Wrightsborough Monthly Meeting Columbia/McDuffie County, Georgia Quaker Records

The Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy Vol. 1 North Carolina
by William Wade Hinshaw

          Wrightsborough Meeting was located in Columbia (now McDuffie) County, Georgia. In 1770 "the General Assembly of Georgia granted a tract of 40,000 acres of land in St. Paul's Parish, to be held in trust for the Quakers. Here they began the town of Wrightsborough, on Town Creek, sixteen miles from Appling, the county seat, and named it for Sir James Wright, Governor of the colony. The records date from 1773. In that year a preparative and a monthly meeting were organized in Wrightsborough township by representatives sent from New Garden. The certificates recorded show that the Quaker population was made up of settlers from South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Burlington in West New Jersey." ("Southern Quakers and Slavery," p. 118-119).
          Prior to the establishment of Wrightsborough Monthly Meeting, the meetings in Georgia had been attached to Bush River Monthly Meeting, in South Carolina. A list of the names of the members of the new meeting, compiled "by the order of Bush River Monthly Meeting ye 4th of ye 10th month, 1774", and attested by William Wright and David Mote as clerks, is recorded in the minutes of Wrightsborough Monthly Meeting under date of the 3rd of 12th month, 1774, as follows: "Benjamin Jackson and family; Richard Moor and family; John Jones and family; Jonathan Sell and family; John Stubbs and family; Catharine Sidwell and children; Benjamin Dunn and family; Isaac Cooper and family; Rachel Maddock and children, Samuel, Hannah and Benjamin; Margaret Day and son, John; Phineas Mendenhall and family; Joseph Mooney and family; Henry Jones and family; Sarah Curle; Peter Cox; Deborah Stubbs (now Cox) and family; James Vernon; Joseph Hollingsworth; Robert Hodgin and family; Walter Jackson and family; Martha Vernon; Rebecca Todd; Ruth Beedle; Hannah Hodgin; Francis Jones and family; John Hodgin and family."
          John Stubbs, Henry Jones, John Hodgin, Joel Cloud, Thomas Sell, Nathan Stubbs and Francis Jones, Jr., were appointed as trustees, 3rd of 9th month, 1779, to receive a conveyance of land from the Governor for a meeting house.
          The existing minutes of the monthly meeting end with the beginning of 1793. From other sources of information it is known that about 1800, just as in the case of the North and South Carolina meetings, there began a great migration to the territory north-west of the Ohio River. In "Southern Quakers and Slavery", page 124, Dr. Weeks says: "In 1800 Joseph Cloud, a minister of North Carolina who had been among the meeting on 'the western waters', visited South Carolina and Georgia, no doubt in the interest of removal. Borden Stanton wrote them urging them to go west in 1802. A certificate from Wrightsborough Monthly Meeting to Cane Creek Monthly Meeting, N.C., dated June 4, 1803, is the last evidence we have of Georgia Friends. They had departed to the great West." Records now available show that Wrightsville Monthly Meeting was in existence at a later date than that mentioned by Dr. Weeks. Many certificates dated in 1804, and several as late as 4th month, 1805, were received by Miami Monthly Meeting, Ohio. The minutes of Lost Creek Monthly Meeting, Tennessee, also record the receipt of certificates from Wrightsborough bearing dates covering the same period. The latest date entered in Wrightsborough birth records is 7th of 5th month, 1805, the birth of Mary, daughter of John and Rachel Conner. On the 30th of 11th month, 1805, Bush River Monthly Meeting, S.C., issued a certificate, directed to Miami Monthly Meeting, Ohio, for this same John Conner and his family. The fact that the certificate was issued by Bush River seems to indicate that Wrightsborough M.M. had been laid down prior to that date. On the 28th of 6th month, 1806, Bush River issued a certificate to Miami for William Farmer and family, of Georgia, former members of Wrightsborough.
          In 1809, certificates to Ohio were signed at New Garden Monthly Meeting, N.C., for former members of Bush River, Cane Creek (S.C.) and Wrightsborough Monthly Meetings. minutes of this action (6th, 7th and 8th months, 1809), will be found in the introduction to Bush River records, page 1015.
          The existing records of Wrightsborough Monthly Meeting used in the proportion of the following abstract, consist of a book of birth and death records, and a book of minutes, 1772 to 1793. The minutes from 1793 to the closing of the meeting, about 1805, have been lost.

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