USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 17
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There were two classes of settlers before the century be- gan-the slave-owner who had a few negroes, a plantation of perhaps four hundred acres, great herds of cattle, flocks of sheep and droves of hogs, and the sturdy yeoman who
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had little besides his hands and his preempted land of two hundred acres.
At first there was little difference in social features, but as years sped on the division between the classes became marked, and, as in all middle Georgia, the plantation ab- sorbed the farm and the planter took the place of the farmer.
Hancock offered special attractions to the North Caro- lina and Virginia slave-owners, and they moved into it rap- idly after the opening of the cotton industry in the begin- ning of the century.
Schools became a necessity, and in the thickly settled parts of the county school villages sprang up. Mt. Zion became a center for the Presbyterians, where Mr. Carlisle P. Beman had a famous classical school, and Powellton, where Jesse Mercer had his home and near where Rev. Malcolm Johnston and Governor Rabun lived, was a famous Baptist village with an academy ..
Sparta was without a schoolhouse or a church at the beginning of the century, but there was preaching in the court-house, and in 1802 David Clements left a bequest to build a church and gave a lot of ground on which an acad- emy was to be built. This academy was probably where the graded school building is now located.
The Baptists and Presbyterians came with the first set- tlers, and the Methodists were not far behind them. There were no church buildings in the county for some years. Services were held in private houses. In 1802 there was a camp-meeting on Shoulderbone creek, where there were on Sunday over five thousand people assembled .*
As Hancock was on the frontier it was much exposed to Indian forays. It met them so bravely the county site was called Sparta. Sparta was soon a village of importance.
* Dow's Journal. 14
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It did a large trade for many years and became an educa- tional center. It had its regular chartered academy, and before there was a female college in Georgia Mrs. Warne had a female academy of high grade in Sparta. The Methodist church in Sparta was erected in 1805. There had been services at the home of John Lucas for several years before that, and a conference was held in the village in 1806, and seventy years afterward the Georgia Con- ference met near the spot where it had held its session seventy years before. Sparta was for a long time a thrifty country town, but with the building of the railroads on. each side its commercial importance declined. The weal- thy planters in the county had their homes in the vil- lage, and, with the lawyers and doctors and country mer- chants, made a good society of cultured people. As in all these middle Georgia towns, the change of things after the war made a great change in the village. The railroad was completed, the trade in fertilizers was immense and. Sparta began to advance, and it has become now a hand- some country town, with an elegant court-house, a fine public school building and many charming homes.
The religious history of Hancock is full of interest, but we can only glance at it here. Governor Rabun was a Bap- tist deacon and lived at Powellton. Jesse Mercer had his home in that village, and there the Georgia Baptist Con- vention was organized. The Presbyterians had a settle- ment at Mt. Zion and a congregation at Smyrna, and the Rev. Mr. Gildersleeve published at Mt. Zion the Missionary, which was the first periodical of that kind in the South.
Many of the families we have found in Hancock went into Putnam, Baldwin, Jasper and Montgomery, across the Ocmulgee and the Flint into the western counties and to Alabama.
Colonel Chappel, who was born in Hancock and lived in Putnam and Monroe, has given a picture of this county
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and its first settlers, which is not too highly colored to be true, and upon which I have freely drawn. No county ever was settled by a worthier people, and for enterprise and skill no county ever had planters who surpassed many of those in Hancock. They were men of great moral worth and simplicity of life, and are too many to be men- tioned. They formed communities where there was every- thing to elevate and refine. Bishop George F. Pierce, when a young man, fixed his home in Hancock and called it Sun- shine, and here, beloved and honored, he spent all the time he could spare from his exacting labors.
Hancock is still a large county and has the villages of Devereux, Culverton and Jewells in its borders.
Hancock has fine quarries of granite, which have been utilized only in late years, and no county in the State is so rich in " jaspers " of the most beautiful kinds.
This county has been rendered famous by being the first county in which new modes of culture for corn and cot- ton were applied to the pine woods.
Mr. David Dickson bought a large body that was called Pine-barren and began the liberal use of commercial fertil- izers upon it, and began to farm on a new and untried plan. He succeeded and his system of farming excited great attention, and his modes of cultivation were recog- nized as wise and were adopted in many sections of the country, and that portion of the county which had been regarded as the poorest became one of the best.
