USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 16
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Some of the oldest Methodist churches in Georgia are still found in Elbert, and the first Methodist conference met at the forks of Broad river, then in Elbert now in Madison county.
The Baptists, the only other denomination of any size in Elbert, have had large success among its people, and the church has sent out not a few prominent preachers to other sections.
There are handsome churches of both of these denomi- nations in Elberton now, and quite a number of each scat- tered throughout the county.
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AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1789-1800.]
The Rev. John Andrew, father of Bishop Andrew, lived in this county. He was a soldier in the Revolution, and the first native Georgian who became a traveling Methodist preacher. He was a nephew of Benjamin Andrew, the staunch patriot of Liberty county and speaker of the As- sembly. Mr. Andrew was a country schoolmaster when he lived in Elbert.
Wm. Wyatt Bibb, who after having been a senator from Georgia was governor of Alabama, lived at Petersburg.
Charles Tait, also a senator, was from a leading family in this county.
Samuel Davis, the father of President Davis, came to this county, and removed from it to Kentucky. He was a soldier in the Revolution.
When Hart county was cut off from Elbert a large num- ber of the smaller landholders were taken from the old counties, leaving the bulk of the negroes in it.
The first court held in Elbert was held in 1791 at the house of Thomas Carter. George Walton was the presiding justice. This house was about six miles from Elberton, and like most of the larger houses of that day had a cellar. This cellar was used as a prison, and a man named Mc- Bride, charged with murder, was confined in it. He was convicted on Wednesday and hung on Friday.
The first grand jury was: Stephen Heard, Moses Haynes, Richard Easter, Isham Thompson, Wm. Aycock, William Hatcher, Richard Gatewood, Ed McGay, James Crow, An- gus Johnson, Archer Walker, Edward Ware, James Shep- herd, James Patten, John Davis, Cornelius Sale, Oliver White, Wm. Hodge.
At the present time there are few better counties in Georgia than Elbert. The magnificent forests which once crowned its hills have long since been destroyed, and even the forests of a second growth have been cut away, and
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men cultivate as new ground in cotton land their grand- fathers planted in tobacco.
There is in Elbert an inexhaustible supply of the finest monumental granite in America, and the most beautiful granite monuments in Georgia are prepared in Elberton.
The court-house is a very handsome and convenient building, the churches unusually elegant, and the residences and storehouses attractive and tasty.
There is a large cotton factory in the city, and other en- terprises of value.
The city is well supplied with water furnished by a bold spring in the city itself.
COLUMBIA.
In 1790 the upper and western parts of Richmond county were made into Columbia, and at a much later period Co- lumbia itself was divided and McDuffie was formed.
The eastern parts of the county along the Savannah river and the northern and western along Little river, and on the Kiokee and near Wrightsboro, were very fertile and were thickly settled before the Revolutionary war. The people distributed themselves into two main groups, one near Wrightsboro and the other on the Kiokee, near where Ap- pling now is. The settlers near Wrightsboro were many of them Quakers from North Carolina, but there were a con- siderable number of Virginians and Marylanders who set- tled in that neighborhood as early as 1770.
The list of settlers in St. Paul's parish, which is found in the Appendix, is very largely composed of those who settled in this county. There was a large body of settlers in these neighborhoods before the Revolutionary war. The lower part of the county and the southwestern part was a great pine forest, and for many years after the Revolution was not settled at all except by a few stock-raisers.
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AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1789-1800.]
The crowds of settlers who had located in this county before the Revolution had been kindly received and en- couraged by Governor Wright, and he was so great a favorite with them that they named their principal village Wrightsboro in his honor, and they had little sympathy with the agitators, whether in Boston or Savannah. Many had never seen a leaf of tea in all their lives, and cared little about taxation without representation, as they paid no taxes, and when the Liberty Boys began their revolution, at Governor Wright's request they almost to a man signed their protest against their course.
It is certain that most of these people at the beginning of the war were poor men, who had not as yet done more than build their cabins and open a few fields. They had but few slaves and were as a rule uneducated, but it was also true that there was among them some of more than ordinary culture and people of some property.
