USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 6
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AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
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money. The governor thought twelve thousand pounds sufficient, and the king agreed with the governor. The Assembly passed an act for the government of the negroes; the governor approved it, but the king vetoed it. The colony was in a bad humor with the whole British gov- ernment, and when Benjamin Franklin went to England to attend to the affairs of other colonies, Georgia appointed him to attend to her interests too, much to the disgust of the governor, who had but little use for the Pennsylvania printer. Then the Massachusetts colony sent out a circular
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
letter, and Mr. Alexander Wylly, the speaker, replied to it, approving its contents. When the Assembly met, although the governor expressed his disapproval of the circular, the Assembly passed resolutions of approval. The governor was very much angered at this procedure and, coming in, dissolved the Assembly.
The Assembly, now at open war with the governor, had sent an address to Dr. Franklin to be delivered to the king, which address the king refused to receive.
Then the merchants and planters began to hold meet-
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[CHAP. 11.
ings, and even Mr. Jonathan Bryan, one of the council, presided over their meetings; and Mr. Alexander Creigh- ton introduced a resolution forbidding any importation of taxed products. The king promptly displaced Mr. Bryan, and twice the governor dissolved the rebellious Assembly. When this body met again in 1770 Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones was elected speaker. This was a gross affront to the governor, who had little use for the rebellious doctor, and
DR. NOBLE WIMBERLY JONES.
he ordered a new election. The Assembly held it and re- elected Dr. Jones, and as they would elect no one else the governor sent them home.
Then Sir James gladly took a respite from this incessant fight with his Assembly and went on a visit to England, and James Habersham took his place for the time being. Mr. Habersham was a man of remarkable probity, and while he sympathized with the colony to a great extent, he was loyal to the crown. The Assembly was composed of men with whom he had been associated from their first coming
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into the colony. He had been in the colony for nearly forty years, he had stood by it in all its struggles, he de- plored this conflict of opinion and sympathized with the colonists, but his duty was plain, and when the members persisted in electing Dr. Jones he promptly dissolved the Assembly. Then there was for a time quiet, and colonists continued to flock into the new lands on Little river and the Ogeechee.
There was no fairer land in Georgia than the lands in St. George's and St. Paul's parishes, which were now open to settlers. Along the clear streams, for as yet they were as crystal, there stretched great bodies of cane in which the bear found his home, and on the rich wild grasses the myriad of deer fed. The hills were covered with a mag- nificent forest. The undergrowth had been kept down by the Indians, who burned the woods annually that the grasses might flourish. The forests were like a king's park. Herds of deer, droves of turkeys, and great flocks of rich-hued birds were found in every part of the land. The cattle needed no pasturage that the woods did not furnish. There were thousands of streamlets and springs, and when the land was opened there was a rich reward to the tiller's toil. It was no wonder then that, as soon as the land was offered to the settlers, they came in such numbers. Life with them was at first hard. There were no roads, and they came with their small supply of needful things on pack-horses. They built their cabins of round logs and covered them with split boards. At the first the floor was of packed clay, and the great chimney, with its wide hearth, was made of clay and stakes. There were no glazed windows and the door was made of split boards. Oftentimes there had not been a single nail used in building the cabin. The saw and axe and auger and frow had been the only tools. There was a scant supply of furniture, and it had been made mainly by hand; a three-legged
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THE STORY OF GEORGIA
[CHAP. II.
stool, a puncheon bench, and, after the chair-maker came, a stout chair of hickory, with a raw-hide seat, were the con- veniences. The bedsteads were made by hand, and the cattail and the long moss, and sometimes the leaves and pine straw, provided a couch for the sleepers.
The frontiersman had no easy time in providing food supplies. A few cattle he brought with him. Deer were abundant, and he killed an occasional bear, while wild turkeys were so plentiful that they were caught in pens and their flesh was dried and used as bread.
EARLY SETTLER'S CABIN.
There were some goods to be bought in Augusta at the stores of the traders, but there was little money on the frontier. By carrying peltry to the markets he secured powder and lead and salt. This was the condition of things on the frontier, but on the coast there was access to markets, and even at this early period comforts were com- mon, and in the cities there was much elegance and many luxuries.
The new immigration was very large. The first comers had reported so favorably of the land that great crowds of immigrants came from the older counties of Virginia and
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1754-1775.] AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
from middle and eastern North Carolina into St. Paul's, St. George's and St. Matthew's parishes. Many Scotch-Irish- men came directly from Ireland and settled in what is now Jefferson county, which was then St. George's parish. Many Marylanders came into the lands on Little river, and another . body of Quakers came from North Carolina, led by Mr. Jos. Mattocks, and settled near what was known as the .
