The early Indian name for Jekyll Island was Ospo. The French called the island, Ile de la Somme, and St. Andrews

“Jekyll Sound
“Sir,
          “I am now come to an anchor in a Harbor and near an Island that bears your Name”.
          Oglethorpe caused fortifications to be erected on the north end of Jekyll and placed Capt. William Horton in command. Two years later Horton was made a major and built a two-story tabby house, which is still standing.
          Southwest of the Horton house and on the bank of the creek now known as duBignon Creek, the brewery was established to make beer for the soldiers at Frederica. Crops of rye and hops were planted to supply the brewery. The bank of the creek was washed and the walls of the brewery have fallen; however, large pieces of tabby can be seen and mark the site of the building.
          Major Horton cut a road across the north end of Jekyll, running east and west, from his tabby house to the beach, which road is still known as the Horton Road.
          During the Spanish Invasion of 1742, the Spaniards landed on Jekyll and burned Major Horton’s house.
          Horton was a trusted officer and Oglethorpe chose him for important missions to the English at Charleston and the Spaniards at St. Augustine; at one time he was left in charge of the Colony of Georgia. He died at Savannah Jan. 23, 1748, of malignant fever.
          On April 5, 1768, Jekyll Island was granted to Clement

Beneath this marble
Repose the remains
of
Mrs. Amelia duBignon
Who departed this life on the
4th May 1850
aged sixty-three years
to enter upon that which awaits
the pious Christian in eternity.
To know her was to esteem her.
Highly educated in France,
Of which she was a native;
Amiable and courteous,
She bid adieu to a devoted family
And a large circle of friends
Who prized her highly for her many
Sociable virtues, and respected her
As an ornament of society.
Requiescat in pace.

Ah, Loved one, through this world’s fierce strife
Thou wert our friend and gentle guide
And dearly wert thee loved in life,
But dearer still since thou hast died.
And now we raise this tablet stone,
To mark the place, where sleeps in death,
As kind a heart as earth hat known,
As pure as e’er drew mortal breath

----------

Not only good and kind
But strong and elevated was her mind,
Fond to oblige, too feeling to offend,
Beloved by all, and to all a good friend,
And faithful to her God.

Requiescat in pace.

----------

This tablet is erected
to perpetuate the memory
of
Joseph du Bignon
Who departed this life
On the 27th April 1850
In the 36th year of his age

Remarkable for his noble and
social virtues as a son, brother
and a husband. A patriot and
friend, he was suddenly and in
the dawn of his usefulness taken
from a devoted wife, endearing
children, parents, sisters and
friends who are left to mourn
his premature death.

Requiescat in pace.

What though our bitter tears shall fall,
Above they grave like autumn’s rain.
Yet would we not thy spirit call
Back to these scenes of care again.
For blessed is he, and doubly blessed,
Who nobly all life’s paths had trod,
Content to find his final rest
Within the bosom of his God.

          During slavery days, the slave ships were wont to land their cargoes on the islands along the coast where the Negroes were hidden until they could be disposed of.
          On the lawn in front of Faith Chapel on Jekyll is a large iron pot which bears the following inscription:          “Mess kettle from slave yacht Wanderer, Captain Corry, used for feeding the slaves landed on Jekyl Island November 28, 1858. Yacht owned by Charles A.L. Lamar of Savannah, Ga.”
          During the War Between the States a battery was located and rifle pits dug at Margaret’s Landing on the edge of duBignon Creek. These earthworks are still visible although overgrown with shrubs and trees.
          Jekyll remained in the duBignon family until 1886, when it was bought by its present owners, the Jekyll Island Club, a group of America’s richest men whose membership represents one-seventh of the wealth of the world. Here they have their magnificent homes and a palatial club house where they spend the months of January, February and March, seeking relief from the biting cold of their northern winters.

          The early Indian name for Cumberland Island was Missoe (meaning sassafras); it was also called Tacatacuru. The French name for this island was Ile de la Seine and for the St. Marys River Riviere Seine, while the Spaniards used Isla de San Pedro for the island and Bahia de San Pedro for the river.
          The Indians of Cumberland Island were Timucuans, who were a more peaceful tribe than the Guale Indians and spoke a different language.
          The Spanish settlement on Cumberland was one of the first they made in Georgia and was maintained until 1686.
          There is a pretty story connected with the changing of the name San Pedro to Cumberland. When Oglethorpe returned to England from his first voyage to Georgia, he took back with him a number of Indians, among whom were Tomochichi, the aged mico or chief of the Yemassee Indians, and his nephew and heir, Toonahowi. While there they were lavishly entertained, being presented at Court and showered with gifts. The Duke of Cumberland, a brother of King George II, presented Toonahowi with a gold watch.
          When Oglethorpe returned to Georgia, he made a trip down the coast surveying the islands and mainland. On this trip he was accompanied by Toonahowi, who asked permission to change the name of the Island of San Pedro to Cumberland, in honor of his English friend who had given him the watch.
          Oglethorpe had erected on Cumberland Island three [MDC crossed out and wrote "two".] batteries--Fort St. Andrews, erected in 1736, on high commanding ground on the north east [MDC crossed out and wrote "west".] point of the island; a battery on the west to control the inland navigation [MDC crossed out.]; and Fort William, a place of considerable strength, commanding the entrance of St. Marys River. Two companies of Oglethorpe’s regiment were stationed near Fort St. Andrew. As many of these soldiers were married, lots were assigned to them which they cultivated and improved. Near here was the little village of Barrimacke.
          With the close of Spanish-American hostilities following the Battle of Bloody Marsh in 1742, these military fortifications

          Nathanael Ray Greene married Ann Clark of Rhode Island.
          Louisa Catherine Greene married James Shaw and lived at Dungeness.
          Catherine Miller died September 2, 1814, and was buried at the graveyard at Dungeness.
          The body of Gen. Richard Henry Lee, better known as “Light Horse Harry” Lee, and father of Gen. Robert Edward Lee, lay for many years in this same graveyard.
          Early in February, 1818, as Gen. Richard Henry Lee was returning from a trip to Cuba he was taken ill and the vessel stopped at Cumberland that he might go to the home of Mrs. Shaw, the daughter of his old friend, Gen. Greene. While here he died and his body rested in this quiet spot until 1913, when the Legislature of Virginia had it removed to Lexington to lie by the side of his illustrious son.
          The older residents of Brunswick remember a visit which Gen. Robert E. Lee made to the grave of his father in 1870. Securing a boat in Brunswick with which to make the trip to Cumberland, several of his soldier-comrades accompanied him and guided him to the last resting place of his father.
          The Carnegie family now owns Dungeness and practically the entire south end of Cumberland Island.

          Of this string of islands fringing the coast of Georgia, only one remains open to the public, where the ordinary well-to-do citizen may obtain a home-site--St. Simons. Here they eye may feast on palm and pine, on live oak festooned with gray moss, on entangled vine and shrub--truly an artist’s paradise.
          No spot in America can rival this picturesque island in historic memories, in weird legends, or in dramatic episodes. The background is a tangle of Spanish and English traditions.
          The Indian name for this island was Asao. The French called it Ile de la Loire with St. Simons Sound as Riviere Loire, while the Altamaha Sound was Riviere Charente and Wolf Island Ila de la Charente. The Spanish names for St. Simons Island were Isla de Asao or (Talaxe)

Pg. 52 Photo

and given a position of importance in superintending the fortifications erected on St. Simons.
          Some of the Salzburgers also came to St. Simons, while others asked permission to join their brethren at Ebenezer, which was granted.
          When they left London it was intended that the two vessels should go to Frederica and land the immigrants and supplies at the place where they town was to be built, but the captains refused to bring their vessels down without a pilot. At last, Oglethorpe was forced to purchase the cargo of the sloop Midnight, Capt. Barnes, lately arrived at Savannah, the captain agreeing to deliver the cargo at Frederica. Captains Cornish and Thomas consented to come down in the Midnight, learn the channel, and then conduct their vessels to Frederica. Oglethorpe sent Mr. Tanner, Mr. Horton, and thirty of the single men of the colony with cannons, arms, ammunition, and tools for entrenching on board the Midnight, while he took the inside route in a periagua (a long flat-bottomed boat, having two masts, and generally rowed with two oars only). He carried with him Capt. Hermsdorf, two settlers, and some Indians. Capt. Dunbar also accompanied them in his scout boat. When Oglethorpe reached Frederica on February 18th, he found the Midnight there before him.
          The place selected for the building of the settlement was the site of an old Indian field of thirty or forty acres. At this place the bluff rose about ten feet above high water mark and was dry and sandy. The fort was located at a bend in the river and at a point which commanded the river both above and below--an ideal situation.
          After establishing the newcomers here, Oglethorpe returned to the vessels, which were anchored in Tybee Roads near Peeper Island, to bring down the remaining settlers and their families. However, Captains Cornish and Thomas still refused to bring their vessels to Frederica, even though assured of sufficient water for safe passage, and Oglethorpe was forced to charter another vessel, the Peter and James, to bring down the supplies. A fleet of periaguas was secured for the transportation of the remaining settlers and the women and children. They took the inside route, leaving the mouth of the Savannah River March 2nd, and making the trip to Frederica in five days.