The distinguished men of Hancock could hardly be numbered. The Abercrombies, so famous in the early his- tory of Georgia and Alabama, resided here. The Lewises came to this county in its first settlement, and have been distinguished men in a number of different walks of life. Governor Rabun was a resident of this county. Colonel James Thomas and Hon. Eli Baxter were prominent law- yers and politicians in Sparta.
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Judge Linton Stephens, judge of the supreme court, col- onel in the Confederate army and member of the Confed- erate Congress, lived and died in Sparta.
Dr. W. J. Sassnett, distinguished as a preacher and a philosopher, was born in this county and died in it.
Dr. Lovick Pierce, so famous as a Methodist preacher throughout the South, died at his son's home in Sparta.
BULLOCH.
Bulloch was laid out from Screven and Bryan in 1796, and named in honor of the excellent Archibald Bulloch, gov- ernor of Georgia. The Ogeechee river is on one side of it and the Canoochee on the other. There was some good oak and hickory land on the rivers, but much of the county was piny woods, presenting the usual features of such a section. It had been settled by stockmen, and White gives as the first settlers:
Benjamin Cook, Barnard Michael, John Everett, Jehu Everett, Andrew E. Wells, George Threadcraft, Chas. Mc- Call, Alex Stewart, M. Buckhalter, A. Mckenzie, Daniel Lot, Arthur Lot, Wm. Mizell, L. Lanier, C. Lanier, D. Hendrix, N. Sweat, Mr. Oliff, Mr. Shorter, the Groovers and Hodges.
There is very little save in the matter of personal detail to distinguish one piny woods county from another. The physical features are the same, the pursuits of the people are the same, and their features of character are almost exactly alike.
Bulloch was for many years a county where men owned large areas of land, which was valued at not more than twenty-five cents an acre. On this land the cabin was built, and in the wide wire-grass pastures the cattle fed. Every man was a landholder and every man was inde- pendent.
There were so few people that schools and churches were
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rare, and the children had very limited opportunities for school training.
The larger body of the people of any religious faith were $ 4. 30 Baptists, and when the division of that denomination took place they were mostly found among the Primitives, but the Methodists had a footing in the county from it first settlement.
Life in these pine woods in the early days when the people found it difficult to go to the markets was very simple. The farmer raised for family use upland rice, corn, pota- toes, cattle and hogs. He had his own syrup kettle and sugar-mill. His sheep furnished him with wool. His house was of logs, built by his own hands, and, while plain, was sufficiently comfortable for his wishes. He raised some sea-island cotton and carried a few bales to Savannah, where, with the produce of his hides, tallow and beeswax, he secured enough money to buy some salt, calico, cotton and woolen cards and nails, and these were about the ex- tent of his purchases.
There were in all this section, however, a few families of large wealth who had plantations on the richer lands and lived in decided comfort, but for many years after the county was settled life was very primitive. With the build- ing of the railroads, the opening of the turpentine farms and the setting up of the sawmills, the same results fol- lowed of which we have spoken elsewhere, and now Bul- loch is one of the best of our inland counties.
MCINTOSH.
McIntosh was cut off from Liberty, and in our account of the Scotch settlement about Darien we have given the early history of this county. Away from the coast the land presented identically the same features as Bulloch and the pine woods of Liberty. It was thinly settled by plain stock-raisers, who lived hard and had no social or educa-
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tional advantages. These people were many of them the descendants of those Scotch people who first fixed their homes near Darien.
Near the coast, however, there were a number of rice plantations, which were owned by planters who had large estates and elegant homes .. There was found here, as along all the coast where these planters had their homes, much intelligence, enterprise and hospitality, but nothing to dif- ferentiate them from those we have already pictured.
Darien, however, being at the mouth of the Altamaha, was until the railways were built a most important shipping point. The cotton boats from the up-country brought great loads of cotton to this port for shipment to Europe and the North, and Darien was for years a great lumber market. The timber ranger of the up-country rafted his timber to this little city and found a market for it.
It had a small but cultured and wealthy citizenship, and was pleasant and attractive, though somewhat isolated. Like St. Marys, it has had its mutations and has been largely discounted by the decay of its river trade, but it is still a vigorous little city. Outside of Darien McIntosh has but a small body of white inhabitants.