11/1
JKARST
PIONEERS.
village of Wrightsboro. When the newly ceded lands in 1773 were opened for settlement there was at once a large immigration into that section, which was afterward known as Wilkes.
The tide of settlers was not checked by the beginning of the Revolution, for it was several years after the war had begun that these frontier people were at all disturbed.
The wondrous fertility and healthfulness of these lands drew at once a rush of settlers from the older colonies.
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The lands were given away, and, without waiting to secure headrights or patents, the new immigrant came into these woods to choose his home. He found the tract upon which he wished to settle, put down his stakes and began to build his cabin. It was only necessary for him to file: with the governor's council an affidavit that he intended to. settle in the colony, and an order was given to the surveyor to lay out for him two hundred acres of land as his head- right, and fifty acres additional for each negro he might bring with him. These newcomers, while of the same: transatlantic stock with the settlers in lower Georgia, were not their close kinsmen; they were, as their grand- fathers had been, native Americans. Mr. Anthony Stokes, who was judge of one of the king's courts, and wrote a book concerning Georgia, speaks of them as convicts and. renegades driven out of the older States, but Mr. Stokes was a cockney who knew nothing of these people.
The early settlers of upper Georgia were not all of the same class, but they were much more homogeneous than the white people of the lower part of the State. The low- country people were English, Scotch, and Germans, but. the up-country people were all native Americans. The low-country English and Scotch people were much more. under the influence of English traditions, and there was a .wider division between classes than in the up-country. Among these up-countrymen there were not a few ignorant. unaspiring people. They were not peasants; they lived in their own cabins, and worked their own fields. They had never known anything of luxury and had a sovereign con- tempt for it. Their origin was probably an humble one. Their ancestors of three generations before had been brought over to Virginia by an enterprising ship-owner and sold to a tobacco planter for five years, and received a peck of corn a week and two suits of plain clothing during the: year for wages, and after five years of servitude were freed ..
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AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
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When they were no longer in bondage they went out to the newer parts of Virginia and into North Carolina, and now their descendants came to Georgia. Some of them were thriftless and ignorant and degraded. That there were such among the early Georgians it would be folly to deny. The ubiquitous cracker we will never lose sight of, but it would be as untrue to history to put the mass of the upper Georgians among them, as to put men like James Habersham, or Noble Jones, or John More McIntosh, or the Salzburghers among the English paupers, the German servants and the Scotch peasants who composed a part of the first immigration to Savannah. These up-country people were not many of them men of means at the first. They had but little education and were plain people in manner and plain in dress and surroundings, but they had never been in bondage to any man. Many of them sprang from the best yeomanry of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England, and many of them were direct descendants of the landed gentry of England. These were the first comers into upper Georgia. An examination of the minutes of the council gives us an insight into their circumstances. There was an Irish colony, as it was called, near what is now Louisville, a large settlement of Quakers near Wrights- boro and on Little river, and a constant influx of Mary- landers, Virginians and North Carolinians into the newly ceded lands. There were quite a number of slaves brought. into this section, but few of the settlers had more than three or four. There was no farming, all were stock-raisers. Horses and cattle were turned on the range and rapidly in- creased in number. The low-country was receiving settlers from South Carolina, who came with many slaves, and who lived in great elegance, but the up-country was still a land of pioneers.
Their fathers had continued the old English custom of bequeathing their landed property to the eldest son, and
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[CHAP. II.
the younger children were compelled to seek homes in the lands of new Virginia and North Carolina. They had no opportunities to secure an education, and grew up with oftentimes no more than was necessary to enable them to read. Their children were given homes in Georgia if they would occupy them, and they came in large numbers. The headright of two hundred acres was free, and the settler had but to choose his land to have it granted to him. There was little in outside appearances to distinguish a man whose ancestry went back to the Conquest from the man whose ancestors had been serfs for generations. They dressed in the same garb and used the same dialect, com- mon dangers united all classes, and common interests caused them to blend. They married and intermarried, and soon they were by men like Sir Anthony Stokes grouped together as composing one class.
