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CHAPTER XI.
1847 TO 1860 .- Governor Towns-Howell Cobb-Herschel V. Johnson- Joseph E. Brown-The Completion of the Main Railroad Lines-A Picture of the Georgia People in the Middle of the Century-The Sea Island People-The Middle Georgia Planters-The Georgia Yeo- manry-Introduction of Commercial Fertilizers-Manufacturing in the Rural Districts-Educational Facilities-The Middle Georgia Negroes -The Middle Georgia Towns and Villages-Religious Improvement -The Blue Limestone Country Developed-The Piedmont Country- Wonderful Development of Southwest Georgia - The Wire-grass Country again-M. & B. and A. & G. R. R .- Features of Every-day Life-Days of Prosperity-Banks-The Panic of 1857-Suspension of the Banks-Passage of the Stay Law-Illiteracy of the People- Measure of Thomas R. R. Cobb to Dispel It-The Daily Press-The Southern Cultivator-The Agricultural Society-The First Agricultural Fair in Georgia-The End of the Current History-General Account of the Origin of the Georgians-Coming of the Catholic Irish and of the Jewish Traders 479-491
XX
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XII.
RELIGION IN GEORGIA .- Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Metho- dists, Roman Catholics, Jews, Other Small Bodies, Temperance Reform 492-501
CHAPTER XIII.
EDUCATION IN GEORGIA .- First School at Ebenezer-Mr. DeLamotte in Savannah-Schools in Dorchester Settlements-School in Augusta- Constitutional Provision for Public Education-Academies Established and Endorsed-Old Field Schools-Appropriation for Poor Scholars -Appropriation for Academies-General Cobb's Measures for Public Schools-Private Academies and High Schools in Georgia-Mr. Whitefield's Effort to Establish a College-The Proposition for a State University-The Charter Granted and the University Established at Athens-First Graduates-A Glance at the History of the Institution- First Methodist School-School at Salem-Manual Labor School- Emory College Established-Glance at its History-First Baptist School at Enon-Manual Labor School at Penfield-Mercer University Established-Its History-Oglethorpe University-Sidney Lanier- First Female College in the World Established in Macon, Ga .- History of the Georgia afterward the Wesleyan Female College- Lagrange Female College-Georgia Female College-Monroe Female College-Andrew Female College-Young Harris College-North Georgia Agricultural and Military College-South Georgia College at McRae-Industrial College at Milledgeville-Technological College in Atlanta-Colleges for Negroes and Colored People-Cox Female College-Gainesville Female College-Shorter Female College-Dal- ton Female College-Lucy Cobb Institute-Gordon Institute-R. E. Lee Institute, Thomaston . 502-513.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CITIES. .514-555
APPENDIX.
HEADRIGHTS GRANTED BY THE COLONIAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS FROM 1754 TO 1800 .- LIST OF SOLDIERS OF THE LINE-SOLDIERS PAID IN MONEY-BOUNTY WARRANTS-LIST OF COUNTIES ..... 557-634
The Story of Georgia and the Georgia People.
CHAPTER I.
GEORGIA UNDER THE TRUSTEES-1732 TO 1754.
Preliminary-Carolina Settled -- Mr. Oglethorpe Plans a Benevolent Colony- A Board of Trustees Organized-The King Makes a Grant of Territory West of the Savannah River-Proposal Made to Immigrants-Immigration of Thirty-five Families-Dr. Herbert First Clergyman-Immigrants Arrive at Charleston and Beaufort-Colonel Bull and Mr. Oglethorpe Select a Place for the Settlement of the Colony-Tomichichi and his People-Savannah Laid Out-Coming of the Salzburghers-Coming of the Highlanders-Second Immigration of English People, Salzburghers and Moravians-Troubles with the Spaniards-Mr. Oglethorpe Commissioned a Colonel, Raises a Regiment and Commands the British Forces-The Spanish War-The War Over- Mr. Oglethorpe at Frederica-Trouble with Malcontents-Mr. Oglethorpe's Return to England-Number of Immigrants up to his Date of Departure-The English Settlement-Allowance to Immigrants-Beneficia- ries of the Trustees-Rum Forbidden-Slavery Prohibited-Reason for the Prohibition of Slavery-Difficulties Encountered by First Settlers-Failure of the Attempt to Make Wine and Silk-Discontent of the Colonists-Contro- versy-The Side of the Trustees-The Side of the, Malcontents-List of the Malcontents - The First Office-holders and their Occupation-Mr. Ogle- thorpe's Treaty with the Creeks-The Scotch Settlement-Origin of the Immigration-John More McIntosh-Pastor McLeod, the First Presbyterian Minister in Georgia-New Inverness Founded-Partial List of the Colonists in New Inverness in 1740-Change of Name to Darien-Breaking up of the Scotch Settlement-The German Settlement-The Coming of the Salzburgh- ers and their First Settlement at Ebenezer - Failure of the Settlement- Second Settlement-Partial List of the First Immigrants-Coming of a Second Colony of Germans-Frederica-Description of St. Simons Island- Settlement of Frederica-Rapid Growth of the City-Its Rapid Decline- Mr. James Spalding-Augusta Settled in 1735-A Sketch of its First Years -George Galphin-Indian Slave Trade - Results of the Efforts of the Trus- tees-Change of Laws-Slavery Permitted-Practical Failure of the Colony -The First Assembly Called-Surrender of the Charter-Amount of Land Granted-Religious History of the Colony for the First Twenty Years.