BRYAN.
Bryan, which was named in honor of Joseph Bryan, was cut off from Effingham and Liberty. In the neck between the rivers there was fine rice land and a few planters had plantations in it, but the area of fertile land was very lim- ited, and the main body of the county was flat and sterile pine woods.
In 1850 there were no schools in the county except a few supported by the poor school fund. In common with all that section of the State great changes were brought about by the war, and Bryan has shared in the prosperity the new era has brought in.
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WARREN.
The counties of Richmond and Columbia and Wilkes to- gether embraced all the land west of Augusta to the Ogee- chee. Much of the land in the northern and western part of this county was very fertile. It was thickly settled with people from Virginia, and it was decided in 1793 to lay off a county to embrace the western section of these counties and name it in honor of Dr. Warren, the hero of Bunker Hill.
The county embraced in its limits all of what is now Warren, a part of what is now Jefferson, and a part of Talia- ferro and Glascock.
There was much fine land in the upper part of the county along the Ogeechee, and there was a large colony of Virginians who moved in a body to this new country. Among them were some families of wealth and influence.
The rich valley of the Ogeechee, which was afterward in Jefferson county, was now included in Warren. John Cobbs, the ancestor of General Howell and Thomas R. R. Cobb, who was a delegate to the convention of 1795 from Warren county, lived on a large estate on the Ogeechee, and his son, John Addison Cobb, was a captain of the militia in 1797 in this county.
The first settlers in Warren, as given by White, were:
Sol. Newsome, David Neal, Wm. Johnson, Job Hunter, Cullen Battle, Robt. Abercrombie, H. Peoples, Wm. Hill, A Denton, W. Carson, S. Burnley, B. Upton, S. Perryman, E. Conner, A Brinkley, W. Jenkins, A. Jones, M. English, C. Lowe, Jr., D. A. Simeon, T. Maddux, E. Ivy, J. Burk- halter, E. Wilson, T. Persons, T. Lockett, S. Bell, J. Shivers, P. Newsome, John Newsome.
Many of these were doubtless in Jefferson, Washington, Richmond and Columbia before Warren was laid out.
In 1797 a roll of officers of the militia battalion shows the following:
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John Lawson, major; David Neal, Addison Cobb, James Wilson, Chapman Abercrombie, captains; Wm. Landrum, Benj. Mitchell, Jno. Burnes, A. Jones, lieutenants; D. Hutchinson, C. M. Lawson, Moor Carter, ensigns. The second battalion had Major Slatter; captains : Bunkley, Jones, Smith, Hill, Flewellen; ensigns: Carter, Brantley, White, Clower, Cox: lieutenants: M. Womack, Mountain Hill, Burrell Posey, Gibson Flournoy.
The above are nearly all Virginia names, and some of them are found in an after time in Jefferson, which included, when it was laid off, a small part of what had been Warren county.
Before the beginning of the century an iron furnace, among the first established in Georgia, was set up in War- ren. It was known as Cowle's Iron Works. Some years afterwards Colonel Wm. Bird, a prominent and wealthy immigrant from Virginia, had another furnace on the shoals of the Ogeechee.
Warrenton was the county site, and was laid off soon after the county was laid out. It became quite a center of trade, and at one time its wholesale trade was quite ex- tensive.
The academy in Warrenton was incorporated in 1812, and Samuel Lowther, Peyton Baker, A. Moncrief, Edward Donahoo, Rufus Broom, Archelaus Flewellen, Turner Persons, George W. Hardwick and Dennis L. Ryan were trustees.
The Methodists came to Warren before it was laid off as a separate county, and had preaching-places in all the thickly settled parts of the county. Some of the leading people in the county were Methodists; among them Judge Stith and his wife and the daughters of John Cobbs, who had married Robert Flournoy and Chesley Bostick. The Methodists had quite a following, and Bishop Asbury men- tions a great quarterly meeting at Heath's, where one love-
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feast lasted from nine o'clock in the morning to three in the afternoon.
While there were thick settlements and considerable wealth in the oak-woods, there was a section afterward in- cluded in Glascock which was almost uninhabited for many years.
