USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48
Governor Reynolds, however, did much good work. He organized the courts and put the government machinery into operation. He was governor in a very important day for Georgia, for the opening wide the gates to new settlers brought in the first American immigrants to the colony, except the few settlers who had come from lower South Carolina into the country below Savannah. There were the Virginians and North Carolinians, who came near this time to St. George's parish, then including all of Burke, Jefferson, and a large part of Screven county. In my sketches of these counties I have given a fuller account of these settlers than I can give here. They were numerous enough to send a representative from Halifax to the first Assembly called by Governor Reynolds, and when the parishes were laid off by Governor Ellis, to call for a special parish known as St. George's. A body of Quakers, before 1754, had settled some lands on Little river at a place which was called Blendon. It was in St. Paul's parish, on Little river, and was near the spot where Wrightsboro was afterward located. These Quakers were led by the Edmond Gray who became so obnoxious to Governor Reynolds. The Indians, however, menaced the peace-loving Quakers and they decided to abandon the settlement. The project was however revived during the time of Governor Wright, under the care of Joseph Mat- tock and Jona Sells, and a road joining the Savannah road, in St. George's parish, known still as the Quaker road, was
42
THE STORY OF GEORGIA
[CHAP. IL.
cut at that time. There is near Wrightsboro a Quaker graveyard, but the Quaker settlement was abandoned during the Revolution.
While Jones, who is remarkably accurate, puts the settle- ment of the Scotch-Irish on the Ogeechee as late as 1768, I am sure there were many of these people in St. George's parish as early as the days of Governor Reynolds. Some who were associated with Galphin in the Indian trade were doubtless in the Nation before Oglethorpe came ; but after the country was fairly opened and all restrictions on land- holders had been removed, the tide of settlement from the north of Ireland set in very rapidly. The same class of Scotch-Irishmen who came to Pennsylvania, to Virginia and to the Carolinas came to Georgia and made quite a settle- ment. Captain De Brahm says that there were two hun- dred families in this section of the colony when his account was written, and, as will be seen by examining the list of land-patents, there were a large number who are registered as having received grants of land before 1768, whom one recognizes as being the progenitors of families who were afterward prominent in Jefferson, Screven and Burke coun- ties, and a Mr. Edward Brown, Andrew and James Lam- bert, Arthur Thomas, Jacob Depford and Solomon Kempe had a settlement on the Ogeechee as early as 1756, in what is now Jefferson and Screven counties.
The little hamlet about Fort Augusta continued to grow, and there was now at the fort a considerable village of log huts, and hundreds of Indians came to it on trading expe- ditions every season, bringing peltry and slaves and ponies, and buying rum and ammunition and Indian guns.
These traders, of whom we spoke in the last chapter, were now quite numerous and had posts in various parts of the nations, and, whether among Creeks or Cherokees or Choctaws, they took to themselves Indian wives, generally the daughters of the chiefs, and in after time their children
43
AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1754-1775.]
by these Indian squaws were chiefs of the tribes, and the Adairs, Rosses, McIntoshes, McGilverays, and many others had their descendants among the Indians, much to the grief of the white man. Nor were they alone, but Englishmen of high birth left the homes of the white people and mar- ried, lived and died among the Indians, and their children led in many a foray against the white invaders in after
.
MAJOR RIDGE (INDIAN).
time. To these must be added not a few Virginians who were traders.
The settled portion of the colony, if any could be called settled at that early day, was confined to a narrow strip stretching along the Savannah, the Ogeechee and the Alta- maha rivers, and on the lands near the coast. The recog- nized western boundary of the white settlement was the Ogeechee. The section east of this river was slowly filling up with white people, but beyond the Ogeechee river, save a few small and scattered Creek and Chickasaw towns, all was an Indian hunting-ground. The Cherokees occupied,
44
THE STORY OF GEORGIA
[CHAP. II.
without any one disturbing them, the northern and north- western part of the State, but they had their principal towns in East Tennessee. The Spanish gold-digger, under De Soto, had traversed their country in search of gold, and had left a record of his stay in the pits he had dug, but other than these no whites had as yet disturbed the dusky denizens of these valleys.
Hitherto our attention has been directed to those settlers who came from over the sea, but now we are to speak of a colony of native Americans, who were to do much for Georgia and to have a great influence on her future history. During the time when Governor Stephens held over,.and before Governor Reynolds reached Savannah, the Dorches- ter settlement, in what was afterwards St. John's parish, was made.
Captain De Brahm, a German engineer who made the first map of the colony and brought over the German emigrants, came to the colony at that time, and says he induced these settlers to come.
