USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 12
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Georgia and spy 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 directly 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:
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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, The 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 Washing- 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 Washington by Madame Dugas, and it had for a long time an important male school. In has now a graded school which has a very
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handsome house well equipped. The attractive homes and. beautiful oaks and elms make Washington one of the most 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-office 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- tions 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
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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 were 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.
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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.
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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
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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 difficulties 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
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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 specimen 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
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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
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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 any 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 McIntoshes 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 and
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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, Glenn (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 of 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. 257. 258.
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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
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shipped from this port to North American and European cities.
There have been in Glynn 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.
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Lands were given away to actual settlers. They were productive, 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.
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