These various classes in after-times became to some ex- tent distinct, but up to the Revolution there was little to mark them. After the Revolution the lines were more dis- tinctly drawn. Every interest was advancing in the colony, and the enterprising Mr. Whitefield projected another grand scheme. The orphanage which he had founded, and which was fairly opened in 1741, had been carefully watched over by him for over thirty years, and had been fostered by his constant care. As the prosperity of the colony during Governor Wright's time had greatly increased the means of the people, the necessity for a home for orphans dimin- ished. Mr. Whitefield then conceived the plan of establish- ing a college for the young men of the Southern colonies and of the English West Indies. He had now about sixty orphans, one thousand eight hundred acres of land and thirty negroes, and the Legislature granted him two thou- sand acres of land additional on Turtle river, not far from Brunswick, for the endowment of the college. He proposed to go to England to collect funds, and invest five thousand
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AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
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dollars in negroes to cultivate his newly granted rice land, near the Altamaha, but on his way to England, in Newberry- port, Mass., he suddenly died. Not long after the college buildings were consumed by fire. He had left the property to his friend and patron, Lady Huntington. She rebuilt the house, but it never was properly established as a college; and, as Colonel Jones, who has given so full a sketch of Bethesda, says, was in moribund condition when it came into her hands .* It never rallied. The troubles with the mother country came. Its great friend, James Habersham, died in New Jersey in 1775. The property was confiscated and passed into the possession of the State, and after sundry unhappy experiences it was finally sold in 1808, and the proceeds distributed among certain benevolent institutions in Savannah. In 1854 a society of benevolent men of all classes, known as the Union Society, bought the site again and established a home for orphans which abides to this day.
The moral sentiment of the colony, so high in the first years, was not lowered during Governor Wright's time. The influence of men like Mr. Habersham and Mr. Bryan, and especially Mr. Whitefield, of the pious Lutherans, and now of the Puritans at Dorchester, all united to give to the colony a decidedly religious complexion.
Although the Church of England was established, an act was passed by which dissenters were not required to even take an oath before the courts in a way objectionable to them, and there was no interference at all with their relig- ious privileges. The most rigid Puritan could not have asked for laws which were more sweeping on the subject of gaming, lotteries, Sabbath observance, profane swearing, or horse-racing. The law against Sabbath-breaking made in 1765, and revived, with the exception of two features, after
* See Stevens and Jones for fuller account.
5
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the Revolution, required the most scrupulous observance- of that holy day. The law required every one to go to church, under a penalty, every Sunday, and forbade any work, trading, traveling, reveling, hunting, fishing, or- gaming on that day. It required justices and town wardens to carry out the law, and that the act should be read yearly in every church. The act was modified, but not repealed, when the independence of the State was secured. The. administration of Sir James Wright was a clean one, and. the morals of his council were of the highest kind. The laxity of conduct found in the young State was not in the- colony. There were schools in Savannah, Sunbury, and. at Ebenezer, Bethesda and Augusta, and doubtless there were private tutors in the homes of the rice-planters on the Altamaha, and some schools in St. George's parish; but the settlers in the newer sections were as yet struggling with the question as to how they were to be fed, and their educational privileges were very few.
In material things the older part of the colony had very rapidly advanced, but nowhere had the advancement been so great as in the Dorchester settlement. The marshes had. been ditched and banked, rice-fields had been opened, and large plantations were made. Sunbury had become quite a. populous little village of eight hundred to one thousand in -- habitants, with a considerable trade from all the country about, and was exporting to England direct. The sea fur- nished rich supplies of fish and oysters, the woods were full of deer and turkeys; the bear and the panthers, or- tigers, as the people called them, were in the swamps, and great droves of wild fowl came annually to lakes and lagoons. There was the church at Midway where the planters assembled for their weekly service, and the social life in so homogeneous a community was of the most de- lightful kind. The people of this community brought cul -. ture, refinement and religion with them, and in this section.
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of Georgia, where for countless miles to the westward there was a forest of pine woods unbroken save by a few Indian villages, there was a community rarely equalled for intel- ligence and piety, and in which was found solid comfort, and even elegance of living. The change in the condition of things on the Altamaha during the years since slavery had been allowed had been very decided. The people living near Darien were nearly all of them kinspeople. John More McIntosh, who had founded the colony, had become a man of large fortune, and on the main on the rice plantations were a large number of his kinsmen. The Scotchmen who came to New Inverness were now scattered all over the tide-water country and were prosperous stock- raisers. There were many Scotchmen engaged in mercan- tile business in Savannah and Sunbury, and who were in the Indian trade in Augusta.