There was much diversity in the character of the people, and side by side with the wealthy and with people of some education there was much illiteracy, and, as the court record shows, in the early years of the county a great amount of lawlessness.
As a very considerable part of the county was not peo- pled by large slaveholders and was not the best suited for cotton-growing, there was less of the absorption of small farms than in some of the adjoining counties; but for years there was constant increase in the relative proportion of negroes to whites. In 1810 there were 5,677 free and 3,048 slaves. In 1830, 6,523 free and 4,193 slaves, and in 1850, 6,317 free and 6,108 slaves. The separation of the territory now into Glascock increased this proportion, since Glascock was largely peopled by whites.
JEFFERSON.
Jefferson county was organized in 1796 and named for Thomas Jefferson. There was no part of Georgia which had been peopled longer by white people, as we have seen, than a part of Jefferson. Here the Indian trader had his station before Oglethorpe came, and drew around him Scotch-Irishmen, and all along the banks of Briar creek, Rocky creek, Lambert's creek and the Ogeechee river many thrifty people had their homes before the Revolution.
According to Mr. White the early settlers were: Wm. Hardwick, Jno. Fulton, the Clemmons, Pattersons, Roger and Hugh Lawson, Wm. Gamble, Captain Haden, Captain Connelly, Andrew Berryhill, the Shellmans, John Berrien,
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the Hamptons, and the Whiteheads. Mr. White has nat- urally concluded because some of these came from the north of Ireland that all did. It is certain that William Hardwick and John Whitehead were Virginians in their ancestry, and I find a large number of persons receiving land grants before 1800 who evidently came from Virginia, but not a few from north Ireland. They were:
Hugh Alexander, James Harvey, Z. Albritton, Charles Harvey, Thomas Atkinson, Garland Hardwick, Dave Alex- ander, Jos. Hampton, Henry G. Caldwell, Esq., D. Han- cock, Isaac Coleman, Wm. Hannah, Isaac DuBose, W. P. Hardwick, Marth Dorton, G. W. Hardwick, David Douglas, John Ingram, John Evers, George Ingram, John Evans, Wm. Kennedy, R. Fleming, John Land, R. Flournoy, Wm. Lowry, John Finley, Samuel Little, John Green, James. Meriwether, R. Gray, John Martin, John Gamble, John Mock, Sherrod Hartley, B. McCutlers, John Maynard, Wm. Peel, Jesse Paulett, Love Sanford, Robert Prior, Henry Tucker, Jesse Purvis, Andrew Thompson, John Reese, Ben- jamin Warren, Jesse Slatter, John Warnocke, M. Shelman.
All these received grants of land in the county, and there were many whose names are to be found in the Appendix who received grants before the county was formed from St. George's parish or Burke county.
Along the banks of the Ogeechee and on the numerous creeks in the county were large areas of the best oak and hickory land, and away from them were wide areas of pine forests.
Like all the first settlements in Georgia, the first indus- try of the people was stock-raising, and there was but little else raised for some years. Then some tobacco was planted for market, and there was a tobacco warehouse where the product might be inspected, located on the Ogeechee, in the early part of the century, but after cotton-gins were set up in the county every energy was turned in the direction
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of cotton-planting. Men made large fortunes raising cot- ton, and with the usual result-the small farms gave way to the large plantations.
The best lands were very hilly and friable, and as in Wilkes and Greene, the hills soon washed badly and be- came very much impoverished. In the pine woods, as in Burke, the story was different.
Queensboro * was established during the time of Galphin, and Louisville, which was named in honor of Louis XVI., was selected in accordance with the statute of 1786 by Hugh Lawson, Wm. Few and N. Brownson, commis- sioners, and laid out in the first of 1796 near Queens- boro. An academy was one of the first buildings erected, and it was endowed by the State with £1,000 of confiscated property and the proceeds of the sales of the town lots. The town commissioners of the new city were Rev. David Bothwell, John Shelman, James Meriwether and John Cobbs. Forty acres of land were laid out into lots and they were sold at auction.
Perhaps the most stirring event in its early history was the burning of the Yazoo act spoken of elsewhere.
The capitol was removed from Louisville after it had been there for only seven years, and the modest building which served for a State-house was sold to the county for county purposes, and many of the people of Louisville fol- lowed the capitol to Milledgeville.