In Plymouth, England, in the heat of the persecution of the Puritans by Archbishop Laud about 1630, a colony of Church of England people, weary of bishops and of litur- gies, resolved to emigrate to then just settled New England. This they did and fixed their home at Dorchester, Mass. They accepted the Congregational form of government they found there, and became a Congregational church, with a Calvinistic confession. Fifty years after this they found themselves cramped for land, and as South Carolina had been settled largely by those who sympathized with their religious and political views, they secured a large grant of land on the Ashley river and planted a colony there, which they called Dorchester also. Here they planted rice and became large slaveholders.
They received an addition to their number from Virginia. The rice country about them was not sufficient for their
45
AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1754-1775.]
needs, and as soon as Georgia allowed the planters to bring slaves into the colony they sent over some of their congre- gation to survey the land. There were some extensive swamps between Savannah and Darien, in what is now known as the swamp land of Liberty county. They were admirably adapted to the growth of rice, but, save to a rice- planter accustomed to malarial swamps, certainly uninvit- ing. The Dorchester people succeeded in getting grants from the colonial government which covered over thirty thousand acres of this fertile country. They did not at once remove, but, remaining a part of the year in South Carolina, they came to Georgia after their crop was made and opened land and built shelters until they were ready to change their habitations.
These immigrants fixed their homes on the edge of the swamps, building their humble cabins in the very center of the malarious district. The heavy timber was cleared away, the swamps were ditched and the dams made, and they moved their families and the cultivation of rice began. The only tool used in culture after the land was cleared, says Colonel Jones, was the hoe, and the rice was brought from the field on the head of the negroes and cleaned from the husks with pestle and mortar. Corn was ground in hand-mills. The market was Savannah, to which the rough rice was shipped by coasting schooners. The colony pros- pered and was soon quite populous. We give here a list of persons who received grants of five hundred acres : John Davis, John Maxwell, James Maxwell, William Maxwell, John Stevens, Benjamin Baker, John Lupton, Rev. Mr. Os- good, Samuel Stephens, Sarah Norman, Daniel Slade, Ed- ward Sumner, Andrew Way, Richard Spencer, William Brumley, Sarah Osgood, Rich Giraudeau, Joseph Bacon, Jonathan Bacon, John Norman, Sarah Mitchell, John Ed- wards, John Ellrod, John Way, William Graves, James Nor- man, John Stewart, Samuel James, Robert Glass, Robert
46
THE STORY OF GEORGIA
[CHAP. II.
Eccles, John Quarterman, David Ross, William Lupton, Richard Baker, John Stevens, Joseph Oswald, Jacob Wes- ton, Joshua Clarke, A. Gleve, William Mackay, David Fox, Willoughby West, Palmer Gaulding, William Russell, Par- menus Way, Jacob Riden, Benjamin Andrew, and James Andrew.
It was decided by them to establish a market town nearer to the colony than Savannah, and in 1758 the town of Sun- bury, on the western bank of Medway river, was laid out. Colonel Jones, who gives a history of the dead towns of Georgia, gives not only a plot of the young city but a list of the lot-holders, which is interesting as showing who re- sided in this county at that time. They were: Mark Carr, " Grey Elliott, Francis Arthur, William Graves, John Cub- bege, James Maxwell, Mary Spivey, Samuel Bennerworth, Stephen Dickerson, James Fisher, Schmidt & Molich, Swin- ton & Co., Darling & Munro, Thomas Peacock, A. Darling, Thomas Young, Roger Kelsal, John James, John Bacon, John Stewart, John Lupton, Dunbar, Young & Co., James Dunham, Lyman Hall, Samuel Miller, Kenneth Bailey, Samuel Benniworth, William Stevenson, Tabitha Bacon, John Winn, David Jerray, Francis Arthur, John Steward, John Lawson, Thomas Ralph, John Quarterman, Thomas Goldsmith, James Houston, Ivan Stevens, William Baker, Elijah Simmons, Robert Bolton, John Humphrey, Francis Guilland, Henry Saltus, Donald McKay, Stephen Dicken- son, James Hurley, Francis Lee, John Quarterman, James Dowell, John Irvine, Jemima Irvine, Math Smallwood, William Peacock, John Osgood, Rebecca Way, Hugh Clark, Paris Wayy Nath Yates, William Dunham, Charles West, Samuel West, Thomas Carter, Audley Maxwell, John Graves, John Baker, James Fisher, Jno. Elliot, Jno. Lyman, John Sutherland, Sam Jeanes, Joseph Tichenor, William Mullen, William Davis, James Sergeant, John Jones, Strong Ashmore, F. Arthur, George Morris, Joshua Snowden,
47
AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1754-1775.]