Pg. 55 Photo

          The strangers were delighted with their new home. The beautiful forest of oak, cedar, and pine, festooned with moss and vines, and filled with game, together with the bounteous supply of food to be had from the waters, all seemed a source of gratification.
          Moore’s Voyage to Georgia says: “The island abounds with deer and rabbits; there are no buffaloes in it, though there are large herds upon the main.”
          Oglethorpe divided the colonists into working parties that there might be no confusion and the work progressed with great rapidity.
          Some of the buildings were built of brick that had been brought over from England for that purpose, but the fort and many of the buildings were constructed of tabby (sometimes spelled tappy)--a mixture of lime (made by burning oyster shells), sand and oyster shells. This was mixed with water, poured into a form made of boards, and tamped with a heavy weight to pack and make it firm, an operation which possibly explains the name tabby or tappy. This composition is very much like our concrete of today and is almost indestructible. In fact, we have buildings of this material that have stood for centuries.
          The colonists were allotted plots for planting, in addition to their building lots, and among the items cultivated we find barley, turnips, Lucerne grass, pumpkins, watermelons, corn, oats, rye, wheat, flax, hemp, and potatoes.
          Realizing the need of a better means of communication, Oglethorpe sent Walter Augustine and Mr. Tolme to survey the country from Savannah to Darien and to open a road between these two settlements. They were escorted by Hugh Mackay, Jr., with ten rangers, and a party of Indians. The road which was surveyed at this time is still used and is now known as the Atlantic Coastal Highway.
          After completing this survey, the party went to Frederica. The six horses used in the work of cutting the road were carried to Frederica from Darien in a periauga, and for a long time were the only horses Oglethorpe had on St. Simons.
          To facilitate communication between Frederica and Darien, a canal was cut through General’s Island. This brought no small joy to the people of Frederica, since they

Pg. 57 Photo

now had easy communication with Darien, from there to Savannah, and, consequently, with all of the English Colonies of North America. This canal is still in use and is known as General’s Cut.
          It is to be regretted that we have no complete record of the early settlers of Frederica. However, some of the officers were Major Horton, Capt. Raymond Demere, Capt. MacIntosh, Lieut. Sutherland, and Lieut. Delegal (who commanded the King’s Independent Company stationed on the east point of St. Simons, known as Delegal’s Fort at Sea Point). Richard Johnston, Daniel Cannon, and John Caldwell were bailiffs; William Abbott and John Flower, constables; and John Levally and Daniel Parnell, tything-men. Francis Moore, who wrote the best account we have of the settlement of Frederica, A Voyage to Georgia begun in the year 1735, came to Frederica as the keeper of stores; John Robinson, as bricklayer; Major Cook and Samuel Auspourger, as engineers; Pighby, as servant to the Trustees; David Fellows, as coxswain of Oglethorpe’s boat; Thomas Hunt, as Oglethorpe’s servant boy; Henry Manley, as overseer for Oglethorpe; Mariotte, as Secretary to Oglethorpe (succeeding Charles Wesley) and, later, as magistrate; and Thomas Hawkins, as the medical doctor for the settlement.
          A town built just behind the fort grew to be of great importance in the colony. IN 1740 Frederica had 1,000 inhabitants, including the regiment of English Regulars, which was stationed here.
          The town of Frederica was enclosed with a palisaded wall made of cedar posts twelve inches thick and set upright in the ground. Entrance to the enclosure could be had through two gates, known as the land-port and the water-port. Over the land-port entry was erected a tower twenty feet square in which sentinels were posted.
          This wall around the town afforded ample protection from attacks by land. At the foot of the wall a ditch, or moat, was dug and flood gates constructed at either end so that, in case of attack, the tidewater could be admitted. Thus the isolation of Frederica was rendered complete and the strength of its fortifications materially enhanced. This moat can be plainly seen to-day, even though two centuries have elapsed since it was dug.

          A description of Frederica, published in London in 1741, is of interest here:
          “There are many good buildings in the town, several of which are brick. There is likewise a fort and store-house belonging to the Trust (Trustees). The people have a minister who has a salary from the ‘Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts.’ In the neighborhood of the town, there is a fine meadow of 320 acres ditched in, on which a number of cattle are fed, and good hay is likewise made on it. At some distance from the town is the camp for Gen. Oglethorpe’s Regiments. The country about it is well cultivated, several parcels of land not far distant from the camp having been granted in small lots to the soldiers, many of whom are married, and fifty-five children were born there last year. These soldiers are most industrious, and willing to plant; the rest are generally desirous of wives, but there are not enough women in the country to supply them. There are some handsome homes built by the officers of the Regiment, and besides the town of Frederica there are other little villages on the Island. A sufficient quantity of pot-herbs, pulse and fruit is produced there to supply both the town and garrison; and the people of Frederica have begun to malt and to brew; and the soldiers’ wives spin cotton of the country, which they knit into stockings. At the town of Frederica is a Town Court for administering justice in the southern part of the Province with the same number of magistrates as at Savannah.”
          Fort Frederica was “the larges, most regular and perhaps the most costly” fortification erected by the English in North America. Parliament gave ten thousand pounds for fortifying the Province, which was used at Fort Frederica and Fort St. Simons.
          After establishing the settlers at Frederica and getting the work of building the fortifications under way, Oglethorpe returned to England to secure the soldiers for the defense of the Colony. On July 1, 1738, he embarked for Georgia with his regiment of British Regulars--seven hundred seasoned troops who had seen service under the British Flag in other parts of the world.
          An account of their arrival at St. Simons, from a news article of that day, says: “General Oglethorpe and the troops that came over with him were all landed at the

Pg. 60 Photo

          The location of this road was an important factor in the fighting with the Spaniards. Since it followed the eastern shore, movements along the road were not visible to the enemy vessels in Frederica River.
          Very little of the road remains today, but in a few places this Military Road may be traced. From the old gate of the Town of Frederica the road may be followed to the place where it crossed the marsh and Gully Hole Creek. Another part which is still visible is a portion north of the site of Bloody Marsh.
          Impressive despite the havoc wrought by two centuries, the ruins of Fort Frederica still stand on the bank of Frederica River. Only one of the ancient cannon is left, the others having been removed at the beginning of the Revolutionary War and used in the fortifications of Fort Morris at Sunbury.
          The tract of land on which this fort is situated is now the property of the Georgia Society of the Colonial Dames of America, who have marked the fort with a bronze tablet.

          The threatened invasion of the English settlements by the Spaniards did not occur until 1742 when a fleet of 51 vessels and 5,000 men under the command of Monteano, sailed to a point on the west of St. Simons and made preparations to land.
          The Spaniards realized the importance of capturing St. Simons before they attempted to invade the upper coast, as is shown by the instructions from Horcasitas, Governor

of Cuba, to Monteano, Governor of Florida and Commander-in-chief of the expedition:
          “I regard as indispensable the invasion, before anything else is attempted, of the Island of Saint Simon, first occupying the northern entrance so as to close the pass to the enemy, and intercept any relief he might receive from that direction; the landing is to take place from three vessels at one and the same time on the beach.
          “The first step having been, thanks to the Divine Grace, and to your Lordship’s wise management, successfully taken, Your Lordship will next adopt measures……to proceed northward by interior channels, devastating, laying waste, sacking and burning whatever settlements, plantations and towns there may be as far as Port Royal, inclusive, razing its fort, and taking possession of the entire country; for your Lordship is informed of the fact that those parts hold no hostile troops able to resist those under your command.”
          The following is from Monteano to Campillo, one of the Ministers of Philip V: “For Carolina once ruined and destroyed, the extermination of her colonial dependencies will follow….”
          Oglethorpe’s entire force numbered only 650 men, so he decided to concentrate all his defenses at Frederica. He abandoned all other fortifications, spiking the cannon, and removing supplies to prevent their being of use to the Spaniards, who landed and took possession of Fort St. Simons.
          A number of skirmishes were held and on July 7th a battle occurred at a point where the road from Frederica to Fort St. Simons crossed the marsh. Oglethorpe’s men were assisted by a company of Scotch Highlanders from Darien, by a body of men from Savannah under command of Capt. Noble Jones, and by some Indians, among whom was Toonahowi.
          The English forces were overwhelmed by superior numbers and retreated towards Frederica. The Highlanders brought up the rear and, after passing this “bend, in crescent form”, which was to become the scene of the Battle of Bloody Marsh, Lieut. McKay and Lieut. Sutherland, with their troops, decided “to return through the brush and take post at the two points of the crescent”.
          No sooner was this done than the Spaniards reached

this place and, seeing by the foot-prints in the sand that the English were in rapid retreat and believing that the fighting for the day was over, they stacked their guns and prepared to eat. The English attacked just at this time. Nearly every Spaniard in this engagement was killed, wounded, or captured. This is known as the Battle of Bloody Marsh because it is said that the marsh was red with the blood of the dead and wounded.
          Thomas Spalding, in his Life of Oglethorpe, fixes the exact location of this battle:
          “The road from Frederica proceeded in a southeastern direction for two or three miles, where it reaches the eastern marsh; this marsh was bounded to the east, or seaward, by a thick and impracticable morass; on the west, by dense, close wood. The highway continued along the marsh for two miles, sometimes opening into wide spreads of firm land….But when it had approached within two miles of the south end, there was a bend, in crescent form, in which the firm way was no more than twenty yards wide; on the east or convex side of the crescent and intense morass, on the concave or western shore of the crescent and extreme thick brush-wood.”