Authorities : Hewitt, McCall, Stevens, Jones, Historical Collections I., II., III., IV., Wm. Stephens's Journal, Wesley's Journal, Whitfield's Journal, Harris's Memorials of Oglethorpe.
Georgia History, so far as it concerns itself with much the larger part of its first settlers, begins in Virginia. Those European immigrants who settled near Savannah, and who
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came directly to Georgia from England, Germany, Scotland and Ireland, were not many.
There was little progress in Georgia until after 1752, when the tide of immigration came in from South Carolina, Virginia and North Carolina, and the American origin of the first Georgians is largely to be found in the old Virginia. records.
The researches of Mr. Alexander Brown, the Rev. Dr. Niele, Dr. R. A. Brock, Mr. E. A. Stannard, Mr. A. C. Bruce, the collections of the Virginia Historical Society and the various histories of Virginia, all cast light on the origin of the Georgia people.
To begin the study of the larger part of the Georgians we must begin with the London company.
England claimed the whole North American continent by virtue of John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland, but one hundred years had gone before she made any effort to settle the wilds. After Sir Walter Raleigh's failure to make a permanent settlement in the latter part of the sixteenth century, in the early part of the seventeenth a company of English adventurers, known as the London company, was organized. This was a great stock company, whose avowed aim was to Christianize the Indians, and whose real aim was to get large dividends from the mines and the fields and forests of the new world. The list of the members of this company and the amount of money each man contrib- uted has been preserved. For near twenty years this company made constant efforts and spent much money in. order to settle the colony, and by the year 1624 the inhab- itants of the colony were about twelve hundred. In 1624 the London company passed out of sight, the charter being revoked by the king. This company took in all classes of Englishmen of means. Noblemen, gentlemen, tradesmen, clergymen and corporations all invested, allured by the returns secured by the Spanish in South America, the
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Portuguese in Africa, and the Dutch in India. The immense profits which these people gained inspired the hope of those who invested their money in Virginia stock that they would be equally fortunate.
The stockholders of this company, when it went into liquidation, received lands for their investment at one half shilling per acre, and the foundations of the immense landed estates of Virginia were laid by the shareholders of the London company, and it was in this way that so many of the descendants of these people were found in Virginia in its early history, and afterwards in Georgia. The first settlements in Virginia were made on the rivers, and a large body of Virginians were found in eastern North Carolina early in the eighteenth century, and from thence came into Georgia. Many Georgia families count their origin as North Carolinian when it was really Virginian, and many South Carolina people who came to Georgia had an ancestry which one hundred years before was in Virginia. There were very few people of any considerable estate who came to Virginia in its first settlement. The days of Virginia's splendor, when the old Virginian begins his story, were not for fifty years after the first settlement of the colony, and though many of the early settlers were sons of noblemen and of gentlemen, they were very poor, and many a man entitled by his birth to a coat of arms had some difficulty in getting a coat of frieze to cover his arms. In those early days men who came from lordly halls in England lived in log cabins and toiled with their own hands. Not a few people of distinction in after time were redemptioners who worked for five years after they came to America to pay back their passage money to the planter who bought them for that time from the ship captain.