James Andrew, Samuel Morcock, George Bodington, Mary Bateman, Patrick McKay, Benjamin Andrew, Marmaduke Gerry, John Winn, Richard Mills, James Hatcher, John Perkins, William Low, Barnard Romans, Ed Mahone, R. Spencer, John Mitchell, Morgan Tabb, Joseph Watcher, Jno. Gasper Stirkey, John Jones, Joseph Richardson, Robert Smallwood, John Futes, Arthur Carney, Isaac Linder, Fred- erick Holsendorf.
The first thing these good people did after fixing their homes was to build them a log church in the midst of their plantations. This church was succeeded by a better one, which was burned during the Revolution, and that by a still better one. For many years the Midway church with its chapels, first at Sunbury, then at Walthourville, commanded the best talent of the Presbyterian Church, and the congre- gation was large, wealthy, and intelligent, but after the last war reluctantly the church was given up by the whites and is now occupied by the negroes.
The Rev. Mr. Osgood, for whom Bishop James Osgood Andrew was named, was the pastor they brought with them from South Carolina. Like his parishioners, he was a. planter and a man evidently of some estate. He was virtu- ally a Presbyterian, and after Mr. McLeod, who only re- mained a little while in Georgia, was the first Presbyterian minister who had a charge in Georgia; for while Midway was a Congregational church during almost its entire his- tory, the pastoral office was filled by Presbyterian minis- ters, with whom the Congregationalists of an early day in America were always in accord.
It was to be expected that the Puritans of Dorchester would sympathize with their New England kinsmen in their resistance to the course of the English government, and they were in advance of all others in Georgia in their spirit of rebellion. They were represented in every public move- ment in Savannah, and sent hundreds of barrels of rice to
48
THE STORY OF GEORGIA
[CHAP. II.
the poor in Boston, and when the convention failed to send delegates to the Constitutional Congress the parish of St. John sent Dr. Lyman Hall as its representative. Two signers of the Declaration-Lyman Hall and Button Gwin- nett-were both from this parish, though Mr. Gwinnett was not a member of the Dorchester colony.
The list of grantees as I have given it is necessarily very imperfect, and is confined to those who received grants of five hundred acres. The list of those receiving grants
BUTTON GWINNETT.
from the State published in the appendix will give many more than those mentioned above, while the memorandum of those who had lots in Sunbury will give a still clearer idea of the people who composed this colony when it was in its infancy.
As slavery was now legalized in the colony the Assembly passed sundry laws with reference to the treatment of slaves. It must be remembered that the larger part of the slaves were savages direct from Africa. They had been captured by their own countrymen in the cruel wars the tribes waged with each other, and driven like cattle to the
49
AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1754-1775.]
west African ports, where they had been sold to the Por- tuguese and English traders. They had no idea of honesty, no feeling of pity to a foe, no conception of sex- ual purity or marital fidelity. They could not speak the language of the people who owned them and understood nothing of what was said to them except a few plain com- mands. Accustomed to nakedness and hunger in their own land, they found the regular supply of rice and pota- toes and the scanty apparel furnished by the rice-planters a great advance beyond all they had in negro-land. Slavery was permitted everywhere at that time and was condemned by none, not even the Quakers. The slavery, however, which was to be allowed in the colonies was by no means Roman or Grecian or African slavery, for the control of the slave was restricted by law, and the slave was carefully protected from all bodily harm. The acts passed provided : I. That the slave should not leave his place without a written permit. 2. Unusual assemblages of slaves were to be dispersed. 3. If he was guilty of a capital crime he should be tried by two justices and pun- ished with death. 4. A justice and two freeholders were a sufficient court for ordinary offenses. 5. Arson should be punished with death. 6. Stealing a slave or effacing his brand should be a felony. 7. If a slave was con- demned to death the colony should pay his value to his owner, but not more than fifty pounds. 8. No slave should carry firearms. 9. If a slave struck a white man he should be punished. If he struck him the third time he should be put to death. Cruelty to slaves was forbidden. If any one should wilfully murder his slave he should be adjudged guilty of a felony, with the benefit of the clergy, for the first offense ; but if he did it the second time he should be deemed guilty of a murther. 10. If he should kill a slave in heat he should forfeit fifty pounds. II. If 4
50
THE STORY OF GEORGIA
[CHAP. II.
he should maim him or cruelly maltreat him, he should. forfeit ten pounds. 12. If he did not give him sufficient food and clothing he should be fined. 13. If an owner was charged with inhuman conduct, he should be presumed to be guilty, unless he showed his innocence. No one- could have a plantation occupied entirely by slaves.