The Fews, the Candlers and the Lamars were among these first comers. The Fews came from Wales to Penn- sylvania, thence into Maryland and into North Carolina, from which State they removed to Georgia. Of this dis. tinguished family we have spoken elsewhere .*
The upper part of the county was wonderfully fertile, and along Little river and the various creeks which per- meated that portion of the county the newcomers made many settlements before the Revolution, and when the British took possession of Augusta this section was at once occupied by their troops, and as a large number of the people were patriots they were driven into exile. After the war ended they returned to their abandoned cabins and soon began to reestablish themselves. The population was very large and the settlers were very thrifty. The best class of Virginians and North Carolinians now came into the growing county. Columbia Court-house became a leading
* See Chapter III.
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town in the up-country and held its place for years. The land was given by headrights and two hundred-acre farms were opened all over the upper and eastern parts of the county. The towns of Wrightsboro and Brownsboro were the leading villages in the county.
It was not long after the Revolution before the tide of prosperity began to rise very high. Men with a number of slaves came from Virginia and settled plantations. Stock had unlimited pasturage, and the soil was remarkably fer- tile. Augusta was a near-by market and tobacco, the staple, found ready sale. By the beginning of the century there was much wealth in the county and an unusual amount of intelligence. It was thickly settled, and when the cotton- gin was invented and the cotton industry began to be an item, Columbia became famous for its rapid advance in prosperity until there were few sections of the State in which there was more wealth and intelligence. The settlers were nearly all from Virginia and were not adventurers, but men of family and means. The Cobbs, Meriwethers, & Hamiltons, Dawsons, Applings, Lamars, Fews, Candlers, Napiers, Crawfords, Carrs, Howards, and many others of that class settled in the county, and there was no part of the State in the early part of the century in which there was a more elegant society.
The coming of Daniel Marshall, the first Baptist preacher in upper Georgia, and the formation of the Kiokee church in 1771, we have already noted.
Before the beginning of the century Moses Waddell, a young Presbyterian minister from North Carolina, came into the county and opened a school at Mt. Carmel, where W. H. Crawford and Jno. C. Calhoun were his pupils. There were many separate landholders at that time and a large number of pupils could be secured.
The Methodists came into Columbia as early as they came into Georgia, and found some old Virginia friends
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1789-1800.]
awaiting their coming, and had prosperous churches in all sections of the county.
There was an academy at Appling in the early part of the century, and a female school of high grade was estab- lished there in the thirties and flourished for a few years, and the usual old-field schools were found in every section of the county.
We have already had a sketch of the distinguished family of Fews, who resided in this county. The grand- father of the famous Howell and Thomas R. R. Cobb died in this county, and his brother, Thomas Cobbs, was said to have been one hundred and ten years old when he died in this county, where he had lived for sixty years.
During the first years of the century Columbia Court- house, as Appling was then called, was a center of wealth, intelligence, and influence. Abraham Baldwin, a young New Englander, who had graduated at Yale College, served as chaplain in the Revolution, studied law, came to Georgia, was admitted to the Georgia bar in Savannah, and came at once to Augusta and then to Columbia Court-house, where he made his home until his death. Few men ever did more for an adopted State, and few men were ever honored more highly than this gifted and excellent man.
The famous Crawford family came to this county from Virginia before the Revolution, and some of its members were soon called to prominent places, and for over a hun- ered years this family have done the State good service. No county has furnished more families of distinguished Georgians than this old county.
The story told of all these older counties must be told of Columbia. The plantations and negroes drove out the whites; but the red lands and the rich river plantations passed into the hands of comparatively few people, and as the tide of settlement rolled westward Columbia de- clined in population as far as white people were concerned,
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but the poorer sections of the county along the Georgia railroad were gradually occupied, first by mill-men who made lumber, and then as places of healthy residences for Augusta people, and Harlem, twenty miles from Augusta, became a thriving village, and still is.
With liberal fertilizing the pine lands have been made productive. The division of the county and the making of McDuffie has reduced it greatly in size and importance, but it is now improving in every way. -
SCREVEN.
Screven was laid out in 1793, and called Screven after the gallant general of that name. The county has some very fertile and much very poor land in its borders. On the creeks the land was famous for its fertility, but being what is known as rotten limestone, it was very unhealthy. The pine woods were healthy but very sterile. The popu- lation was scant and scattered, and schools were few and churches fewer for many years.
