USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 11
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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
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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
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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.' Brantley, 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 Allday, 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
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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
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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.
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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
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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-
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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 1810, 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.
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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
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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
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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, £1; I horse, £3; I horse colt, £4; 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, £5; . I pot, IOS.
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
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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
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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-
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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 large 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
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