While this last stated fact is true, it is only exceptionally true, and it will be seen that the men of small means, who came from the upper and middle classes of England, Scot-
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land and Wales, men who had some education and some small means, were largely the ancestors of the present race of Georgians.
That part of the colony of South Carolina, now Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi, was only settled by a few scattered Indians, and in it the Indian trader had now and then a warehouse and a ranch.
GEN. JAMES OGLETHORPE.
Florida was held by the restless and grasping Spaniard, who also laid claims to the lands on the Tombigbee and the Mississippi. The Spaniards menaced the South Caro- lina colony, and the English authorities realized the im- portance of settling a strong colony nearer Florida; so when Mr. Oglethorpe and his associates asked George II. for a grant of land for their projected refuge for the unfor- tunate, they met with a ready response, and all of the country originally granted to the proprietors which lay west of the Savannah was granted to them for the benev-
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AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
olent purpose they had in view. George II. made the grant, and in his honor the colony was called Georgia. There were associated with Mr. Oglethorpe in the trustee- ship of the new colony twenty others. They were noble- men and gentlemen, and had a charter carefully drawn, which was to run for twenty years. Mr. Oglethorpe was selected by them for the work of planting the colony.
He was a member of Parliament, an English gentleman in easy circumstances and of excellent family. He had been educated at Oxford and had in his youth entered the army and served on the continent under Prince Eugene. He served on the prince's staff until the peace, then re- turned to England and was elected to Parliament, of which he was an active member in 1730. He was a man of gentle nature and of philanthropic spirit, and was led to enterprise an over-the-sea colony by finding that a friend of his, a baronet who had become involved in debt and who was confined in a debtors' prison, was in irons for some infraction of prison laws. The severe' punishment inflicted on his friend led him to look into the matter of imprisonment for debt, and to ask if a plan could not be devised by which those who were poor and embarrassed might be kept out of debtors' prisons. An over-the-sea colony suggested itself. He would give the poor a chance in the new world to make a living, and, if in debt, to pay their creditors. His plan was not, as many have supposed, to pay poor debtors out of prison, but rather to give poor men a chance to keep out. To accomplish this extensive grants of land were to be made by the crown, and then by public aid and private contribution means were to be pro- vided to settle needy families. They were to be those who could not make a comfortable living in England, men of good morals, who were not in debt, or, if in debt, whose creditors were willing for them to leave England. The
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grant was secured, the charter was written, and the trustees were given large powers by the crown.
Mr. Oglethorpe, who had charge of the colony, was per- haps a little visionary, but he was nobly unselfish and heroic, and devoted himself to the interest committed to his charge with great zeal.
The English Parliament granted £10,000 to the new col- ony in order to put it on its feet, and the English philan- thropists subscribed liberally to the funds the trustees were securing for their project. They were now prepared to offer inducements to those who were willing to emigrate to the new colony. The colonists were to have a free pas- sage across the sea, a town lot and a section of land, and were to be clothed and fed at the expense of the trustees for a twelvemonth.
The land to which they were going was contiguous to prosperous Carolina, and was pictured to them as an Eden. The silkworm and the vineyard they were assured would enrich them in a few years.
There should be no negro slaves to compete with them, and no large landed proprietors to monopolize their terri- tory. They should have vines and fig-trees, and none should make them afraid.
So thirty - five families - carpenters, brick - layers, and farmers-with Dr. Herbert, a clergyman of the Church of England, as their chaplain, took passage at Deptford on the 16th November, 1732, and on the 12th of January, 1733, the Ann reached Charleston, S. C., on its way to Georgia.
The Carolinians received these new adventurers very kindly and convoyed their ship to Beaufort, where a smaller craft was provided to take them to some point on the west side of the Savannah river. Mr. Oglethorpe and the benevolent Colonel Bull made a prospecting tour up the Savannah river while the immigrants remained at Beaufort, and they decided to fix the settlement near Yamacraw town,
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some eighteen miles from the mouth of the Savannah, on a high bluff on the west side of the stream. This city stands to-day near where it was located by Oglethorpe in 1733, and Yamacraw still holds its old name on the map and in com- mon parlance. The settlers were provided with abundant
LOSSING=BARRITT
TOMICHICHI AND NEPHEW.
supplies of necessary things. The generous Mr. Whittaker from South Carolina furnished one hundred head of cattle to give them a start, and Colonel Bull, Mr. Barlow, Mr. St. Julian, Mr. Woodward and Mr. Joseph Bryan, all wealthy planters, brought over a number of their slaves from South Carolina to assist them in building their houses.
e
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There was no trouble to be expected from the poverty- stricken band of runaway Indians at Yamacraw, and Mr. Oglethorpe soon made a good friend of Tomichichi, who was head chief of the tribe. The colonists were sheltered in cloth tents on their first landing, and as it was in a Savannah February they were abundantly comfortable.
