USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 4
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FREDERICA.
One of the objects of establishing the Georgia colony was to protect the more northern colonies from the aggres- sive Spaniards, who were in strong force in St. Augustine,
* See De Brahm's account, Wormsloe ed.
t Mr. Oglethorpe's Letters in Historical Collections.
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and General Oglethorpe on his first visit determined to establish a fort and build a city on St. Simons Island at the mouth of the Altamaha. On his second coming to Georgia he brought with him quite a number of emigrants whom he intended to locate on this beautiful island, where he had a military post. Colonel Jones, to whom Georgia is so greatly indebted for having recovered so much of lost history, gives an account of Frederica in his "Dead Towns of Georgia." It was located on St. Simons Island, oppo- site to where the city of Brunswick now is, and was called Frederica in honor of Frederick, the son of George II. The town was located near the beach, where there had been once an Indian town. It was settled by the emi- grants which Mr. Oglethorpe brought with him in his second coming to Georgia. The emigrants intended for it were landed at Savannah and reshipped in broad flat boats, which reached the bluff at St. Simons after six days of voyaging. The people found shelter from the March weather in booths made of the palmetto boughs. The city was laid out on forty acres of cleared land covered with grass sod. Around it was a beautiful forest of live-oaks, water-oaks, laurel, bay, cedar, sweet-gum, sassafras and pines. The muscadine and fox-grape and the fragrant yellow jessa- mine festooned the forest trees. The island abounded in deer, rabbits, raccoons, squirrels, wild turkeys, doves, red- birds, mocking-birds and great flocks of rice-birds. The marshes were crowded with wild geese, ducks, herons, cranes, plovers and marsh-hens, and the waters were filled with fishes of all kinds, crabs, shrimps and oysters.
This is not an exaggerated statement of what was to be found on St. Simons and the islands contiguous at that time. The island was said to be fertile and healthy, It was hard land to be cleared, and when the land was culti- vated it soon was apparent that those crops which were in-
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dispensable to an Englishman's or a German's comfort were not suitable to the climate and the soil. The settlers reached the island too late the year of their first coming to do any farm work for that year, and before they could get fully settled the Spanish war was upon them. The money which came to the troops and for furnishing the supplies necessary for the subsistence of the small army helped to build up the little city and make it prosperous for a time. It is evident that this new city was a favorite of General Oglethorpe. The only land he located in Georgia was on St. Simons, and here he spent the larger part of the time he was in America. Up to the period when Oglethorpe returned to England Frederica prospered, but when peace came the town began to decline and soon ceased to be a place of any note at all. It afterward became the home of Mr. James Spalding, who carried on quite a trade with the Creek and Seminole Indians. There was nothing in the location or its surroundings to give anything like per- manent prosperity to it, and after its bright and vigorous in- fancy it declined constantly until there was nothing left of the second city of Georgia-not even the name. Mr. Bar- tram, the French botanist, who visited this country just be- fore the Revolution, found only the ruins of what had once been the city, and when it was decided some years ago to take a picture of the live-oak under which John Wesley and his brother Charles had preached, they found the oak still standing in magnificence, but no vestige of a living being near-by. Frederica was truly a dead town.
AUGUSTA.
Before Mr. Oglethorpe came to Georgia there was a trading-post near what is now Hamburg, S. C., on the South Carolina side of the river called Fort Moore, and Mr. Oglethorpe decided to build a fort on the Georgia side and garrison it. This he did, and in honor of the Princess
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1732-1754.]
Augusta it was called by her name. In the pamphlet to which we have referred, by Wm. Stephens, there is the following list of Indian traders who had headquarters at Augusta. The names given are: Wood, Brown, Clark, Knott, Spencer, Barnett, Ladson, Mackey, Elsey, Facy, McQueen, Wright, Gardner, Andrews, Duvall, Cammell Randel, Chauncey, Newberry.
There were beside these traders, living near the fort, Kennedy O'Brien, Frazer, Miller, Brown, a saddler, a tailor, William Clark, H. Overstreet, L. Bean, William Grey, William Calahan, McGilveray, Casson, Gilmore, Goodale, Ross, Galphin.