White gives as early settlers in the county: Lewis Lanier, Henry White, Wm. Young, Rowland Roberts, Cap- tain Everett, Paul Black, W. Black, F. Womack, William Blackman, Richard Scruggs, R. Herrington, S. Pearce, N. Williamson, J. H. Rutherford, Jas. Boyd, Jno. Bonnell, H. Bryan, W. Rushing, Benj. Greene, Wm. Shepherd, R. Warren, J. Tanner, Jno. Fletchell, John Nevil, A. Bonnell, B. Lanier, M. Coleton, Wm. Pearce, D. Blackburn, John Jeffers, Wm. Rawls, M. Green.
It is evident from these names that the settlers, like those of Burke, came principally from Virginia and North Caro-X lina. Some of them were people of some wealth, and a few of the settlers on the richer lands were people of culture.
Seaborn Jones, at one time speaker of the House and
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AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1789-1800.]
long a distinguished lawyer in Augusta, spent his last years here on a large estate known as Mill Haven.
The larger part of the people lived at the first settle- ment in the pine woods, and were very poor and dissolute.
Jacksonborough, the first county site, was so famous for its rough -and-tumble fights that it was said that the chil- dren went about the village after a court day with a saucer to gather up the eyes which had been gouged out .*
Much of the county was looked upon as worthless, ex- cept as ranges for cattle. The timber near the river could be floated to Savannah, and that which was near the rail- road could be made into lumber; but much of the county was not accessible and was unopened.
The building of a branch road has connected the distant parts of the county with the Central, improved methods of culture have made the pine lands profitable for farming purposes, and while the country, which at first was most famous for its fertility and in which there were large plan- tations and many slaves, is less prosperous, the county as a whole has grown very steadily and is now in better condi- tion than at any previous day. Churches and schools are now found in all parts of the county.
In glancing at Burke and Effingham, from which Screven is taken, we have already largely described this county.
OGLETHORPE.
Oglethorpe county was laid off from Wilkes in 1793. In giving an account of Wilkes I have already glanced at this county, and many of those who are mentioned as citi- zens of Wilkes in the early days resided on that side of Broad river which was afterward included in Oglethorpe. Governor Mathews, Governor Gilmer's father and uncle, Frank Meriwether, Micajah McGhee, John Thomas, the Stuarts, the Floyds, the Howards, the Popes, and the Hills
* White.
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were among the early people who came to this section. A new county was a necessity. It was organized in 1793, and the first court was held three miles from Lexington in I794.
Oglethorpe has much the same history as the other mid- dle Georgia counties. It was settled at first by men of moderate means; the farms were small, the people thrifty. They prospered and soon acquired negro property; then, tempted by the new lands of the new counties, the small farmers sold out their farms, which were absorbed by the large plantations, and these in turn wore out their lands and went to richer fields. Those who remained in Ogle- thorpe found themselves in the same condition as the Wilkes, Greene and Burke planters. They had many ne- groes, much worn land, and but little besides.
There was, however, much good land in the county, and there was a very fine class of industrious people. The old county has rallied to a considerable degree and is perhaps now in better condition than it has been for fifty years. The town of Lexington was at one time a very famous trade center, but its trade has long since been transferred to Athens; but it is a solid town, and perhaps one of the best representatives of the old Virginia county towns left in the State. It has a famous academy, which was the first academy endowed by private bequest in the State. It is a delightful Georgia town of the olden time. Crawford, Winterville and Maxeys are villages on the line of railway to Union Point.
The first grand jury of Oglethorpe was: John Lumpkin, Robert McCord, John Marks, Joel Hurt, Andrew Bell, Jesse Clay, Charles Hay, John Collier, Richard Goolsby, Isaac Collier, John Garrett, John Shields, Robert Beaver, P. Thornton, Jeffrey Early, H. Edmondson, Wm. Pattie, Jas. Northington.
In 1810 there were 6,862 whites and 5,435 slaves in the
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AND THE' GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1789 1800.]
county; in 1830 there were 5,670 free and 7,940 slaves, and twenty years afterward there were 4,385 free and 7,874 slaves; in 1890 the entire population was 16,951.
The Baptists came into Oglethorpe in its earliest years, as did the Presbyterians and the Methodists, and the first camp-meeting held in Georgia was held in Oglethorpe county in 1802. It was a union meeting, in which all de- nominations were represented.
Bishop Asbury, the Methodist bishop, visited this county before the beginning of the century, and after that was often in it. He says in one of his journeys "that as Ben- jamin Blanton, one of his preachers, was ill, he gave him his place in his carriage, and rode his stiff-jointed horse, that he would only ride to save souls or the health of a brother."