The bluff on which they had pitched their tents was covered with wide-spreading live-oaks, and a short distance away from the river was a wide stretch of pine forest. Colonel Bull and Mr. Bryan brought over some sawyers from their plantations, saw pits were dug and the pines were cut into boards, and the carpenters went to work to provide houses for these homeless Englishmen.
The little houses, 16 x 24, made of pine boards, were soon erected, a board tabernacle for a church was built, and then Mr. Oglethorpe proceeded to select a place for a fort for the protection of the colony from the Spaniards. He went across the country some twenty miles to the Ogeechee and built a fort called Fort Argyle, and settled a few families around it, and north of Savannah he located the village of Abercorn, where there were placed ten families.
The next immigrants to the colony were a body of Salz- burghers. They were originally Austrians who had been driven from the Tyrol and who had been living for a time in Germany. They were Lutherans of the Pietist wing, people famous for their solid worth, and they had been invited to settle in this new colony, and the society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts had consented to pay the cost of transporting them. They were cordially welcomed by Mr. Oglethorpe and were permitted to select a home for themselves. Their agents selected a place in what is now Effingham, and they settled a village called Ebenezer. This spot was not happily chosen, and the next year they removed to another spot nearer the river, to which they gave the same name. There were a few Jews,
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originally from Portugal but directly from England, and a few French Huguenots who came from South Carolina. These were the first immigrants.
In July, the city having been tastefully laid out, there was allotted to each immigrant a town lot, a garden of five acres and a farm of forty-five acres, in all fifty acres. This prop- erty, however, was not granted in fee simple but was to de- scend to heirs, male, and in case there were none, then it was to revert to the trust. The English settlers received their grants in and around Savannah, and the Salzburghers had lands granted them some twenty miles away.
A body of Scotch Highlanders was the next considerable body of immigrants. They came from the north of Scot- land and were settled by Oglethorpe at a place near the mouth of the Altamaha, which they called New Inverness, near what is now Darien.
Early in 1735 Mr. Oglethorpe, having settled these first colonists, returned to England, and in the fall of that year came again to Georgia with a large body of immigrants composed of Germans and Englishmen, and located a new town on the island of St. Simons, which he called Frederica. With these German Salzburghers there came another body of German religionists, the Moravians, who came to Georgia to Christianize the Indians, but after making a settlement called Irene, they removed to Pennsylvania to their larger settlement at Bethlehem.
The troubles with Spain were increasing, and it was evi- dent that there would be a collision between the English and the Spaniards, and Mr. Oglethorpe went back to England to get a commission as colonel and to recruit a regiment for service in the colony. He endeavored to secure married men for his recruits, that they might bring their wives with them, so that when discharged they would remain in the colony.
The war came, as was expected, and Mr. Oglethorpe, now
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commander-in-chief, with the aid of troops from the South Carolina colony, made an abortive effort to capture St. Augustine, and the Spaniards in return made a failure in their effort to capture Frederica, and the war ended in- gloriously. Mr. Oglethorpe, henceforth known as General, became involved in some unpleasant affairs with some of his subalterns and demanded a court of inquiry. He re- turned to England and was fully vindicated.
He did not again visit the colony for whose interests he had labored so hard and sacrificed so much. He was very bitterly assailed by some malcontents, and vigorous pam- phlets making all kinds of charges were written against him. The reader of these attacks will decide that they are unsup- ported by facts and do great injustice to one whose motives were of the noblest kind, although his judgment on the practical affairs of the colony was none of the best.
During his administration there were sent over, at the ex- pense of the trustees, 1,521 immigrants, of whom 687 were foreigners. These immigrants were settled at and around Savannah, Ebenezer, Darien and Frederica.