The large incoming of new settlers brought a lively trade to the three main markets, and as the visionary schemes of raising silk and wine were given up the colonists gave their attention to corn, indigo, rice and cattle.
Negro slaves were very cheap, and they were becoming very numerous on the sea islands and the rice plantations. The sea island planters were large producers of indigo, while the rice plantations were above the salt water on the coast. The people in the interior gave their attention almost entirely to corn and live stock. There was some lumber cut by whip saws; some crude turpentine and pitch and a large quantity of peltry of all kinds, myrtle-wax, hogs and cattle, which found a market in Savannah.
The counties below the Altamaha were very thinly peo- pled. Where St. Marys now is was a frontier post, and in the interior there were a few people on cattle ranches, but up to the Revolution the population was very small and the people very poor and very lawless.
The Germans were increasing. The new coming Ger-
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[CHAP. II.
mans brought in by Captain De Brahm and the Salzburghers had become one. They were of the same tongue and of the same faith, and naturally coalesced. These people were small farmers but very thrifty, and were constantly extend- ing their lines and improving their estates. They had good pastors and intelligent schoolmasters, and when the Revo- lution began no people could have been more thrifty.
Up the Savannah river above the pine forests of St. Matthews there was a large section of valuable land un- suited for rice planting, but very fertile. It was on the Savannah and Ogeechee rivers and the creeks flowing into them, and was included in St. George's and St. Matthew's parishes. It was known as the borough of Halifax. In that part of this country now known as Burke, Screven and Jefferson, as we have seen elsewhere, there had come a great many worthy settlers from Virginia and North Caro- lina, and in the western part of it, as we have already seen, there was a large settlement of Scotch-Irish people. The Savannah river for much of its course through these counties was bordered by a thick swamp of cypress and water-oaks, and great cane-brakes, but along Briar and Bark Camp, McIntosh and McBeans, and Rocky creeks and the Ogee- chee river there were fine lands adapted to the cultivation of corn and the raising of stock. People of moderate means had come in numbers into this country where land was easily secured and preempted small farms, which in course of time became large cotton plantations. But for the civil strife which the Revolution brought in, there would have been little disturbance to them during the war, but the Tories made sad ravages of these frontier homes.
Of the history of Savannah and Augusta I speak more particularly elsewhere, and it is not needful to do more here than mention the fact of their rapid growth and great pros- perity. They were the chief commercial marts and were
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largely peopled by cannie Scotch traders who drove a thrifty business.
The twenty years which had elapsed since the trustees had surrendered their charter had brought about great changes in the social life of older parts of the colony, in which now everything had taken shape. The removal of the restriction concerning slavery, the admirable adaptation of the lands on the Ogeechee and Savannah and the Alta- maha for rice culture, and the low price of negroes and the fact that the land was given away, led to the opening of large plantations and the establishment of homes of elegance in Savannah. The inventory of the property shows that before 1774 in Savannah and in Liberty county some of the planters had every elegance, even to phaetons and horses. There was a life of luxurious indulgence among the gentlemen, whether they lived on their estates or in their city residences. The importers brought into Savannah silks and satins from France, Madeira wine, cognac brandy, cases of Geneva gin, Jamaica rum, as well as the cheaper New England rum for the common people. In all the homes the decanter had a place on the sideboard, and was always brought out at every gathering. Society had taken a shape on the seaboard in 1774 from which there was little departure for over forty years, except during the Revolu- tionary war. The plain people of St. Matthew's, conserva- tive and thrifty, had now after forty years of careful industry surrounded themselves with many substantial comforts, and were independent and prosperous. The rice-planters of St. John's parish had but transferred the long-established homes in South Carolina to Georgia, and society in the Midway and Newport section had not had any infancy. There was a frontier in upper Georgia and in the country south of the Altamaha, and all the hardships which had been encountered by the first comers to Georgia forty years
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[CHAP. II.
before were encountered by the newcomers to St. George's, St. Paul's, and St. Andrew's.