Governor Reynolds was succeeded by the scholarly and considerate Governor Ellis. Governor Ellis made an. honest and successful effort to conciliate the offended col- onists and to secure peace to all the colony. The Assem- bly, which had been called by Governor Reynolds, was by no means a representative body, and those who were eligi- ble to seats in it were by the restrictions laid down reduced. to a very few.
The Assembly called by Governor Ellis met and estab- lished the Church of England and divided the colony into parishes. The administration of Governor Ellis was une -- , ventful and unimportant. He left the colony after a short stay in it and went back to England, carrying with him good wishes to all the colonists and a holy horror of the hot summers in Savannah. The most important and really the only notable act of his administration was the establishment of the Church of England and the division of the State into parishes. There was in Georgia at that time Christ Church, in Savannah ; St. Paul's Church, in Augusta ; St. George's, a log church, in Burke county ; a. Lutheran Church, in Ebenezer ; a Congregational in Liberty county; and these were all the churches from above Augusta to Amelia Island. There was the rector of Christ Church in Savannah, and a missionary sent out by the. Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign parts, Mr. Jonathan Copp, whose home was in Augusta. These were the only Episcopal ministers in the colony. Mr. Osgood was the only Congregationalist and Mr. Bedge- wood the only Baptist, and he had no organized church to
51
AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1754-1775 ]
serve. The Lutherans had two pastors, Mr. Bolzius and Mr. Gronau, but they preached only in German. The Lutherans built them a small church in Savannah, which was supplied by these Ebenezer pastors.
There seems to have been little opposition to the estab- lishment of the Church, and it was after all a mere form of church establishment. It was abandoned in twenty years, and did not exist long enough to accomplish any noticeable results.
The parishes were: Christ Church, which included all of Chatham and the islands adjacent.
St. Matthew's, which included all of Effingham and much of Screven.
St. George's, all of Burke, Jefferson, and a part of Screven.
St. Paul's, all of Richmond, Columbia, McDuffie, and a part of Warren.
St. John's, all of Liberty.
St. Andrew's, all the section south of the Altamaha, near Darien.
St. Philip's, the section on the south side of the Ogeechee, west of Liberty.
St. James's, Frederica and the county south of it to the disputed line.
In 1765 four new parishes, St. Patrick's, St. David's, St. Thomas's and St. Mary's, were laid out in the section south of the Altamaha, and now contained in Camden, Charlton, and the adjoining counties. These parishes were not really organized, and were such in name only.
There was a feeble effort to build a church in each of these parishes, but save the log church in Augusta and in St. George's parish I can find no evidence that any others were built.
Governor James Wright, who succeeded Governor Ellis, was by far the ablest man who had ever been governor of
52
THE STORY OF GEORGIA
[CHAP. II.
BRAD
PARISHES OF GEORGIA.
The State was laid off Into 8 parishes In 1758, viz .: St. Paul, St. George. St. Matthew, Christ Church. St. Philip, St. John, St. Andrew and St. James. Four others were added In 1765. viz .: St David. St. Patrick, St. Thomas and St. Marys,
LITTLE
ST PAUL -
AVANNAN
BRIAR C
GEORGE
RIVER
ST MATTHEW
OGEECHEE RIVER
CANNOUCH
ST PHILIP
RIVER
HRIST.
5
-
ALTAMAHA
RIVER
IST WOHNS
Sr
ANDREW
... ST
DAVID
--
JAMES
THOMA'S
ST
ATLANTIC OCEAN
SATIMA RIVER
ST PATRICK
ST MARYS
FLORIDA
This excellent map was originally prepared under the direction of the University Publish- ing Co., who published Evans's History, and was transferred from their book to the pages of the Constitution, which has kindly furnished it to me. G. G. SMITH.
SOUTH CAROLINA
CHURCH
53
AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
1754-1775 ]
Georgia, and he has had no superior in that office since his day.
He was a South Carolinian by birth, and was a gentle- man of fine culture. He was a lawyer, as his father, Chief Justice Wright of South Carolina, had been before him. At the time he received his appointment as governor he was colonial agent ot Georgia in London. He was a man of large estate and great -purity of character. He had a strong will and great common sense. The question of removing the capital from Savannah to the new city of Hardwick, which had been settled by Governor Reynolds and Governor Ellis against Savannah, he reopened and de- cided that the capital should remain where it was and where it had been in Savannah, and the scheme of the new city was abandoned.