General Oglethorpe has received so large a share of attention on the part of all who have written of Georgia that it is hardly necessary that I should say much of him here. Save to bring over the first two bodies of colonists and to conduct the Spanish war, he had but little to do with the Georgia colony or the Georgia people. He only spent seven years in Georgia. He went back to England and retired to his estate. Here he remained until the troubles with the Pretender began, and he was selected as brigadier to command some of the militia, but did little military service. He had a nominal connection with the British army, and living to a great age, was at one time the oldest general in the service. He has been very highly eulogized, and perhaps he has been overpraised and his
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services to the Georgia colony have been rated too highly, but he is worthy of very high commendation.
We will now take a more careful view of the social con- dition of the people and glance first at the English settlers.
The colonies in Virginia and New England were over one hundred years old. They were thickly peopled, and their inhabitants were in many respects in as comfortable circumstances as people of the same class were in Europe. Large fortunes had been made in many cases, especially in Virginia and Maryland and in the New England cities, and all the comforts and many of the luxuries of London and Bristol and Rotterdam were brought into Virginia, Massa- chusetts, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and New York.
The valley of Virginia was now being opened to settle- ment, and bodies of fine settlers were finding homes in the fertile valley of the Yadkin in North Carolina. South Carolina, in which slavery was allowed, was very prosper- ous, and there was a great area in that colony yet unsettled where free homes were awaiting all comers.
There was but little inducement for men of capital to emigrate to Georgia, and she was dependent upon the poorer class for her settlers.
In 1735, when the second body of English emigrants was to be sent out, in order to induce emigration it was agreed to give to every man who would go to the new col- ony a watch-coat, a musket and a bayonet, a hatchet, hand- saw, shovel, spade, three hoes, a gimlet, a drawing-knife, and a frying-pan. There should be given to each one during the year, 312 pounds of beef or pork, 104 pounds of rice, 104 pounds of cornmeal and peas, 104 pounds of flour, I pint of beer for each working-day, 52 quarts of molasses, 16 pounds of cheese, 12 pounds of butter, 12 pounds of sugar, 4 gallons of vinegar, 24 pounds of salt, 12 quarts of lamp oil, 20 pounds of soap, and I
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pound spun cotton. The same allowance of food was to be made to women and half that to each child.
In consideration of this they were to work for the col- ony for twelve months, and then settle in the town or coun- try near by, on lots granted to them. These lots were not to be united and could not be sold without a special license. If the land was not improved in ten years it should be forfeited to the colony. A rent charge of two shillings for each fifty acres was to be a fixed charge.
None could take advantage of these offers but persons in decayed circumstances and those who had large families and whose habits were good. Emigrants might take a male servant or an apprentice whose expenses in three years should be repaid to the trustees. To us of this day it would seem as if stupidity could have gone no further than in the adoption of some of the regulations of the trustees, and that if they had aimed to prevent the settlement of the colony they could not have worked more effectively. The trustees made a provision that no rum should be sold in the colony, and that if any one brought in any of the fiery spirit the casks should be staved and the same poured out. When the drinking habits of the people at that time are remembered, when there was as yet no temperance so- cieties, when at the raising of church buildings in New England the keg of rum was always opened, when pious deacons distilled the spirit with a good conscience, when the good pastor had his rum toddy to recruit his exhausted strength after his long Sabbath labors, when ministers and physicians defended the use of rum as a necessity in the malarious sections, it was a remarkable evidence of ad- vanced views that the trustees endeavored to prevent the introduction of rum into the Georgia colony. Their well- devised scheme came to naught, and it is probable that rum was openly sold in Savannah almost from the be- ginning.
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If the views of the trustees on rum and on African slavery could have been carried out as perfectly in all the colony as they were for twenty years in the Ebenezer settlement, the prosperity that from the beginning marked that com- munity might have attended all Georgia from the first, but the unhappy regulation concerning land tenures, added to the prohibition of negro slavery, turned the tide of immi- gration into South Carolina and North Carolina, and the Georgia colony was neglected. The law forbidding the introduction of slaves was not made because slavery was thought to be a moral evil, but for purely economic reasons; and the practical workings of the law soon demonstrated the fact that its enforcement would prevent all development, for the country on the coast could not be developed by white labor. So most of the few people of means who came into the colony at its first settlement, and who tried to use white men as laborers, were compelled to remove to South Carolina, where they could get negroes.
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