep forest solitudes, remote from towns and cities, where the Indian's tomahawk was still dripping with the blood of his slaughtered victims. What is today known as the Meth- odist camp-meeting is a reminiscence, a memorial, so to speak, of these arcadian days of Methodism.
Dr. James W. Lee, in a work of recognized authority, tells of how the Methodist Church started in Georgia. Says he: *
"Georgia was a state in which, at the close of the Revolutionary war, the Anglican Church was extinct. Savannah, which had been selected fifty years before as a center of Methodist religious life, was now noted for its godlessness. Indeed, so strong was the prejudice against Meth- odism in this busy seaport that it was not until 1811 that a church was planted there. The new Methodism traveled across the South Carolina frontier with the settlers, who took up lands in the interior. The pioneer preachers were Thomas Humphries, a fine-looking man, who preached with great earnestness and power, and John Major, who, a constant suf- ferer from ill health, was more pathetic in his address, and earned the name of 'the weeping prophet.' At the first conference held in the state, in April, 1788, ten members were present, and Asbury came south to preside. Among the members were two notable men-Richard Ivy, who was appointed an elder at the Christmas Conference of 1784, and the Maryland carpenter, Hope Hull, a man of fine physique and great courage, who, notwithstanding the disadvantages of his early training, valued education next to religion, and succeeded in making good his deficiencies. He married the daughter of a prominent Georgian, became one of the board of trustees of the University at Athens, an institution to which he devoted much of his time and energies, aud gained a high reputation as a powerful and persuasive pulpit orator, at home in ad-
** "Illustrated History of Methodism," Lee and Luccock, pp. 307-308.
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dressing educated audiences. He left descendants who became promi- nent in education and polities in the state.
"The first completed Methodist Church in Georgia was in Wilkes County, near Washington, and was known as Grant's meeting house. Here in 1789, the second conference met, Asbury again presiding. Thomas Grant was a Virginian of Scotch descent, whose people had be- longed to the Presbyterian Church. The family migrated to North Carolina, and thence, in 1784, removed to Wilkes County in Georgia. During a long and useful life, this liberal-minded and pious man was a pillar of the church in Georgia, and the warm friend and benefactor of every traveling preacher.
"At this conference Hope Hull was appointed to Savannah town, where, nearly sixty years before, the Wesleys had labored, none too successfully. The tradition of the 'meddling Methodists' unfortu- nately lingered about the place, and he met with a hostile reception. The Calvinists, represented by able men in the Presbyterian and Baptist churches, were strongly intrenehed in the town, and Hull found that he could not obtain a footing. It was not, indeed, until the year 1811 that the town of Savannah could boast of a Methodist society or meeting house. Methodism entered Georgia from the interior, and depended for its support on families like that of the Grants, who had moved south- ward from Virginia or the Carolinas. The work in Georgia pretty much resembled that in Kentucky and elsewhere along the Indian frontier. There were no bridges and no turnpikes; in many counties not a pane of glass was to be found in any of the houses; nor were there many saw mills to provide the material for frame houses. The men were hard- working pioneers, who, dressed in hunting-shirts, went barefoot or wore Indian moceasins; the women dressed in the homeliest of homespun gar- ments. Ignorant they were, but honest and simple-hearted, and ready to share their simple meals of lye hominy and venison with the travel- ing preachers. He received no salary, for money was a commodity that was hardly existent in these remote parts. Some of the preachers, indeed, had not as much as five dollars in cash to spend during a whole year. It was among the poorest of the Georgians that Methodism first planted itself, and the results were very modest for many years."
Kiokee Creek, a small tributary of the Savannah River, in the upper part of Columbia County, furnished the sacramental waters in which the earliest Georgia Baptists were immersed. On January 1, 1771, Daniel Marshall, an ordained Baptist minister, sixty-five years of age, moved from Horse Creek, South Carolina, and settled with his family on Kiokee Creek, about twenty miles north of Augusta. He had organized two churches in South Carolina, and while residing at Horse Creek he made frequent evangelistic tours into Georgia, preaching with wonderful fervor, chiefly in groves. Says a work of recognized authority : *
"We will gaze upon him as he conducts religious services. The scene is a sylvan grove, and Daniel Marshall is on his knees, engaged in prayer. While he beseeches the throne of grace, a hand is laid upon his shoulder and he hears a voice say :
* "History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia." Compiled by the Chris- tian Index,
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" 'You are my prisoner !'
"Rising to his feet, the earnest-minded man of God finds himself con- fronted by an officer of the law. He is astonished at being arrested under such circumstances, for preaching the gospel in the Parish of St. Paul; but he has violated the legislative enactment of 1758, which established religious worship in the colony according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England. He is made to give security for his appearance in Augusta on the following Monday, and is then allowed to continue the services. But to the surprise of every one present, the indignation which swells the bosom of Mr. Marshall finds vent through the lips of his wife, who has witnessed the whole scene. With the solemnity of the prophets of old, she denounces the law under which her husband has been appre- hended, and to sustain her position she quotes many passages from the Holy Scriptures, with a force which carries conviction.