Chancellor Mell, who was a Baptist preacher, during the forty years of his connection with the University was the pastor of a Baptist church in the lower part of Oglethorpe county, and such was the universal favor with which he was regarded that that section was known as "Mell's King- dom."
The Rev. John Newton, one of the first Presbyterian preachers in. Georgia, was the pastor of the church at Beth- salem, near Lexington, in 1788; and on Broad river in 1809, under James Russell, there was a great revival among the Methodists, which brought into the church a large part of that remarkable community. Churches dotted the whole county, and during the days of slavery the Methodists had a missionary for many years, whose work it was to preach to the negroes. Among the Methodist churches is one known now and for a long time past as Cherokee Corner, so called because it was at that very spot that the dividing point between the Creeks and Cherokees was located, and up to a few years past the tree the surveyors marked a hun- dred years before was living.
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Oglethorpe has been long noted for its culture and re- finement and for the number of its distinguished men. W. H. Crawford lived at a place called Woodlawn, now Craw- ford, a few miles from Lexington, and is buried there. He was born in Virginia, and during the stirring days of the Revolution, while he was a lad, his father removed from Amherst county, Va., to Edgefield, S. C., and in 1783 he removed to Columbia county, Ga., which at that time was Richmond. The elder Crawford died before his son was grown and the cares of the family fell on the youth. He taught school for awhile, then attended Hope Hull's school in Wilkes, and then Dr. Waddell's. He was an assistant teacher in the Augusta Academy while Charles Tait was rector. He studied law and settled in Lex-
ington in 1799. He was very handsome, very genial and eloquent, and became very popular with the up-country people, who were largely Virginians. He was sent by them to the Legislature soon after he settled in Lexington, and in 1806, when only thirty-four years old, he was elected United States senator. At the end of the term he was elected again. He soon evinced his great ability as a statesman, and after declining a place in Mr. Monroe's cabinet he was sent as minister to Paris. He returned to America and was secretary of war, and soon after sec- retary of the treasury. He was a favorite candidate for president in 1824, and the prospects of his election were very bright, when he was stricken with apoplexy. The stroke was not fatal, but his constitution was shattered and his intellect somewhat impaired. He was defeated, and appointed in Georgia to a judgeship. While on the bench, ten years after he received the first stroke, he died. Mr. Crawford was the leader of a party known as the Crawford party, and John Clarke, of whom we speak elsewhere, was his great political antagonist. The war between the two men was bitter and unrelenting until Mr. Crawford's death.
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1789-1800.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
He was a man of brilliant mind, a bitter hater, a fearless fighter. He antagonized Mr. Clay, Mr. Adams and Mr. Calhoun. They differed in everything with each other but agreed in their dislike to him, but he was always the victor over them all.
Governor George R. Gilmer was born in this county and died in it. His father came with the Broad river settlers, and before Oglethorpe county was made in 1790 George Rockingham Gil- mer was born.
The father was a man of sterling character and of moderate fortune. He gave his son the best ad- vantages the country af- forded, and sent him to Dr. Waddell's famous school in South Carolina. The governor taught' school for a few years in his youth, entered the army, and was five years an officer. He then studied GEORGE R. GILMER. law and settled in Lexing- ton, and entered public life as a member of the Legislature; then he was two years in Congress. In 1828 he was elected governor, and in 1836 was elected again. He then retired from public life and spent the rest of his days in Lexing- ton. He wrote in his old age a gossipy book on early Georgians, in which, with delightful egotism, he tells of himself and of the men and of the times he had known.
Another of the men of distinction who was reared in Oglethorpe was Joseph Henry Lumpkin, long chief justice. He was a man of great beauty of character, whose dignity
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and suavity of manner was connected with the finest at- tainments as a lawyer and the highest capacity as a great jurist. He was an humble Christian, a great temperance advocate, and an incorruptible judge, at once the pride of his whole State as well as of the county which gave him birth.
No county in Georgia has had a more distinguished class of inhabitants than Ogle- thorpe, and no county has sent to other sections of the South a finer class of people.
JOSEPH HENRY LUMPKIN.
Edmond McGhee, who was so noted as a princely planter in Mississippi, and a generous friend of re- ligion and education, who built a handsome church in New Orleans and large- ly aided both a male and female college in Louisi- ana and Mississippi, spent his youth in Oglethorpe.