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          “The tract of land that surrounded this filed of action was afterwards granted to Col. William McIntosh, my grandfather. It was sold subsequently to Mr. Cater and Mr. Page of St. Simons Island. Mr. Cater’s house stands within a hundred yards from the Bloody Bend, as it was named from that day.”
          This tract of land is now the property of Mrs. Maxfield Parrish.
          The monument which marks this historic spot was erected by the Georgia Society of the Sons of Colonial Wars.
          Being led to believe by means of a decoy letter that Oglethorpe had superior forces and that he would shortly receive reinforcements from South Carolina, the Spanish Commander, already discouraged by the losses at Bloody Marsh, abandoned the invasion of the English Colonies and returned to St. Augustine. In fact, this was the last attempt on the part of Spain to claim any land that was being

settled by the English; twenty-one years later by the Treaty of Paris she relinquished to England all claim to this territory.
          The Battle of Bloody Marsh is considered one of the decisive battles of the world because it decided the language and customs that would belong to this country. Just as the Battle of Quebec in 1759 drove the French from Canada, so the Battle of Bloody Marsh decided the fate of the Spaniards.
          With a mere handful of men, Oglethorpe turned the tide of Spanish Invasion that was slowly but surely creeping northward.
          Thomas Carlyle, great historian, philosopher and essayist, says of it:
          “Half the world was hidden in embryo under it--the incalculable Yankee Nation itself, the greatest phenomenon of these ages. This, too, little as careless readers on either side of the sea now know it, lay involved; Shall there be a Yankee Nation? Shall the New World be Spanish type? Shall it be English?

“If ever freedom’s altar-fires
Grow cold, or but one spark expires;
If Truth be ever sold to buyers,
Let free-born sons remember sires
At Bloody Marsh.”
--L.L. Knight

          Southeast of the old Town of Frederica was located a tract of fifty acres of land which Oglethorpe reserved for himself. It was within sight of Frederica and, yet, far enough removed that the General might have quiet and rest.
          Here he erected a cottage, planted a garden, and set out an orchard of oranges, grapes, and figs. This was the only home he ever owned or claimed in Georgia, and was in fact Georgia’s first Governor’s Mansion.
          Thomas Spalding of Sapelo Island in his Life of Oglethorpe written in 1840, gives a description of the place. Spalding, who was born at Frederica, was perhaps more than anyone else qualified to speak on this subject, for he

Pg. 66 Photo

says: “I am describing a scene traveled over by my infant footsteps”. The description is as follows:
          “….It may be remembered, in describing the road executed immediately after the General’s arrival with his troops, it was stated that the road entered a beautiful prairie of a mile over. Upon the shore of that prairie, just where the road entered the wood, General Oglethorpe established his own humble homestead. It consisted of a cottage, a garden, and an orchard for oranges, figs and grapes. The house was overshadowed by oaks of every variety. It looked to the westward across the prairie (which was the common pasturage of the herds of the town), upon the entrenched town and fort, and upon the beautiful white houses, which had risen up as by the enchanter’s will….
          “At General Oglethorpe’s cottage, a road diverged due east, passing in about half a mile to the seat of Captain Raymond Demere….
          “This cottage and fifty acres of land attached to it, was all the landed domain General Oglethorpe reserved to himself, and after the General went to England, it became the property of my father; so that I am only describing a scene, traveled over by my infant footsteps, and stamped upon my earliest recollections. After the Revolutionary War, the buildings being destroyed, my father sold this little property. But the oaks were only cut down within four or five years past, and the elder people of St. Simons yet feel as if it were sacrilege, and mourn their fall.”
          Charles Spalding Wylly locates this tract as the Beck Place and states that he recalls the graves that were nearby. The Beck Place is on Frederica Road about a mile southeast of Frederica and just opposite the Negro church, which is the approximate location of Oglethorpe’s house.
          John Stevens of Frederica also stated that he remembered the graves that were at the Beck Place many years ago and that he could not understand how they could have disappeared since the vaults were of brick.
          Perhaps the most valuable document in definitely fixing the site of Oglethorpe’s home is the old map of lands on St. Simons Island in close proximity to Frederica, which map is reproduced in this volume through the courtesy of Mrs. Agnes C. Hartridge of St. Simons.
          Mrs. Maxfield Parrish, whose interest and knowledge

Pg. 68 Map

of the history of St. Simons are always keen, realizing the value of this map, asked permission to make a tracing of the map for the write, which was readily granted by Mrs. Hartridge.
          This map, which was made by John M. McKinnon in 1801, was a resurvey of a map made by Jacob Lewis in 1774.
          The tract of land situated in the angle formed by the “Main Road from the South to the North End of the Island” and the “Road to Frederica” and marked on the map, “Land granted Spalding now the Estate of Clubb’s”, is probably the fifty acre tract where Oglethorpe made his home. It measures a little more than fifty acres on the map, but the old grants were very indefinite as to acreage. The Military Road crosses this tract and it must have crossed Oglethorpe’s fifty acre tract, for his home was located on the road.

          Harrington Hall, the home of Capt. Raymond Demere, was located a mile and a half east of Fort Frederica, on a fifty acre tract granted him “on the north High Road from Frederica to the German Village and bounded west by Colville and east by Dr. Holtzendorf”.
          Raymond Demere, who came to Georgia with Oglethorpe in 1736, was a “French Huguenot of considerable fortune, much of which he expended in ornamenting a country seat, rather in the French taste than the English….The enclosures were entirely of orange or cassina, a species of ilex, but the most beautiful of the family, with fleshy leaves intensely green….For fifty years after the death of Capt. Demere these hedges, in much of their beauty, continued to permit experiment and to invite others to improvement. If the cassina hedges are even now all gone, they must have perished by the rude axe, in the hands of ruder men, and not by time”.
          Harrington Hall, named in honor of Capt. Demere’s friend, Lord Harrington of England, was a beautiful home and it is to be regretted that there is no trace of the building or hedges to be found now.
          Mrs. Charles W. Taylor, who has lived at Frederica all

her life, remembers the pile of debris that marked the site of the house and recalls that her mother, Mrs. Charles Stevens, said that the residents of St. Simons often gathered there for amateur theatricals.
          Capt. Demere, although “a foreigner by birth” had served ten years in the English army, having been with Lord Harrington in Spain, and was, therefore, a soldier of experience.
          Coming to Georgia, he took an active interest in the affairs of the Colony and in 1739 we find him making a formal protest to the Trustees against the introduction of slaves into the Colony.
          He was a gallant officer, having taken part in the defense of the Colony during the Spanish Invasion of 1742 which culminated in the Battle of Bloody Marsh.
          Raymond Demere was not only an able officer, but was Oglethorpe’s trusted friend, their homes being only half a mile apart. When Oglethorpe took final leave of his infant Colony and returned to England in 1743, he gave his desk to Capt. Raymond Demere. This desk, perhaps the only article now in America that was ever owned by our first Governor, is the property of Edward Houston Demere II, of Atlanta.  [Desk has since been proven not to be Oglethorpe's as it was constructed in the 1840s--ALH]
          When Oglethorpe returned to England, Capt. Demere commanded a detachment from the three Independent Companies in South Carolina stationed at Fort Frederica, at Fort St. Simons, on Jekyll, and on Cumberland.
          The Minutes of the Executive Council held at Savannah on July 23, 1754, state that Capt. Demere “commanding his Majesty’s troops stationed at Frederica….acquainted the Board that he hoped to be supplied with plenty of powder and ball and any other small assistance when wanted.”
          Executive Council assured him that “he might depend on their utmost assistance in that and everything else in their power”.
          Again on Sept. 15, 1761, Capt. Demere, having heard rumors that the Spaniards at St. Augustine were planning to invade Georgia, appealed to the Executive Council at Savannah for a “supply of gunpowder for his people”, and Council ordered that a barrel of gunpowder be sent.
          Raymond Demere served the Colony in many ways; he was named as Commissioner to assist in moving the settlers