"One of the most interested listeners to her exposition was the con- stable, Mr. Samuel Cartledge, who was so deeply convinced by the inspired words of exhortation which fell from her lips that his conver- sion was the result: and, in 1777, he was baptized by the very man whom he then held under arrest. After the interruption caused by the inci- dent above described, Mr. Marshall preached a sermon of great power, and before the meeting was over he baptized, in the neighboring creek, two converts, who proved to be relatives of the very man who stood secur- ity for his appearance at court. On the day appointed Mr. Marshall went to Augusta, and after standing a trial was ordered to desist; but he boldly replied in the language of the Apostles, spoken under similar circumstances :
" 'Whether it be right to obey God or man, judge ye.'
"It is interesting to note that the magistrate who tried him, Colonel Barnard, was also afterwards converted. Though never immersed, he was strongly tinctured with Baptist doctrines, and often exhorted sinners to flee from the wrath to come. He lived and died in the Church of Eng- land. Following this dramatic episode, Mr. Marshall does not seem to have met with further trouble; but the outbreak of the Revolution soon suspended religious activities.
"Daniel Marshall was born at Windsor, Conn., in 1706, of Presby- terian parents. He was a man of great natural ardor and holy zeal. For three years he buried himself in the wilderness and preached to the Mohawk Indians near the head waters of the Susquehanna River. War among the savage tribes led him to remove ultimately to Virginia, where he became a convert to Baptist views. He was immersed at the age of forty-eight, his wife submitting to the ordinance at the same time ; and then, after preaching for several years in the two Carolinas, he came to Georgia, settling on Kiokee Creek at the time above mentioned.
"Though neither learned nor eloquent, he possessed the rugged strength of mind which fitted him for pioneer work, and he knew the Scriptures. From his headquarters on Kiokee Creek he went forth preaching the Gospel with great power. By uniting those whom he had baptized in the neighborhood with other Baptists who lived on both sides of the Savannah River, he formed and organized Kiokee Baptist Church, in the spring of 1772; and this was the first Baptist Church ever consti- tuted within the limits of Georgia.
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"The Act incorporating the Kiokee Baptist Church was signed by Edward Telfair, Governor; Seaboard Jones, Speaker of the House, and Nathan Brownson, President of the Senate. It is dated December 23, 1789, seventeen years subsequent to the actual time of organization. The first meeting house was built where the town of Appling now stands. Daniel Marshall became the pastor. He served in this capacity until November 2, 1784, when he died in his seventy-eighth year. Abraham Marshall, his son, continued his work.
"When this pioneer minister moved into the State, he was the only ordained Baptist clergyman within its bonnds; but he lived to preside at the organization of the Georgia Association, in the fall of 1784, when there were half a dozen churches in the State, hundreds of converts, and quite a number of preachers. His grave lies a few rods south of Appling Court House, on the side of the road leading to Augusta. He sleeps neither forgotten nor unsung, for every child in the neighborhood can lead the stranger to Daniel Marshall's grave."
On December 23, 1789, the pioneer Baptist Church in Georgia was incorporated by an act of the Legislature under the name of "Anabap- tist Church on the Kioka," with the following trustees: Abraham Mar- shall, William Willingham, Edmond Cartledge, John Landers, James Simms, Joseph Ray and Lewis Gardner .*
Georgia during the colonial period, was an asylum exclusively for oppressed Protestants. Consequently, it was not until a full decade after the Revolution that even the smallest beginning was made in Georgia by the Church of Rome. The first house of worship to be erected by Catholics in Georgia arose in 1796 on the frontier belt of Wilkes County, not far from the site of the present Town of Washington. Our authority for this statement is the Right Rev. Benjamin J. Keiley, Bishop of the Catholic See of Savannah. Says he: t "The cradle of Catholicity in Georgia-so far as regards the first building for divine worship-was at Locust Grove, in what was then the county of Wilkes. Near the close of the eighteenth century a few Catholics came from Maryland and settled at Locust Grove. Their reason for leaving Mary- land was no credit to their neighbors. They were visited at irregular intervals by priests, but in 1799 a French priest, Rev. Mr. Sonze, came from San Domingo, and remained for some time. He erected the first chapel for Catholic service in Georgia. In 1821 Bishop England visited Locust Grove, at which time the old log church was taken down and a frame building erected. Father O'Donoghue was pastor until Decem- ber, 1822, when Rev. Patrick Sullivan was appointed by Bishop England. Excellent schools were established by these Catholic colonists, and our great commoner, Alexander H. Stephens, received there his early train- ing. Father Peter Whelan, the farmer-priest, as he was called, was pastor at Locust Grove for eighteen years. Locust Grove suffered from the stories of the wondrous fertility of the Mississippi Valley and most of the colonists left only to meet disaster, failure and death in what was then the Far West." In 1801 an act was passed by the Legislature incorporating the Catholic Church of Savannah. Its charter members
* "Marbury and Crawford's Digest, " p. 143.
t "Landmarks, Memorials and Legends, " Knight, II, pp. 1053-1054.