A State university had been projected, which was to be located in Louisville, but it was never established. The spot chosen by the commissioners at the capital city proved to be unhealthy. The hope that Louisville would be an important city was given up, and it declined, until in 1850
* It has been claimed that this little hamlet was settled long before Ogle- thorpe came, and was named in honor of Queen Anne, but I can find no trace of it before 1760, and I am confident it was not settled until that time. Gal- phin's old town antedated it.
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there were only two hundred and fifty people in the deserted village. The Central railway was ten miles off. The health of the village was not good. There was no trade, and there was but little hope of any change for the better.
The population of the county in 1810 was 3,775 free and 2,336 slaves; in 1830, 3,062 free and 3,647 slaves, and in 1850, 3,717 free and 5,637 slaves.
The owners of these large plantations in many cases lived in Augusta, Savannah and Macon, and only visited their estates occasionally.
Churches were few and congregations small, but with changes which came with the war a new order of things came in. Sprightly towns sprang up on the railway, and a branch road was made from the Central railway to Louis- ville. The pine-barrens were filled with a thrifty and well- to-do people. Louisville began to improve and took its place with the progressive towns. Handsome churches were built, a graded school of high order was established, and now there are few villages anywhere more attractive than Louisville, and the county is more prosperous than it has been in fifty years.
The boring of artesian wells in various parts of the county has provided a bountiful supply of the purest water, and the health of the county is remarkably good.
Few counties have sent forth a larger number of good citizens than this old county. Their descendants are found in all the lower and western counties of the State and in all the southwestern States.
The Scotch-Irish Presbyterians had congregations in the county before the Revolution, but churches were not erected. The Rev. Mr. Ronaldson was the pastor, but he was a Royalist and was taken captive, and being released he left Georgia and never returned. After the war ended the Presbyterians sent to Ireland and secured a pastor, the Rev. David Bothwell, and the churches were revived.
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The Methodists came after the Revolution, as did the Baptists. The first church in Louisville was built by the father of Roger L. Gamble, and was on the lot where the public school now stands. It was afterward surrendered to the Methodists, but on their securing a lot of their own the old church, much dilapidated, was torn away.
There are now excellent churches in every part of the county and good schools have been established.
At the junction of the railway from Louisville a very sprightly town known as Wadley has sprung up. It has handsome churches, an elegant school building and school, neat residences, and good, solid store buildings, and does a large trade. Bartow, a considerable village, is only a few miles away.
On the railway from Augusta to Tennille there are sev- eral villages of some size.
Jefferson has been more famous for its large planters than for its public men, but it has produced not a few men of distinction. Hugh Lawson, whose father came into Georgia from North Carolina before the Revolution, was a captain in the Revolution, one of the commissioners for the sale of confiscated property and for selecting the place for a State-house, and one of the trustees of the university. He was brought up in this county.
Judge Roger Lawson Gamble, who was a member of Congress, long lived in Louisville.
Chesley Bostwick and Littleberry Bostwick, both officers in the Revolution, lived in this county.
The Cobbs, Lamars, Rootes and Flournoys lived here, and at one time no county had so many distinguished people.
JACKSON.
Jackson was laid off from Franklin in 1796, and included in its bounds what is now Jackson, Clarke, part of Hall, and a part of Gwinnett county.
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It had, as did most of the up-country counties, three varieties of land. The rich red land, on which grew a heavy growth of oak and hickory wood, was very broken, and when cleared was soon washed away. The fertile bot- toms along the creeks and rivers and the gray post-oak lands were level and easily cultivated. The land in Jack- son, except a small part of it, was not regarded as good land for cotton culture, and was not in demand by slave- owners. It was settled with white people of moderate means.
Jefferson, the county site, was a very obscure hamlet for many years, but has of late years, since it has been reached by the railroad, become a town of some importance. The Martin Institute, founded and endowed by a Mr. Martin, is located here.
Harmony Grove is a prosperous town in the eastern part of the county. In this little hamlet there was established the first chartered female academy in the State. At that time the Legislature gave a small amount to each chartered academy, but it had refused to charter any academy which excluded males. It, however, abandoned this position, and a female academy was chartered for Harmony Grove.
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