from Ossabaw and Sapelo Islands in 1759. He was Justice of the Peace for the Midway, Darien, and Frederica Districts in 1759 and the following years was named Justice for St. James Parish. On Nov. 20, 1764, he was elected to the House of Assembly from St. James Parish but declined the seat since “his private avocation would not permit him to attend the House”.
          Capt. Demere was described as being “a very industrious and worthy gentleman and peculiarly addicted to the cultivation of lands”.
          Harrington Hall was one of the very few plantations successfully operated on St. Simons at this period. One writer stated that there were only six plantations here in 1745--those belonging to Capt. Demere; Dr. Holtzendorf, who died about 1762 and whose son Frederic succeeded to the estates; Mr. Sinclair; Mr. Houston; Mr. Hawkins; and Mr. John Terry.
          The will of Capt. Demere, who died about April 1766, is on file in the State Department of Archives in Atlanta and directs that the residue of his estate, after certain legacies are paid, shall be divided between his sons, Raymond Demere, and his nephew, Raymond Demere. John Graham of Savannah and Donald Mackay, a merchant of Frederica, were named as executors.
          The appraisal of the estate, which was made by Lieut. Robt. Baillie, John Polson, James Forrester, and Dr. Allan Stuart, listed articles valued at £3,224, including between 300 and 400 head of “horned cattle”; 50 hogs; 4 riding horses and a mare; silver headed swords; silver mounted pistols; gold headed canes; 350 oz. “plane” silver plate; 100 ox. “chased” silver plate; diamond ring; silver cork screw; silver lock; gold seals; gold brooch with garnets; silver snuff box; gold watch and chain; the periagua Harrington; the ranger and cannon; 25 slaves, valued at £1035; and notes of the following parties: Andrew Marston, Robert Davis, John Harvey, John Simpson, James Forrester, Wm. Mills, Regina Margaretta, Angus McRae, Georgiana McIntosh, Andrew Bruden, Joseph Prunious, Peter Grant, Mark Carr, Wm. Hester, John Perkins, James Johnson, Benj. Arnold, Donald Munro, Anthony Hancock, James Abrahams, Wm. Woodland, Richard Cotymore, John Monroe,

 Sacred
To the Memory of
RAYMOND DEMERE
Who Departed this Life
January 2nd, 1829.
In the 77th Year of
His Age.

 ----------------

 RAYMOND DEMERE, 3RD
Born 20th August
Departed this Life September
14th 1821

 ----------------

 Sacred
To the Memory of
RAYMOND DEMERE, 2ND
Born Feb. 11, 1773
Died
On St. Simon’s at The Grove
Jan. 10, 1832
Ae. 58 Years, 11 Mo.

----------------

 Sacred
To the Memory of
CAPT JOSEPH DEMERE.
Born on
St. Simon’s Island
Aug. 17, 1808
Died Suddenly on Blyths’
Island
Jan. 13, 1831

Sacred
To the Memory of
ANNE DEMERE.
Wife of Raymond Demere,
Who
Died September 18th, 1847,
Aged 61.

 Oh weep not o’er the Christina’s dust.
For angels guard the sacred trust;
And mournful tho’ the parting be,
The grave has gained no victory.

 ----------------

 Sacred
To the Memory of
THOMAS DEMERE
Son of
Raymond & Ann Demere,
Who departed this life
July 2nd,1828
In the 22nd Year of His
Age

 ----------------

 Here Lies
Interred the Remains of
MRS. ANN DEMERE
Who Departed this Life the
17th day of December, 1808,
And was Born in
South Carolina the 28th day of
March, 1744

          Among the settlers that accompanied Oglethorpe to St. Simons in 1736, there was a group of Germans, known as the Salzburgers--a part of that famous band that settled at Ebenezer. The English on St. Simons called them “Palatines”, meaning natives of the old German Empire (Bavaria, Baden, Hesse and Prussia.)
          These Salzburgers made their homes in a small community on the eastern shores of St. Simons near Frederica at a place which came to be known as The Village. They made their living from the produce of the lands, and during Oglethorpe’s residence were the only people on the Island who lived entirely by planting. Besides gardening, they also planted mulberry trees and introduced silk worms, winding the silk and sending it to England. They were an industrious people and brought to the Colony an element much to be desired.
          Among the settlers at The Village were Mr. Shotz, Mr. Ragles, and Dr. Holtzendorf. All these names have disappeared from this locality with the exception of Holtzendorf, which is said to be the only name that has been here continuously since the coming of Oglethorpe and is, therefore, the oldest name in Glynn County. [MDC crossed this out and wrote in Clubb, Higginbotham, Pyles.]
          This band of people became the nucleus of a Lutheran church established at The Village, under the pastoral care of Rev. Ulric Driesler.
          Rev. P.A. Stroebel (a descendant of the Salzburgers)  [MDC crossed out]

Pg. 75 Map

in The Salzburgers and their Descendants, published in 1855, gives the following, which will be of interest:
          “The gentleman [Mr. Driesler] had been sent over in 1743 by the ‘Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge’, to supply the spiritual wants of the Salzburgers who had settled on St. Simons Island. In 1744, he visited the brethren at Ebenezer. Mr. Bolzious [the pastor at Ebenezer] thus speaks of him under date of February 24, 1744: ‘Mr. Driesler arrived yesterday. He labours with the blessing of God in his small congregation at Frederica, consisting of sixty-two souls. Captain Horton, the commandant of the fort at that place, gives him an honourable testimony; and we trust our friend will be an instrument to the salvation of many souls. Next Lord’s Day he is to preach in Savannah. This day he preaches both in Zion and Jerusalem churches.’
          “Mr. Dreisler was spared to the congregation at Frederica but a short time. The Lord called him to his rest in the early part of the year 1745. He was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. Zubli, from Switzerland, who had charge of the church for several years. He seemed to have had no connection with the pastors at Ebenezer, and was probably supported by the English officers commanding the fort. Mr. Zubli continued pastor at Frederica only a few years, for as soon as the Spanish and French war began, he removed to Orangeburg, in South Carolina.”

          Charles Wesley, that “sweet singer of Israel” and his illustrious brother, John Wesley, ministers of the Church of England, and known as the founders of the religious society which grew into the Methodist Episcopal Church, both preached at Frederica.
          While students at Oxford University, England, the Wesleys organized a society of fifteen members “to observe the method of study prescribed by the statutes of the University”. Unsympathetic outsiders called this society the “Holy Club”. Four members of this earnest band of students labored in the Colony of Georgia—John Wesley, Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, and Benjamin Ingham.
          John and Charles Wesley, aged thirty and twenty-five [MDC replaced this number with 33 and 29 respectively.]

respectively, were tutors at Oxford, when, through the influence of Dr. John Burton, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and one of the Trustees for the Founding of the Colony of Georgia, John decided to come to Georgia, being authorized by the Trustees to perform all religious and ecclesiastical offices in the towns of Savannah and Frederica. A salary of fifty pounds was allowed him by the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts. This Society is still in existence and is preparing to celebrate its 225th anniversary.
          It was also arranged that Charles should come to Georgia as Secretary to Oglethorpe and as Secretary to Indian Affairs.
          Up to this time, Charles, had declined entering into holy orders, but he changed his mind, due to the persuasions of his brother and Dr. Burton, who argued that he would be better able to serve the spiritual interests of the people of the Colony if he were a clergyman. Accordingly, a short time before leaving England, he was ordained deacon by Dr. Potter, Bishop of Oxford, and the following Sunday was ordained priest by Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London. However, the work he did in Georgia was under the direction of his brother, who had charge of the ecclesiastical affairs of the Colony.
          Upon reaching Georgia, the Wesleys went to Savannah, while Oglethorpe and his little band of settlers, together with Benjamin Ingham, set out for Frederica.
          Charles Wesley remained at Savannah with his brother five weeks before he came to Frederica to take up his first work as a minister of the Gospel.
          “Tuesday, March 9, 1736, about three in the afternoon”, says Charles, “I first set foot on St. Simons Island; and immediately my spirit revived. No sooner did I enter upon my ministry, than God gave me, like Saul, another heart…
          “The first who saluted me on my landing was honest Mr. Ingham, and that with his usual heartiness. Never did I more rejoice at the sight of him…The people seemed overjoyed to see me. Mr. Oglethorpe, in particular, received me very kindly.
          “I spent the afternoon in conference with my parishioners. With what trembling ought I call them mine! At seven we had prayers in the open air, at which Mr. Oglethorpe