On the east side of the Savannah, in South Carolina, where negroes were allowed, there were numbers of plan- tations opened, and the corn consumed by the large number of horses needed in the trade with the Indians was pro- duced there.
These Indian traders sent out their men to the towns of the Chickasaws, Uchees, Creeks and Cherokees, and in the spring season great crowds of Indians came with their ponies loaded with peltry to trade at the post for powder and lead, and especially for rum. There was a mean rum known as tafia which was the main article of traffic. It was brought by Indian traders from the coast and traded for all kinds of products and for Indian slaves .* These slaves, taken by their enemies in war, were brought to Au- gusta and sold and carried to Charleston and shipped to the West Indies. The traders were oftentimes wretchedly dissolute. They lived shameless lives with the squaws, and when they grew weary of them went from them with- out hesitation.
There was a large trading-post owned by Galphin in Ogeechee Town. This old Galphinton is ten miles south
* See Logan's History of South Carolina, p. 180 and beyond, for a full account of this traffic.
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of Louisville, on the Ogeechee river. George Galphin was a famous Indian trader, who had an elegant home at Silver Bluff and was recognized as a king by the various tribes. They brought all questions to him for settlement It was told of him that once a chief, attracted by the red coat Galphin wore, said to him one day:
" Me had dream."
" Oh!" said Galphin, " what was it ?"
" Me dream you give me dat coat."
" Then you shall have it," said the trader.
A long time passed, when one day, when the chief was at the post, Galphin said:
" Chief, I had a dream."
" Ugh ! What you dream ?"
"I dreamt you give me all the land in the fork of this creek."
" Well, you shall have it, but we dream no more."
Augusta was not a place for a quiet residence in those wild days. Two thousand ponies owned by the traders were loaded with goods in Charleston and with peltry at the fort, and kept the now almost deserted old road to Charles- ton alive. As one now rides over the deep sands through which the old highway runs, he can bring before him the great train of Indian slaves doomed to a life worse than death, who had been bought and branded by the traders with a red-hot iron, and who were now to go in weary pro- cession from Augusta to Charleston. There were great fortunes made in this Indian slave-trade and in furnishing the Indians with rum and gunpowder ; and it was to pay the debts due George Galphin and other traders that Sir James Wright secured from the Indians their cession of Wilkes, Oglethorpe, Elbert and Lincoln counties. Augusta was not affected by the laws concerning negroes, and as far as rum was concerned it was the main article of traffic, but
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1732-1754.]
that rum was sold to the Indians, and the slaves she sold were captives secured in war.
There may have been, and I think it likely there were, sundry settlers who were scattered among the Indians and who had squatted on lands belonging to them ; and it is probable that Mr. Galphin had around his settlement at Galphinton some of his countrymen before Oglethorpe came, but I find no positive proof of it, and Colonel Jones puts the emigration of the Scotch-Irish to St. George's parish as late as 1768. I find that certainly as early as Governor Reynolds's grants in 1752 there were grants of land made to men whom I know were in Jefferson.
General Oglethorpe had done his best to make a model colony, and though he left it in a sadly depressed condi- tion, it was not from any failure on his part to endure hard- ships or face danger. When he returned to England the trustees selected Mr. William Stephens, who had for some years been his secretary and the de facto governor. He was at one time a member of Parliament in England, and was a man of excellent family and good cultivation. He had been a servant of the trustees from his first coming to the colony, and was devoted to their interests. He had been virtually the governor of the Savannah part of the colony during Mr. Oglethorpe's stay, and after Mr. Ogle- thorpe's return to England he was in entire control of affairs.
In 1749 there occurred the famous Bosomworth trouble, to which a ludicrous prominence has been given in the Georgia histories and in Hewitt's History of South Caro- lina, and a trifling affair has been magnified into an event of immense importance. Mary Bosomworth was a half- breed Creek woman, the daughter of a Scotch father. She had some education and spoke both the Creek and English languages. She had been employed by Mr. Oglethorpe as an interpreter. Having lost her first husband, Musgrove,
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[CHAP. I.