Governor Wright found the civil government well organ- ized. The difficulties arising from the impracticable meas- ures of the trustees had now been removed, and there was a prospect of a prosperous and peaceful rule. He sur- rounded himself with a wise council and made himself fully acquainted with all the needs of the growing colony. The Indians had given some little trouble to the frontier people, but in the main were peaceful. He called the Assembly together in Savannah. It consisted of: Jos. Ottalenghe, YGrey Elliot, Lewis Johnson, Jos. Gibbons, Christ Church; Wm. Francis, N. W. Jones, Abercorn; Wm. Ewen, James De Vaux, Ebenezer; Alex Wylly, Halifax, James White- field, St. George's; Edward Barnard, John Graham, Williams, Lachlin McGilveray, St. Paul's; Elisha Butler, John Maxwell, Great Ogeechee; Thomas Carter, Parmenus - Way, John Winn, St. John's; Robert Baillie, Jno. Holmes, St. Andrew's ; Lachlin McIntosh, St. James's.
As will appear, the members of the Assembly did not always reside in the parishes which they represented. Hali- fax, in St. George's, a comparatively new section in what is
54
THE STORY OF GEORGIA
[CHAP. II.
now Burke and Screven, was represented by Alex Wylly, of Christ Church, and Wm. Ewen and James De Vaux rep- resented Ebenezer; while John Holmes, the Episcopal minister, represented St. Andrew's.
The Assembly seems to have been a harmonious body of able and intelligent men. The colony was now prospering. The wild schemes of raising silk and wine had been sur- rendered. The restrictions on land holdings and on slavery were given up and everything promised well for the future.
Shortly after Governor Wright began his career as gov- ernor, the governors of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia met in Augusta and secured a cession of lands, and ten years after he purchased another body. As these two cessions were only ten years apart, and the sections purchased were contiguous, it is hardly necessary to consider them separately. The country first secured lay in the oak and hickory lands north of Augusta, in what is now Columbia county, and extended westward to what is now the west boundary of McDuffie county; in the second purchase in 1773 a body of land very much like this was also secured in what was afterward Wilkes county. This country was wonderfully beautiful and attractive. The land was mainly of two kinds, the oak and hickory lands and what was then known as the pine-barrens. There were no Indian settlements of importance in the section, and it was reserved by them as a hunting-ground. The first comers regarded the pine woods as uninhabitable, and set- tled along the creeks and rivers of the red lands. The In- dians came annually in large hunting parties to kill the game which was in such abundance, and every winter they burned the woods to provide for the growth of the wild pasturage.
There had doubtless been some intruders on these lands, and no doubt horses and cattle were being raised on the range by South Carolina ranchmen and Indian traders.
1754 -1775.]
AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
55
There had been an effort to settle a colony on Little river in this section ten years before, but as we have seen it was broken up by the Indians. Now that this land was secured, and the Indians pacified, it was opened to settlement on
1!
.
INDIAN LIFE.
11%.
2
most liberal terms. Any one who would file before a mag- istrate his purpose to settle in the land could get one hun- dred acres if he was single, two hundred if he was married, and an additional fifty acres for each child and each slave until five hundred acres were secured, at a nominal rental
56
THE STORY OF GEORGIA
[CHAP. II.
of two shillings a hundred acres. The offers of free farms were so generous that the tide of settlers poured in with great volume and covered the country. These people came from Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland, and settled on the banks of the Savannah river, the Kiokee creeks and Little river. In a study of the counties I have given a fuller account of the country and of the people. The tide of prosperity was rapidly rising.
When the Stamp Act troubles began there was but little excitement in Georgia outside of Savannah and Sunbury. In Savannah the young men paraded and burned in effigy obnoxious persons. The governor was furiously indignant, and in loud yet vain proclamation denounced the acts of the seditious.
The Liberty Boys were organized and the governor ordered out his little army of fifty-four men to take the stamps to the guard-house. The stamp-distributer came, and the intrepid governor protected him as well as he could, but he found himself unable to do so perfectly, and the English officer left the town. Governor Wright was menaced and the good and loyal James Habersham threat- ened also. Mobs gathered, a collision seemed imminent, but no further harm came than the burning of the governor in effigy. The stamps were in Savannah, but the people would not use them; though much to the indignation of the sister colony, South Carolina, the governor did use them on the clearance papers of the seventy sail in port at that time. The governor had barely held his own when the Stamp Act was repealed, much to his relief. But it was only a temporary lull. The Assembly refused to grant supplies to the soldiers quartered among the people. The Assembly appointed a new London agent, which the gov- ernor denied their right to do, and thus the contest between him and his Legislature grew more violent. Then the Assembly wished to issue twenty thousand pounds paper
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.