Pg. 78

was present. The lesson gave me the fullest direction, and greatest encouragement. At nine I returned, and lay in the boat.”
          Jackson’s life of Charles Wesley gives an interesting picture of Charles and of Frederica at this time:
          “Few men sustaining the clerical office have ever applied themselves with greater assiduity and diligence to the discharge of their duties than Charles Wesley at this period of his life, or with a more fixed purpose to promote the spiritual good of the people. He conducted four religious services every day, for the benefit of those who chose and had leisure to attend; and he was in the habit of giving an extemporary exposition of the daily lessons at the morning and evening prayer. These services were conducted in the open air when the weather would permit; and as the people had no public clock to guide them, (for as yet they dwelt in tents, having no houses,) nor any ‘church-going bell’ to summon them to their devotions, they were apprized of the hour of prayer by the sound of the drum.”
          In his diary, Charles wrote:
          “April 5th. At one this morning the sandflies forced me to rise, and smoke them out of the hut. The whole town was employed in the same manner.”
          John Wesley visited Frederica only once while his brother was there. In his Journal he gives an account of the services he held:
          “Sunday, April 11th. I preached at the new Storehouse on the first verse of the Gospel for the day, ‘Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?” There was a large congregation, whom I endeavored to convince of unbelief, by simply proposing the conditions of salvation, as they are laid down in Scripture, and appealing to their own hearts, whether they believed they could be saved on no other terms?”
          Duties connected with his secretaryship called Charles Wesley to Savannah and he left Frederica May 15th. It so happened that he never visited there again. He said, “I set out for Savannah, whither the Indian traders were coming down to meet me and take out licenses.”
          A few days later John Wesley embarked for Frederica to supply his brother’s place and Charles took up the work in Savannah. Charles said, “The hardest duty imposed

upon me was the expounding the lesson, morning and evening, to one hundred hearers. I was surprised at my own confidence, and acknowledged it not my own”.
          On this second visit of John Wesley to Frederica he stayed a month and organized a small group for regular meetings. His Journal has these entries:
          “Wed. June 16th. Another little company of us met—Mr. Reed, Davidson, Walker, Delamotte, and myself. We sung, read a little of Mr. Law, and then conversed. Wednesdays and Fridays were the days we fixed for constant meeting.
          “Sat. 19th. Mr. Oglethorpe returned from the south and gave orders on Sunday, the 20th, that none should profane the day (as was usual before) by fishing or fowling upon it. In the afternoon I summed up what I had seen or heard at Frederica, inconsistent with Christianity, and consequently with the prosperity of the place. The event was as it ought; some of the hearers were profited, and the rest deeply offended.”
          Soon after John Wesley returned to Savannah, it was decided to send Charles to England as the bearer of important dispatches from Oglethorpe to the Trustees. Accordingly on June 26th, Charles accompanied by his brother, set out for Charleston, where he took passage for England on board the London Galley, sailing August 16th. However, the vessel had to put into Boston for repairs and Charles remained there for some weeks. October 25th he finally sailed for England on board the Hannah and, after a stormy passage, reached there December 3rd, having been absent more than a year.
          Having discharged the business connected with the dispatches he had brought home, Charles busied himself visiting the Trustees and the Board of Trade and informing them of the state of affairs in the Colony. In the meantime, Oglethorpe returned to England and persuaded Charles to make another trip to Georgia for he still held the office of Secretary to Oglethorpe on April 3rd, 1738.
          Charles Wesley was the first Methodist, having organized

the little band at Oxford before his brother took charge of it, and his first charge was at Frederica. Truly, this spot should be sacred to all Methodists.
          Since the Trustees had placed John Wesley in charge of the ecclesiastical affairs of the whole Colony, he seemed to feel a great responsibility for Frederica, and, after the departure of his brother for England, he left Mr. Ingham at Savannah and embarked for Frederica, arriving August 13th and remaining about three weeks.
          Wesley’s Journal with reference to his fourth visit to Frederica is as follows:
          “I came hither on Sat. Oct. 16th and found few things better than I expected. The morning and evening prayers which were read for a while after my leaving the place had long been discontinued…
          “Mon. 18th. Finding there were several Germans at Frederica, who, not understanding the English tongue, could not join in our public service, I desired them to meet me at my house; which they did every day at noon thence forward. We fist sung a German hymn…”
          Wesley’s last visit to St. Simons took place the following year. He said, “After having beaten the air in this unhappy place for twenty days, on January 26th I took my final leave of Frederica. It was not any apprehension of my own danger, but an utter despair of doing good there, which made me content with the thought of seeing it no more.”
          John Wesley remained at Savannah until Dec. 2, 1737. To quote from his Journal, “I left Georgia, after having preached the Gospel there (not as I ought, but as I was able) one year and nearly nine months”.
          On his return from Georgia, John Wesley organized the United Societies in England. These societies were composed of a few Christians who met weekly in classes to pray and to talk concerning the things of God. The Societies were independent of each other, except as they were held together by Wesley.
          The organization of the first Society took place July 20, 1740, in a building called the Foundry, formerly government property but long disused, near Finsbury Square, London, which was for many years the headquarters of Methodism.
          The title Methodism was not a word of their own choosing—

it was given by others because of the strict life they led. However, they took it as a matter of course and it became an ecclesiastical watchword.
          Wesley was a sincere lover of the Church of England and tried to be a loyal churchman. As a rule, he did not hold services of the United Societies during church hours. It was his hope that his movement would be the nucleus of a reunited Christendom and it was with sorrow that he saw forces which he could not control carrying his people into a permanent separation.
          Proof of his desire to remain in the Church of England is given in one of his letters to Rev. Samuel Bradburn:
          “Birmingham, March 25, 1783.
          “Dear Sammy:
          “You send me good news concerning the progress of the work of God…I still think when the Methodists leave the Church of England, God will leave them. Every year more and more of the clergy are convinced of the truth and grow well affected toward us. It would be contrary to all common sense, as well as to good conscience, to make a separation now.

“I am,
Dear Sammy,
Your Affectionate Brother,
J. WESLEY.”

          It is not too much to say that in 18th century England “no single figure influenced so many minds, no single voice touched so many hearts” as did John Wesley.
          Charles Wesley, though well known as a preacher, will be remembered best as a writer of songs, having written more than six thousand hymns.
          Although leaders in the movement which after their death grew into the Methodist Episcopal Church, both of the Welseys lived and died in the Church of England.

          Christ Church at Frederica lays claim to being the second oldest Episcopal Church in Georgia and the third oldest church in the state.

          In the early days when Frederica was the most important military settlement in the Colony of Georgia, the religious work at Frederica was a part of the missionary work of Christ Church, Savannah.
          The first Protestant minister that labored at Frederica was Charles Wesley, who with John Wesley came to America in 1736.
          John Wesley had charge of the ecclesiastical work of the Colony with headquarters in Savannah where he served as rector of Christ Church.
          Charles Wesley remained at Frederica about ten weeks, when he returned to England. John Wesley visited Frederica only once while his brother was here and, later, made four trips, spending about three months altogether at this place.
          The third missionary sent here was the Rev. George Whitefield, the founder of Bethesda Orphanage, located near Savannah, the oldest orphanage in America.
          In 1740, Rev. William Norris was located at Frederica, and a year or so later Rev. Thomas Bosomworth was sent to this place. Bosomworth was the third husband of a half-breed Indian, generally known as Mary Musgrove.
          In 1746, Rev. Mr. Zoaberbuhler had charge of the religious work of the Colony and, as a part of his duties, visited Frederica. For twenty years he labored faithfully.
          St. Simons was practically abandoned during the Revolutionary War. After the war when wealthy planters moved here, the parish was organized. Wishing to show their appreciation of the aid received from Christ Church at Savannah, the church at Frederica was named Christ Church also.
          On Dec. 22, 1808, the Legislature, being petitioned for lands on which to build a church, granted one hundred acres of land around the Town of Frederica and three lots within the town for the use of the church, naming William Page and Robert Grant as wardens and Joseph Turner, John Couper, James Hamilton, Raymond Demere, Jr., and George Abbott as vestrymen.
          The lands were rented and the income used for the erection of a church, which was built in 1820.
          In 1836, when Christ Church celebrated its centennial, interesting ceremonies were held, the principal address being

made by Thomas Spalding, Esq., of Sapelo Island.
          The glebe lands were sold off and the funds invested in a bank that was ruined in the War Between the States and the funds were thus lost. The church was used by troops during this war and it was practically wrecked.
          In 1879, through the efforts of Anson Green Phelps Dodge, Jr., the parish was reorganized and the present church constructed upon the site of the old church and upon the old cornerstone. This church was erected and endowed by Mr. Dodge as a memorial to his first wife, Ella Ada Phelps Dodge. Later, Mr. Dodge became the rector of Christ Church.
          A beautiful marble bust of the Rev. Mr. Dodge, made when he was about six years of age, is placed near the west window which is a memorial to him.
          Other windows which have been erected as memorials to the former communicants of Christ Church are as follows: Rev. Dr. Matthews (a former rector); Major William Page and his wife Hannah (Timmons) Page; Hon. Thomas Butler King and his wife Ann Matilda (Page) King; Thomas Butler King, Jr.; Capt. Henry Lord Page King; Capt. Mallory Page King; Horace Bunch Gould; Deborah Abbott Gould; Wilson Campbell; Rebecca Holmes Dangerfield; Ellen Ada Phelps Dodge; William Earl Dodge; and the Couper-Wylly window.
          In 1890, Rev. Mr. Dodge married Anna Deborah Gould of St. Simons Island and to them was born one son. Upon the tragic death of this son in 1895, the Anson Dodge Home for Boys at Frederica was established in his memory. [MDC crossed out 1895 and entered 1894.]
          In the burying ground at Christ Church lie the bodies of there of her rectors—the Rev. Edmund Mathews, the Rev. A.G.P. Dodge, Jr., and the Rev. D. Watson Winn.