she had married a worthless fellow by the name of Mathews, who gave Governor Stephens much annoyance. When he died she married a scapegrace clergyman whose name was Bosomworth. She made some claims to back- pay due her as interpreter, and laid claims to some landed property and threatened the infant colony with her ven- geance if her claims were not allowed, and finally, with a small body of vagabond Indians, she came toward Savannah to enforce her demands. The few militia in the province, one hundred and seventy in all, under command of Cap- tain Noble Jones, met the Indians, who were two hundred in number, and disarmed them without any trouble; and eventually, after Mary, in her drunken rage, for she was a sad reprobate, forced Governor Stephens to lock her up, the Indians were all invited to the governor's house and took a glass together with the whites, and smoked the pipe of peace and went back to their wigwams .* Mary's claim was at last settled by Governor Ellis, and she secured some money and a grant to St. Catherine's Island, which was sold to Button Gwinnett.+
Governor Stephens was old and feeble and the burdens of his office were borne by his associates, Parker and Hab- ersham. He voluntarily, after a short incumbency, retired to his plantation near Savannah, where very suddenly he died. He wrote a copious Journal, often referred to by the
* In Hewitt, McCall, Stevens and Jones there is substantially the same account. There were only two hundred Indians in all. They had no ammuni- tion and had not, in all likelihood, the slightest idea of doing any violence. The great army who saved the people from massacre were one hundred and seventy militia, under Captain Noble Jones. There was not a single drop of blood shed, and no threat or danger of a massacre. I am a little regretful that the brilliant rhetoric of Bishop Stevens, in giving account of this occur- rence, has so little to support it; but he merely followed Hewitt, who was copied by McCall. The Journal of Mr. Wm. Stephens gives the best ac- count of the whole affair. Colonel Jones has given all the facts with his. accustomed accuracy.
t See Stephens's account in his Journal.
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historians of Georgia, which was published in three vol- umes. This Journal was the first book written in Georgia, with the exception of the small collection of hymns pub- lished by John and Charles Wesley.
The colony, as we have seen, was in a depressed condi- tion, and it was apparent to all on the ground that the chief cause of the state of things was the inability of the
JAMES HABERSHAM.
planters to secure cheap labor and the nature of the ten- ures of the granted land. Even Mr. Bolzius recognized that something was the matter, and James Habersham was requested by him to draw up a statement setting forth the condition of the colony and the cause of it, and Mr. Hab- ersham wrote an article in which he attributed the depres- sion to the prohibition of negro labor.
This paper came into the hands of the trustees, and they, becoming convinced by it that the restriction was not a wise 3
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one, decided that under certain conditions the colonists might import negroes. They had not been led to prohibit slavery at the first from any moral considerations, but had been led to it by their opinion that it was best for the tem- poral interests of the colony. They were now convinced that they had been mistaken, and so they prescribed the conditions under which the planters would be permitted to purchase and hold slaves.
These conditions were: The slaves should not be in large numbers on any plantation. They should be enjoined and encouraged to marry; they should be forbidden to use profane language; they should not be sold without registry, and should not learn any mechanical arts; they should not be worked on the Sabbath day, but should be compelled to go to church and be instructed by the Protestant ministry. Under these conditions the restriction against slave labor was removed.
The law against the admission of rum had probably been disregarded for some time, and it was repealed, and the restriction concerning land tenure was removed and the property was to be held in fee. There was nothing now, save that Georgia was still governed by trustees, to distinguish the youngest of the colonies from her older sisters ; and this government by trustees was nearly at an end, for in 1751 the trustees surrendered their charter to the crown and the colonial office took the government of Georgia in hand. For two years and nine months the old appointees held over, and Mr. Henry Parker and Sir John Graham were successively in charge of the gov- ernment.
In 1754, however, Sir John Reynolds was duly appointed to the position of governor.
In 1751 the first Assembly met in Savannah. The members were Francis Harris, John Milledge, William Francis, Wm. Russell, Savannah; Geo. Codagan, David
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1369427 Douglas, Augusta; Christian Riedelsperger, Theobald Kiefer, Ebenezer ; Wm. Ewen, Abercorn ; Patrick Houston, Ver- nonsburg ; Peter Morel, Acton ; Jos. Summers, Little Ogee- chee ; Jno. Barnard, Skidaway ; Audley Maxwell, Midway; Jno. More Mackintosh, Darien .*
The names of the places from which the delegates came give us some idea of how the population had moved and of the advance of the settlements into the interior.