An Independent Presbyterian Church, of which I speak more fully elsewhere, had been built in Savannah, and Mr. John Joachim Zubli, a Swiss, was the minister, and while the church people went to hear Mr. Haddon Smith read the service, and Governor Wright and Captain Tattnall, Judge Stokes, Messrs. Habersham and Bolton, and other old Englishmen had their pews in Christ's church, Sir John Grahame, Mr. Gibbons, and Mr. McGilveray went to the kirk to hear the sermon and sing the Psalms. The steady- going Lutherans had their churches at Ebenezer and Goshen. The Congregationalists went to hear Mr. Osgood, and now the Baptists came. Mr. Daniel Marshall moved into the Kiokee settlement, and did some wonderful work, and Mr. Bottsford organized some Baptist meetings on Briar creek, in Burke county, and a young Presbyterian licentiate was working in the neighborhood of the old church in St. George's and gathering the scattered Presbyterians together; but as a general thing these colonists had no one to preach to them, and no one to teach their children, save now and then a wandering Irishman, who taught a subscription school for a few months in the year. There was every- thing, however, to be hoped for in the future, when the events of which we shall speak in the next chapter occurred, and then for near a decade of years there was desolation.
The list of public officers in 1774 gives us a good insight into the colony as it then was. There were:
Sir James Wright, governor ; James Habersham, Lewis John- son, John Graham, Jas. Read, Clement Martin, Gray Elliot, Jas. x Mackey, Jona Bryan, Jas. Edward Powell, counsellors ; Noble Jones, Alex. Wylly, Jno. Adam Truetlen, John Mullryne, Patrick Houston, John Smith, David C. Braddock, Jno. Simpson, Geo. McIntosh, Thos. Vincent, Thos. Moody, Wm. Ewen, Edward Barnard, N. Jones, Jona Cochran, Andrew Johnson, John
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AND THE GEORGIA PEOPLE.
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Milledge, Josiah Tattnall, Assemblymen ; Button Gwinnett, J. P. St. John's; H. Preston, notary ; C. Prest, attorney-general ; C. Watson; M. Roche, provost marshal; Chas. Pryce, notary ; David Emanuel, David Lewis, Thomas Burton, J. P. St. George's ; Sam Bullock, J. P. Christ Church ; James Brown, dep. surveyor ; Wm. Graems, attorney ; Sam'l Farley, solicitor ; John Glen, lawyer and attorney-general ; L. Claiborn, lawyer ; Henry Yonge, lawyer; Thos. Schender, lawyer ; John Smith, lawyer; Anthony Stokes, lawyer and chief justice ; James Hume, lawyer, Savannah ; Wm. Belcher, lawyer; Arthur Carney, justice of the peace for the four southern parishes and captain of militia; Reymond Demere, ditto; John Holmes, J. P. St. George's; Thos. Stone, J. P. St. Phillip's; Stephen Smith, J. P. St. George's; Thomas Ross, solicitor ; Wm. Stephens, clerk Assembly, Savannah ; John Hume, secretary and registror, Savannah ; Lewis Johnson, treas- urer, Savannah ; Wm. Stewart, N. P .; Isaac Perry, dept. surveyor ; Frank Bigbee, surgeon ; John Stephens, 3d lieutenant; James Whitefield, quartermaster; Benj. Lewis, dept. surveyor ; Richard Scruggs, J. P. St. Matthew's ; J. T. Russell, J. P. St. Andrew's; Jno. Maclean, J. P. Christ Church ; John Dunbar, J. P. St. John's ; Sam'l Creswill, D. S .; Jos. Houghton, James Cosby, D. S .; James Pannel, D. S .; Basil Lamar, D. S .; John Dooly, D. S .; Jona Sells, D. S .; George Walton, solicitor ; David Tait ; Andrew Elton Wells, clerk of market and marshal ; Geo. Barry, justice ; Francis Arthur, D. S .; James Robertson, solicitor ; J. Pickens, D. S. ; Thomas Waters, J. P .; Edward Keating, J. P .; J. Wood, J. P. St. John's; James Lucina, J. P. Christ Church ; D. Frazer, Sunbury ; James Seymour, J. P. St. George's and St. Matthew's; Stephen Matthews ; J. Walthaur, J. P. St. Matthew's; Jno. Stirk, captain ; Jas. Seymour ; Quinton Pooler, captain 4th ; Philip Howell, J. P. St. Matthew's; Samuel Strong, D. S .; James Kitching, collector; Robert Hamilton, solicitor ; James Peart, D. S .; Elijah Lewis, D. S .; James Cantey, deputy surveyor ; John Graves; Thomas Chisholm, deputy surveyor ; Alex Wyly; Isaac Antrobus, deputy sur- veyor; J. Lewis, deputy surveyor ; Jos. Marshall, J. P. St. Georges; Jno. Douglass, deputy ; Josiah Cantey, D. S .; Isaac Antrobus, collector Sunbury ; Elijah Brazeal, J. P. St. George's parish; Rich Cunningham ; Patrick Houston, J. P .; William
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