          In 1794 Congress authorized the building of the first vessels for the United States Navy. These were to be constructed at different ports of the country; the Constitution was to be built at Boston, the President at New York, the Unites States at Philadelphia, the Chesapeake at Norfolk, the Constellation at Baltimore, and the Congress at Portsmouth, N.H.

          The jolly Irish commodore, John Barry, searched the Atlantic Coast for materials suited to the building of these vessels and found what he wanted in the timbers of the giant live oak trees growing on the coastal islands of Georgia.
          The timbers for the building of the Constitution, better known as Old Ironsides, were cut on St. Simons Island, loaded at Gascoigne Bluff, and carried by boat to Boston, where the vessel was built and launched in 1797.
          The first tree felled for the Constitution was an immense live oak at Cannon’s Point, whose size and shape made it desirable for use as the stern-post. It is said that the stump of this tree was banded with an iron band bearing the inscription, “U.S. Frigate Constitution, 1794”. This stump was carried to the International Cotton Exposition held in Atlanta in 1895, and was not returned to St. Simons.
          Much of the timber that was cut on St. Simons and carried north for the building of these vessels was from the lands of Richard Leake, who at that time owned Hawkins Island and a plantation at Gascoigne Bluff.
          The work of getting out these timbers was under the superintendency of John T. Morgan, a master shipwright of Boston, who sought to purchase the plantation at Gascoigne Bluff, together with Hawkins Island, from Richard Leake, and made the following proposal:
          “I will pay you 500 guineas for said property. $500 to be paid down, the remaining sum of 427 pounds 1/8 Sterling to be paid by the first day of November ensuing, at which time good and sufficient titles to be executed. I will pay you for 12,000 feet of ship timber, including he 7,000 already paid for and quit you of the contract with the government.
          “You shall be at liberty to tend the crop of cotton and provisions planted on the said plantation and Hawkins Island and to take the same to house and gin it for market without let or molestation from me. The buildings as they now stand are considered as belonging to the plantation and Mr. Morgan is put in possession of said plantation immediately and one of the houses; the plantation tools and whatever other movables in and on the said premises you

are at liberty to carry off and are considered your property.
          “The contract with the government for the rent of said plantation to the 1st of January, next, not to be impaired or affected by this purchase and as it was the intention of Mr. Leake to build on said plantation immediately, which by this purchase is discontinued.
          “It is agreed and fully understood that if the remaining sum of 427 pounds 1/8 Sterling above specified is not paid at or before the first day of November, 1795, that the $500 paid at signing this agreement the same shall be forfeited to the said Leake and he be at liberty to take possession of the said plantation.”

May 12, 1795
(signed) John T. Morgan
(signed) R. Leake
Witness:
Dudley Bailey
James Shearwood

          The timbers for the construction of these vessels were purchased by the Treasury Department and the following letter addressed to Commodore Barry from Tenche Coxe, Commissioner of Revenue, is most interesting:

“TREASURY DEPARTMENT REVENUE OFFICE Oct. 3, 1794
          “Sir:
          “The Brig Schuylkill is nearly ready to depart for Frederica in Georgia. On board of her you will be pleased to proceed to that place and on your safe arrival you will apply to Christopher Hillary, Esq. Collector of the Customs at that place, for such information as may have been forwarded to him for your use by John Habersham & Joseph Clay, Esqrs of Savannah. You will apply also to Mr. John T. Morgan Superintendent of the business of procuring the timber for the Naval Armaments, or such other persons as you may learn there is entrusted with the management of any part of that business, for such timber as may be in readiness for the Frigate to be built in Philadelphia and with all possible dispatch have the vessel you proceed with laden Therewith. It is highly probably that Mr. Hillary can direct you to the spot where Mr. Morgan and his people are employed. It will be necessary to use precaution,

that only the proper timber for one Frigate be laden in this brig for the port of Philadelphia. If it should be found that there is more of the timber in readiness for that Frigate than the vessel in which you proceed will carry, you are hereby authorized to procure one or more other vessels (if to be had on terms that are reasonable) to carry whatever of the timber for the said Frigate can be got ready during your stay in Georgia. In pursuance of this or any Material objects that may arise which cannot be forseen here you will be pleased to consult with Mr. Habersham and Mr. Clay at Savannah & with Mr. Morgan and with Hillary, the Collector of the District of Brunswick. Whatever you do that is material to the service you will communicate to Mr. Habersham, particularly as to the quantity and description of the wood shipt, and the vessels which may be either laden or engaged.
          “The public property on board the Brig is recommended to your particular care, especially the oxen and horses, which are of the utmost importance to the expediting of the timber for several frigates.
          “Should you have occasion to go to Charleston in pursuit of Vessels, you will apply there for information and advice to Daniel Stevens, Esq. Collector of the Customs. The Gentlemen in South Carolina, and the above named Gentlemen at Savannah will be able to make the necessary advances of money should there be occasion for any. Here you will permit me to recommend the utmost care and moderation in all expenditures, whether for great or small objects, which shall consist with the effectual and prompt execution of the public service.
          “It is difficult to give in greater detail Instructions, depending upon contingencies in places remote from the seat of Government. I shall therefore content myself with requesting that you will use all possible exertion to effect your departure from hence to the cutting and transportation of the timber for your own and every other Frigate, to the order and industry of all persons whatever employed in procuring the wood, and to the preservation of the valuable

property, which is the object of the voyage, in whatever situation it may be.

“I am Sir with great esteem
Your most obedt. Servant
Tenche Coxe
“Commissioner of the Revenues”

          Barry was acquainted with Major Pierce Butler, the owner of Hampton or Butler’s Point at the north end of St. Simons, who was at this time a member of the United States Senate from South Carolina; and during his stay on St. Simons, Barry took up his residence at Major Butler’s plantation home.
          The following letter from Major Butler was addressed to Barry on the eve of his departure for St. Simons:

“Oct. 3, 1794.
          “Dear Sir:
          Inclosed you have a letter for my Overseer it is open and written in such a hurry that I doubt if he, who is a poor Schollar, can read the writing; if not You must read it to him. I regret exceedingly, my good Sir, that the accommodations will not be such as I wish them; but such as they are You will command them as Your own. The settlement is in its infancy. I have not had the leisure yet to do more than Lodge my negroes. If you put in there in a year or two with Your Frigate you will find things better. Wishing you a pleasant Passage

“I am very sincerely Dear Sir Yr Friend
P. Butler

friday morn

“I send some Garden seeds which
I request you will give into the hands
Of the man Santee to whom they are directed.
“Addressed Capt. Barry”

          Capt. Barry fulfilled the purpose of his journey and returned to Philadelphia. His report to Tenche Coxe, Commissioner of the Revenue, reads:

“Philadelphia, 1794, Nov. 10th.
          “I have the pleasure to inform you of safe arrival here from the Southward after completing the business I was sent on as well as I could. On the 14th of Oct. I arrived at Gashayes [Gascoignes] Bluff on the Island of St. Simon, where I found Mr. Morgan the shipwright, who

has the superintendent of Cutting the timber for Frigates, with his two boys Sick and not a man with him nor a stick of wood cut; the 15th the Revenue cutter arrived from Savannah with part of the utensils for Cutting timber part of the Moulds and part of the provisions. The next Day I sent Mr. Morgan into the Country to try and get hands; he got six from Mr. Spalden [Spalding]. Mr. Spalden had been gone to the Assembly Mr. Cooper paid me a visit with whom I had influence enough to let me have ten of his best hands which he sent on Monday the 20th. As soon as Morgan got the above sixteen then he set them to work making open. The oxen and Horses was all landed in good order and making a road to the Wood.
          “On the 22d Eighty one men arrived from New London, via Savannah as soon as they Land’d they was set to work to make a place to cover them from the Weather. The next day they was set to cut Wood. Mr. Morgan arrived by the Sloop that brought the men. Sundry other articles for carrying on business. I asked Mr. Morgan what was the terms between him and Mr. Leake whose land he was going to Cut on. His answer was that Mr. Leake told him he might cut what timber he wanted off his place upon as good terms as he could get from any other man in the State. I have told Morgan it was very bad contract that the timber was not contracted for. His answer was that there was but one contract made and that for fifty thousand feet and he believed no time limited for the haleing of it. Mr. Morgan received orders from the Agent at Savannah to send half of the men in twenty days after they was at St. Simons to the Island where they have contracted for the fifty thousand foot, Distance seventy miles to the Northward as soon as the men get to work Morgan informed me that he could take it in provided he could keep the men together. Having done everything in my power at St. Simons I thought it best to go to Savannah to try if I could charter any vessels there but on my arrival I found there was not a vessel in the place fit for the business. The 28th Revenue Cutter arrived from St. Simons and brought me a letter from Mr. Morgan informing that he could load Capt. Knox in six days on which I declined. Returning to St. Simons. While I was at Savannah I asked Mr. Habersham the reason why there was not more timber contracted for, his reply was that they could have as much as

they pleased. I did not think that a proper answer but as I had no order to call him to acct I thought it best to leave that to the gentlemen who employed him. Upon the whole I am of the opinion that Morgan would have done the business much better himself. I am with much esteem

“Your Obt Humbl Ser’t
John Barry”

          The formal report from the committee of which Barry was chairman to the Secretary of War is given below:

“Philadelphia, Dec. 18, 1794.
          “Secretary of War,
          “……………..and every pains taken to procure the most durable wood in the world (the live oak of Georgia), but the summer season having passed before the appropriation act was passed, at which time it is so very sickly in and about the islands of Georgia, that it is impossible to procure, and would have been both expensive and useless to have sent men thither to cut wood, if they could have been procured during the summer months. Early in October however, a number of wood cutters, that had previously been engaged in Connecticut, arrived in Georgia, commenced their operations, and have made such progress that one vessel has already arrived here with a full cargo; the master of which reports favorably as to the dispatch of the others, that have been sent on by the Treasury Department, for to take timber to the different yards. The building of frigates of live oak will certainly be a great saving to the United States, as we are well satisfied (accidents excepted) that their frames will be perfectly sound half a century hence, and it is very probably they may continue so for a much longer period. On the contrary, we are as fully convinced, from experience, that if they were to be built of the best white oak in America, their durability at the utmost would not exceed one-fourth of that time, and the expense of building and equipment is the same, whether the ships are of the best or worst wood in this country…

“We have the honor to be, &c.
John Barry
Richd. Dale
Thomas Truxtun”

          Soon after she was launched, the Constitution began

the career that made her the most famous and best beloved of all American war vessels. In the war with Tripoli she achieved a world-wide reputation. Her decks were trodden by two illustrious commanders, Bainbridge and Hull, but it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who immortalized and saved Old Ironsides for posterity.

“Aye, tear her tattered ensign down,
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky
“Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every thread-bare sail,
And give her to the God of storms,
The lightning and the gale.”

          In 1849, when the Constitution was docked for repairs, Hon. Thomas Butler King, a resident of St. Simons, who was a member of Congress and Chairman of the Naval Committee, was presented with a vase and a walking cane carved from her timbers. Thus did the oak that had grown on this island return, after peril by battle and peril by storm, to add to the charm of the drawing room at Retreat plantation on the south end of the Island. This vase is now in possession of Mrs. Thornton Marye of Atlanta, a grand-daughter of Thomas Butler King, while the cane is the property of Mrs. R. Cuyler King, of Macon.

          On Oct. 17, 1804, John Couper of Cannon’s Point, St. Simons Island, sold to the United States for the sum of one dollar a tract of land on which to erect a light house. This site which measured two hundred ten by eight hundred forty feet and contained four acres, was situated on the southeastern shore of St. Simons, known as Couper’s Point, and was a part of a tract originally granted James McKay.
          The first light house built here was constructed by James Gould of Massachusetts, under a contract entered into on Jan. 9, 1808, with Joseph Turner of Glynn County, Collector of the ports of Brunswick and Frederica, and

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local representative of the United States government, who had been appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury to superintend the construction. The contract was for the sum of thirteen thousand seven hundred, seventy-five dollars and called for a one-story dwelling and kitchen, in addition to the light house.
          The tower was built of lime brick (“tabby” brick) made from oyster shell to be found in abundance on St. Simons, and rested on an eight foot stone foundation. Tradition says that the walls of some of the “tabby” houses at Frederica were used to make this foundation.
          The upper story, or division of twelve and a half feet, was of best “northward” brick. The tower which was seventy-five feet high, exclusive of the lantern, had the shape of an octagonal pyramid, being twenty-five feet in diameter at the base and ten feet at the top.
          The iron lantern at the top of this tower was eight feet in diameter and ten feet high. Within it was suspended by iron chains a set of oil lamps. The contract also called the installation of lightning rods.
          In May, 1810, President Madison appointed James Gould, the builder, to be the first light house keeper. The light was formally established in 1811.
          In 1857, the light was equipped with a modern lenticular illuminating apparatus which greatly improved its power and range.
          The report of the Light House Board for 1860 stated that the tower needed rebuilding, but this was not done.
          In 1862, the Confederate soldiers destroyed the tower and lantern by dynamiting it [MDC crossed out]. No doubt this was done to prevent the United States forces from entering the harbor.
          From that time until the present tower was built, there was no light to guide vessels on St. Simons at night. During the day mariners steered their vessels by the large cotton barn at Retreat Plantation, which was located on U.S. government maps as “King’s Cotton House”.
          The present tower, constructed about twenty-five yards north of the old tower, was built in 1871 and the light was re-established on September 1, 1872.
          St. Simons Light House is built on the site of Fort St. Simons, erected by Oglethorpe as a part of his defense against the Spaniards.

          In the early years of the nineteenth century there lived on St. Simons Island a man by the name of R. Durfee. Durfee kept a diary which has been preserved through all these years and which was at one time a part of the collection of Charles Spalding Wylly who gave it to his friend, Emma Postell Shadman (Mrs. W.H. Shadman), from whom it was obtained by the writer.
          Capt. Wylly told Mrs. Shadman that as a boy he remembered Mr. Durfee, who was then an old man living on Sapelo Island.
          Because of the picture it gives of life on St. Simons among a small circle of the inhabitants, a part of this diary is given here:
          First its here necessary to mention one Great Object I had in View in undertaking this Voyage Was as follows—When I left N. York to find some means of employment Whereby I might get a small Sum of money to provide myself with a humble Cottage on my return on Long Island. The next Place the Winter being so severe, Such as had not been known for a number of years That I resolved in my own mind to change climates in expectation of finding a Warmer One. And particularly my brother mentioning to me that he thought I might get employment. But according to my determination I embarked on the Schooner Franklin. My brother was at this time captain and was bound to Savannah, the capital of Georgia. We set sail from one of the Wharf’s of the City of N. York, Tuesday, February the twelveth day of 1805. The Weather began to be more moderate than it had been for a long time and there was not so much danger from the ice as had been which prevented vessels from sailing for sometime. With a fine wind and that being fair in about six hours our Pilot left us off the Hook. The wind and weather still was favourable; and nothing very particular occurring untill we came up with Cape Hatteras except our passengers was sea sick. There was three whose names are as follows: Doctor Grayham, John G. Snead and a German. It was Night when we got up with the Cape, the Wind blowing then fresh and dark. In attempting to pass the part called the Swath, not a great distance from the light house we was not able to judge of

the proper distance from to be kept at this time. The vessel struck three times on this place, Which was most severely felt by all on board, for at the rise and fall of the sea she would touch bottom, but fortunately not so as to hinder her from going over. This indeed was an alarming situation. The passengers made the best of their way upon deck, While I remained in my birth to receive such a fate as the Providence of God would design.
          My great anxiety was about my brother. We found ourselves safe over. What great reason We had to be thankful to thee Almighty Preserver of mortals.
          After leaving the Cape the morning was pleasant and wind favourable. We had a great run this day. In the meantime passed Cape Look Out. Nothing worth mentioning till night. This night we found ourselves in four fathom of water. We immediately altered our course. Not without some uneasiness by several on board this was supposed to have been the S.E. Point of Frying Pan Shoals. Towards the middle of the following day, a Pilot came along side, the master of which informed us that we was then a little to the North of Charleston bar Which agreed with an observation made on board. We continued sailing along the coast, favored with good wind and pleasant Weather. The next morning saw the shoals of Tybee; here my brother thought best to go over the bar without the loss of time in waiting for a Pilot. We soon got safe over without any difficulty. By this time the Pilot came on board, but soon Dropt anchor in consequence of the wind all dying away together with the current setting us directly on the south breakers, While I took this opportunity of taking a rough sketch of Tybee Light House, with a part of the land as then appeared at a distance of four or five miles. By this time there was a small breeze; the Pilot gave orders to get under way. However, did not pass Tybee as soon as I expected but it was late in the evening. (Tybee is situated at the mouth of Savannah River and is about 17 miles from thence to the City). Notwithstanding we did not arrive untill the morning and then came to opposite the city this being on Sunday February the 24th. As there was no business to be done on this day we improved our time the best we could by going on shore.
          Previous to this Snead had left us and gone on to St.