In taking a survey of the colony for these twenty years one cannot but be impressed with the elevated aims of its founders. The trustees doubtless made grave mistakes, and in endeavoring to do too much had failed to do what might have been done for the good of the colony; but their motives were of the highest kind, and, with the single exception of Mr. Causton, there seems to have been among the officers of the colony only men of probity and intel- ligence. Men like Wm. Stephens, Noble Jones, James Habersham, and ministers like Jno. and Charles Wesley, Geo. Whitfield, and Pastors Gronau and Bolzius would have ornamented any State.
Up to the time the trustees surrendered their trust there had been granted in trust forty-one thousand acres, and sold outright twenty-seven thousand acres. The colony had been settled twenty years, and while it had had but little prosperity, it had had no disasters. There was no Indian massacre as in Virginia, no Indian war as in New England, no servile insurrection as in South Carolina, but it had by no means met the hopes of those who planted it. Perhaps no colony ever had a better class of first settlers. They were most of them quite poor, but so were the first settlers of Virginia and New England, the Huguenots and German emigrants to Pennsylvania. They were hampered at first by impracticable regulations, and many of them left the colony for South Carolina, but many remained
* Jones.
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in Georgia, and many of those who left the colony returned in an after time. These first settlers had none of the ca- lamities which befell the early settlers in the older col- onies, but there were all the discomforts of frontier life. There were no mills driven by wind or water, and the settlers were dependent for bread upon Indian corn which was beaten in a mortar or ground on a hand- mill. The houses out of the villages were of round logs, and sometimes of clapboards. The floors were of dirt, and the chimneys were made of clay and stakes. The settlers had no comforts, but there was generally a sufficiency of food. Turkeys were caught in pens and quails and rabbits in traps, and near the towns where ammunition could be easily secured the pot hunter provided ducks and wild geese and venison for the table. In a few years cattle were abundant and hogs in large numbers were raised on the acorns in the swamps.
There was no wheat flour save what came from New England, but soon after the settlements were made there were patches of rice. Even those planters who at this early date were considered well-to-do had few comforts, and even near the coast, where there was some shipping, living was plain, but away from it it was exceedingly hard.
There was comparatively little difference in the style of living among the rural people, and there were but three small villages-Savannah, Augusta and Ebenezer. Fred- erica had been almost abandoned and Augusta was merely a trading-post. There were only a few settlers above Savannah or below Brunswick, and these were far from prosperous.
In the sketch of Savannah in a later chapter an account is given of the religious history of the colony-the found- ing of Bethesda and the growth of Ebenezer. There was but little attention paid to churches and schools during the time of the trustees, although there was a school in Savan-
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nah and a tabernacle and a church and school in Ebenezer; but there were, so far as I can find, neither churches nor schools at the time when the trustees gave up their charge out of these villages. The Presbyterians had abandoned the colony, the Moravians had gone to Pennsylvania, and save at Bethesda and at Ebenezer there was little attention given to religious matters.
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CHAPTER II.
UNDER THE ROYAL GOVERNORS.
Governor Reynolds-Some of his Difficulties with the Colonists-Dr. Little- Clement Martin Removed from the Council-Governor Reynolds Asks to be Recalled - Georgia as it Appeared in his Time-The Dorchester Settlement- The English Emigration to Dorchester, Mass .- The Settlement of Dorchester, S. C .- Removal to Georgia-List of the First Patentees-Midway Church Built-Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett-The Land Grants Made by Gov- ernor Reynolds-Slavery in the Colony-Native Africans-The Condition of the New Negroes-Laws for Regulation of the Slaves-Governor Ellis-His Administration-Church of England Established-Episcopal Churches in Georgia-The First Presbyterian Church-The Congregational-The Luthe- ran-The List of Parishes-Governer James Wright-The Capital Settled in Savannah-Governor Wright's First Assembly-Condition of Affairs in the Colony-Troubles Impending in Consequence of the Stamp Act-Collision between Governor Wright and the Assembly-The Newly Ceded Lands and the Middle Georgia People-General View of the Colony to 1774-Mr. Whitfield's College Plan-The Moral Tone of the Colony-Sabbath Laws- Governor James Wright's Administration-Education in the Colony-Ad- vance of the Colony among the English, the Scotch, the Germans, in St. George's Parish, Augusta, and St. Paul's Parish-Social Changes-Relig- ious Movements-Baptists Enter the State.