The Gilmers, Meriweth- ers, Mathews, Marks and Jordans all went from this county.
HANCOCK.
Greene was laid out in 1786, but in seven years its popu- lation had grown so rapidly that a new county was carved out of its southern extremity, and from Greene and Wash- ington one was made, known as Hancock, in honor of John Hancock. It was a large county and embraced all varieties of soil. There were the rich red hills, the fertile valleys along the rivers and creeks, heavily timbered with oaks and.
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AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1789-1800.]
hickories, and the wide stretches of gray post-oak land and pine-barrens.
The Oconee river with its limpid waters formed its west- ern boundary, and the Ogeechee was on the east. A num- ber of large creeks and sparkling brooks dashed through its forests, and although the Indians were just over the Oconee river and were then hostile, the tide of settlement could not be stayed.
The first settlers of Hancock, according to White, were: General H. Mitchell, Bollin Hall, Charles Abercrombie, General Adams, Henry Graybill, Joseph Bryan, William Rees, Jonathan Adams, John Montgomery, Jacob Dennis, Archibald Smith, T. Holt, T. Raines, J. Bishop, Isham Rees, M. Martin, R. Clarke, R. Shipp, F. Tucker, I .. Barnes, W. Wyley, William Saunders, James Thomas, Jephtha Pope, Jonas Shivers, William Hardwick, L. Tatum, R. Moreland.
One who examines this list and the one which follows will find that some of the first settlers of Hancock came from Jefferson, Burke and Columbia, while the bulk of them can be easily traced to the tide-water counties of Virginia and to North Carolina.
In a list of accounts filed by the executor of the estate in Sparta of David Clements in 1801 there were these . names:
John Lewis, James Lucas, Jonathan Davis, Joseph Bon- ner, Simon Holt, John Dowdell, Alex Bellamy, Lindsay Thornton, Isaac Evans, John Shackelford, Robert Tucker, John Hall, William Harper, Thomas Winn, John Trippe, Dr. R. Lee, James Lamar, Thomas Lamar, Peterson Thweat, Captain Samuel Hall, Duncan McLean, R. Respass, Wm. Lawson, Job Taylor, Dudley Hargrove, Dr. John Pollard, Robert Montgomery, Seth Parham, Homer Holt, Jas. Huff, Philip Turner, Dixon Hall, Peter Flournoy, William Hard- wick, Thomas Byrd, Frances Lawson, Thos. Glenn, Gabe Lewis, David Lewis, Jos. Lewis, Arch Lewis, Little Reese,
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John Freeman, William Lewis, Isaac Dennis, John Dudley, Thomas Jones, William Kelly, Isaac Dunegan, John Dyer, William Johnson, Malachi Brantley, Francis Lewis, Bollin Hall, George Lewis, George Weatherby, John Perkins, Jas. Parnell, Thomas Broadnax, John Cain, Jos. Middlebrooks, H. Jones, R. Tredewell, Woodruff Scott, John Sasnett, Jas. Bonner, Isham West, Thos. Carney, Isaac Wilson, John Brewer, Thomas Carter, Drury Thweat, Jas. Arthur, Daniel Melson, S. Parham, Harris Brantley, William Hatcher, C. Leonard, W. Collier, C. R. Bonner, S. Kirk, Isham Loyd, Andrew Jeter, Isham Askew, James Childs, Joel Reese, Thomas Pentecost, James Hamilton, William Powell, Ben Harper, Robert Simmons, E. Bomar.
There was evidently a much larger white population in the rural parts of Hancock in 1800 than there is now in 1900. There were only thirteen hundred slaves in Greene, of which Hancock was a part, in 1790.
Tobacco had been the staple in Hancock and Greene to 1800, but with the coming in of cotton culture it ceased to be cultivated. Hancock became rapidly peopled after 1800 with the wealthy people of Virginia and North Caro- lina. The delightful "Dukesboro Tales" of Richard Malcolm Johnston have their location in this county, in the village of Powellton, and the pictures which he gives are portrayals of real people.
The first settlements of Hancock were in the northern and eastern sections of the county on Shoulderbone creek and the Ogeechee river. The hills were heavily timbered, and when cleared were very productive. The county was exposed to the Indians, but it was soon settled.
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