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were: Don Emanuel Rengil, Thomas Dollghan, Thomas Callaghan, John Shaw, Francis Roma, Bartholemew Coquillon and John Moquette Montalet. These were declared to be a body corporate, styled the Trus- tees of the Roman Catholic Church of the City of Savannah .*
* "Clayton's Compilation," p. 10.
CHAPTER XII
SOCIAL CONDITIONS AT THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY-GEOR- GIA'S EXPANSION BI-FOCAL-MOST OF THE STATE'S WEALTH AND CUL- TURE CENTERED IN THE COAST SETTLEMENTS-HOW THE RICH PLANTERS LIVED-LORDS OF THE LOWLANDS-SPLENDID ESTATES- EXTENSIVE LIBRARIES-HANDSOME CARRIAGES-LARGE BODIES OF RIVER BOTTOM AND SEA-ISLAND LANDS CULTIVATED BY SLAVES-UPPER GEORGIA-THE VIRGINIANS-THE NORTH CAROLINIANS-TOBACCO RAISING-SPORTS AND PASTIMES-LITTLE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE UP-COUNTRY AND THE COAST-RIVALRY BETWEEN THE TAR HEEL SETTLERS AND THE VIRGINIA COLONISTS GIVES RISE TO PARTY SPIRIT- BITTER POLITICAL FEUDS-THE GEORGIA CRACKER-HOW THE NAME ORIGINATED-GOVERNOR GILMER'S ACCOUNT OF UP-COUNTRY SETTLE- MENTS, ESPECIALLY OF THE NORTH CAROLINIANS AT LONG CANE- OLD WILLS EXAMINED, SHOWING CONDITIONS OF LIFE ON THE FRON- TIER-HOW JUSTICE WAS ADMINISTERED-LIFE IN BURKE-WAYNES- BORO, AN ARISTOCRATIC CENTER-LONGSTREET'S GEORGIA SCENES- JOHNSTON'S DUKESBORO TALES-POPULATION-EXPORTS-IMPORTS- THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT STATE-WITH THE ADVENT OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, A NEW PERIOD OPENS.
NOTES: OLD RUCKERSVILLE-THE MILITIA DRILL-THE OLD FIELD SCHOOL.
To understand social conditions in Georgia at the close of the eighteenth century, we must recognize two distinct centers of develop- ment, each of which, independent of the other, contributed its separate life-current and sent its individual pulse-beat throbbing into the Georgia wilderness-chiefly along the Indian trails. This bi-focal process of expansion was due to the fact that, opening to the ingress of settlers, there were two gateways by which immigrants could enter the state. One of these was at the ocean front, looking across a wide waste of waters to the Old World. The other, in what was then the far northeastern corner of the state, guarded the mountain trails which threaded the interlying valleys of the great Appalachians.
As we have already seen, the Georgia seaboard was settled in the main by immigrants who came from the north of Enrope. The original colonists sailed from England. Savannah, therefore, was an English settlement in the strictest sense of this term. Darien was settled by Scotch Highlanders. Frederica was a military stronghold. Ebenezer was settled by German Salzburgers. The Dorchester colonists at Mid- way came by this water ronte from South Carolina.
Most of Georgia's wealth and refinement at this time was concen-
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trated in these eoast settlements. Savannah was the principal seat of culture. Some of the confiscated estates of the old royalists were baronial in extent, embellished with handsome driveways, fountains and statues and enriched with all the charms of English country life, including a stately manor house, in which elegant portraits adorned the walls. On the rich sea-islands along the coast and on the rich alluvial bottoms of the mainland there were vast plantations, on which slaves were employed in large numbers. These wealthy coast aristocrats owned extensive libraries, wore costly fabries, planted on modern seientific principles, owned handsome family carriages in which they traveled in a sort of regal splendor, imported luxuries and dainties from abroad, and dispensed a hospitality whose counterpart was to be found only in the palaces of London. These lords of the Georgia lowlands educated their sons in Europe, stocked their wine-cellars with products of the rarest vintage, and gave even their humblest slaves a taste of life to which the greatest chief of the uplands was a total stranger. Malarial conditions on the coast, however, especially in the neighborhood of Sunbury, became such that in summer the planters were obliged to betake themselves to higher points further inland, and out of these retreats in after years grew large towns.
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