Authorities : McCall, Stevens, Jones, Georgia Historical Collections, White's. Statistics, White's Historical Collections, Whitfield's Journal, Colonial Laws, Hewitt, Records in Secretary of State's Office, Bartram, De Brahm.
Governor Reynolds, who came into his office in 1754, had been a captain in the British navy, and as a reward for his naval services he was made the first royal governor of the Georgia colony. He was officially designated as captain-general and governor-in-chief of his majesty's province in Georgia and vice-admiral of the same.
He was received by the people of the colony with great enthusiasm and began his administration very promisingly. He selected an able council consisting of the leading men
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in the colony. They were Sir Patrick Houston, Patrick Grahame, James Habersham, Noble Jones, Pickering Rob- inson, Francis Harris, Alex Kellett, Jonathan Bryan, Wm. Russell, Wm. Clifton and Clement Martin, Sr.
The bluff old sailor found things in a rather cheerless condition and was evidently greatly disappointed in the outlook. Savannah was not a well-built city, as he ex- pected to find it, but a dilapidated village; and the govern- orship of a province in which there was not five thousand people, and whose most important public building was a board tabernacle, was not a place to be coveted. He began, however, to do some very needful things. He organized the courts and ordered all previous grants of land recalled, and proposed to issue new patents. He called the Assembly together, but soon found he had some troublesome men in it. One of these was Edmond Gray, a Quaker from St. Paul's parish. Gray, in connection with Farmer, McIntosh and Carr, issued a call for the people of the colony who valued their liberty to appear as soon as possible at Savannah. This Governor Reynolds thought was open rebellion, and as such denounced it. What led to the call of Gray we do not know, but we can conjecture it was to protest against the proposed measure of Governor Reynolds to recall the grants of land hitherto made and issue new warrants upon new conditions. These conditions were so hard that the entire Assembly united in a success- ful petition to the king for a negation of them, and the governor reluctantly withdrew them.
Edmond Gray, of whom we know too little, went after- ward to the neutral ground south of Darien, and was vis- ited by Governor Ellis at his home. Governor Ellis speaks of him kindly, and says he was a man of remarkable abil- ity but had no common sense.
There was perhaps not a man in Governor Reynolds's council who did not know better than he did how to govern
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[CHAP. II.
the Georgia colony, for every one of them, and they were superior men, knew the condition of things in the colony as Governor Reynolds could not have possibly known it; but the blustering old sea captain, who knew noth- ing of the conditions about him, and who, in addition to his own incompetency, was under the control of his pri- vate secretary, Dr. Little, another newcomer who was thoroughly detested by all of the council, treated their suggestions with contempt, and was not even satisfied when they expelled Mr. Carr and Mr. Gray and Mr. Farmer from the Assembly, but dismissed Mr. Clement Martin from the council and was generally offensive.
There was no easy time for the captain-general and com- mander-in-chief in the new colony. His salary was small, his expenses were heavy, and the home government was not disposed to make further grants to a colony which made so poor a return.
The Assembly was impertinent, if not rebellious, the council was as bad, and so, as matters did not improve when he had spent two years of a troublous kind in the province, and had done some hard work, he asked relief, and went back to England to his congenial place on the quarter-deck once more .*
The colonists had not been pleased with Governor Rey- nolds, and he fretted at the idea of being an exile to a small American town, so there was mutual pleasure at the separation. He said there were only one hundred and fifty houses in Savannah; the biggest of them was used for the meeting of the president and council; " but one end fell down whilst we were there, and obliged us to move to a kind of shed behind the court-house which was quite unfit. I have given orders, with the advice of the council, to fit up a shell of a house which was lately built as far as the laying of the sills, but never made use of. The prison
* Stephens and Jones.
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was an insecure structure, which I ordered to be strength- ened with bolts and bars."
Captain De Brahm, who came during Governor Stephens's last incumbency, confirms the governor's story. He says he could have bought the best improved lot in Savannah for a few pounds, and somewhat complacently intimates that if he had not come when he did the colony would have been deserted.
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