Simons but according to contract we had to sail in a few days for that island. After discharging some freight here belonging to a merchant in this city.
          I now take the liberty to mention what befell our German Passenger. The second evening of our being there he was so unfortunate as to lose his money which was about one hundred and fifty dolls, out of his pocket. This was inclosed in a small box. It was well known that he was intoxicated the same evening on leaving the vessel in company with one of his countrymen. He returned late at night and in the morning missing the money He was greatly Distressed. He said he was in a strange place without money or friends, but as it happened the succeeding day he found some employment.
          But in regard to myself I did not get the employment I expected for the Gentleman had Already engaged another person.
          So that in my then present situation I had no Alternative left me but to continue on with my brother. By this time our business being completed and everything ready for Sea, We left Savannah on the 2nd of March and on the same evening got as far as Tybee once more there came to anchor. By daylight we was under way and got safely over the bar. In the meantime the Sun arose in its Splendour and with a gentle breeze. We shaped our courses for St. Simons. This morning had the good luck to meet with a fishing boat who had taken our Yawl Boat in tow (that the preceeding evening we had lost; which we obtained by paying five dolls.)
          On the fourth in the morning discovered the breakers off St. Simons; but the weather was too heavy to venture. (Mr. Conkling was somewhat acquainted with these. He thought it best to stand off for two hours.) We then hove about and stood out for two hours or upwards. By this time it was clear. We soon veered ship and stood in towards the shoals or south breaker with a stiff breeze. The same evening got safe to anchor at the Bluff near the S. end of this island. Here we had to wait untill the morning, and then go to Brunswick for doctor Crawford came passenger who had previous to our leaving Savannah Put on board eight negroes and other articles for his brother who was a planter there.

          This evening my brother, Conckling and the Doctor went on shore merely to pass away the time but I had to stay on board on the account of my having the toothache not only then but I had suffered most Severely the Whole of the passage insomuch that I scarcely could take any Nourishment (and not a little in mind). These returned again in about an hour and with nothing very particular to relate. In the morning we made a movement for Brunswick and was not more than two hours sailing that distance. We dropt anchor again, but let me observe that I see nothing there to invite a Stranger on shore so that I never went on shore at this time.
          My brother made very dispatch possible to discharge the freight to be landed here, and on the following morning returned to the island of St. Simons and came to anchor at the bluff, as before.
          This day was the first of my landing on this island. With my brother and Mr. Conckling, we stopped about an hour at one Mr. Wilson, who kept a publick house at the bluff. By this time the tide suited for us to proceed to the old town so called. Without loss of time we went directly on board and got under way. While on our passage there we ran afoul of a schooner laying at anchor not far from old town and carried away her Gibb boom, which afterwards caused some dispute; however, at last was settled but not without my brothers paying 10 dolls. We soon came to anchor oppsit the town. The original name of this town is Frederica and is nearly in Latitude 31º15, it is one of the first towns built in Georgia, and was founded by Gen. Oglethorpe. The fortress was regular and well constructed, chiefly tabby walls and some brick. (Tabby work is a composition made of oyster shells and mortar, and is durable.) There are part of the walls to be seen at the present day, but the town is now in ruins. However there has lately been built one or two stores and about the same number of dwelling houses. The river is on the west side. You have an extensive view of marshes from the town. We remained here about a day and a half, in the meantime landed part of the cargo. We then had to proceed round the North end of this island near the Plantation that Mr. Snead then occupied, and there deliver the remaining part of our cargo. Before we sailed Snead put on board a negro

man for a Pilot for my brother nor Mr. Conckling was acquainted with the way, particularly my brother. And so agreeable to this contract we got under way once more. It being night and dark, through the ignorance of the Pilot, we got into the rong creek, which caused much trouble; for in getting out again the evening after we ran the vessel aground on a mud bank, and there with the great fall of the tide, we came near oversetting, insomuch that the topmasts almost touched the water. All hands had enough to do to hold on the starboard side of the vessel as she was then on the Larboard Beam ends. We remained din this situation untill a quarter flood, which was the principal part of the night. However, we had the good luck to get off at high water and found the right Creek by the light of the sun. I give this the name of Alligator Creek as we found them so numerous there. Our Sailors amused themselves by shooting some of them. We made very little progress this day till evening , Then got as far as the North End, or Point, and came to anchor nearly opposite to one Mr. Coupers. This gentleman has a large plantation there and is a Tolerable Pleasant situation. Notwithstanding its being a late hour, my brother and Conkling went on shore at this plantation and Mr. Couper let them have some refreshments to bring on board. They soon returned again. Just about daylight we got up anchor but in half an hour or thereabouts ran aground on a sand bank not many miles from the Point. Here we was detained till the next high water before we got off this bank. However, this afforded us an oportunity of procuring a boat load of oysters. These oysters are excellent in general, but not very Large. So let me observe that these creeks are not without their good properties as well as ill ones. They likewise abound in fish, such as mullet of a superior quality, and sheephead, also drum fish of a large size, bass, trout, whiting and crabs.
          Likewise some of the bad qualities which are to be met with everywhere here, such as sand-fly, or a small species of gnat, Mosketioes, these are insufferable sometimes, as I well know, particularly at this time.
          What makes it so tedious and difficult in sailing around this island is you have to go such a round about way through extensive marshes, full of small creeks. Indeed the inland navigation between this island and Savannah is

much the same. By this time it was high water. We had no difficulty in getting off this bank, and about sun set arrived at our Place of Destination, or the Village Landing, Which is on the E. side of the island. Here we ran in close to the edge of the bank and made fast. This bank answered for a wharf. We found ourselves somewhat fatigued by this time and soon after supper retired to rest untill morning but did not then hurry ourselves till we had made a hearty breakfast of oysters to go shore as it was some distance to walk to Mr. Sneads. This was a fortunate circumstance for when my brother and myself came there, Snead and his wife was not at home as we was informed by one Mrs. Moore then housekeeper. We had nothing more to do but to return on board. It was about midday when we got back to the vessel.
          The sailors was busy getting ready to receive a Cargo of live oak timbers on board, as soon as the remaining part of our freight was discharged. Mr. Conckling, the mate, was employed in making sails for the yawl boat. In the meantime I amused myself in ketching fish. This evening and the next day I caught a fine drum fish of a middle size and at the same time my brother went as far as Frederica and when he returned Mr. Snead accompanied him on board. Shortly after this came Mr. Harrison. Mr. Snead had agreed that Mr. H. should have part of the corn my brother had brought on freight for him. Mr. H. sent his boat with his overseers and four of his negroes. They remained here all night. The next day delivered the corn to the overseer and likewise Snead received the principal part of everything on board the Franklin belonging to him. He disputed a little with my brother about some articles that had received damage on the voyage but at last thought best to comply.
          The same evening we went to his house and took supper agreeable to his invitation and at this time I was introduced to Mrs. S.
          After supper my brother, Conckling and myself returned on board as I preferred being with my brother.
          About one day after this time my brother began to reload with the live oak. Thus while our affairs was going on in the same time Mr. Snead was making some preparations to invite a few of this neighbours and acquaintances

to come to his house and there spend a social evening and to partake of such as he would provide. However it did not take place until the fifteenth of the month. Previous to this, my brother, Conckling and myself was requested to come early and partake of a good dinner. We did not fail to be there at the time appointed. Also Mr. Harrison and Mr. Kanady came soon afterwards. However, the remainder of the Company did not arrive here Till the dusk of the evening and Amongst the rest came Mrs. Harrison with her two daughters and her Son John.
          The eldest daughter of Mrs. H., her name was Mary. Mary excited my attention the Whole evening and upwards in Such a manner, Let me Observe, that I soon found means to inform myself Who this young lady was that I might have an opportunity of becoming acquainted with her. Who should the young person be that I made inquiry of but a young man by the name of Kanady who lived in the same house with her mother as an overseer (a young man that I very readily became familiar with which hereafter proved friendly); and whom I esteemed; he very politely satisfied my curiosity, and in the meantime one Doctor Jones to amuse the ladies and make the time seem more agreeable played a number of tunes for the company to dance after on his Violin he had then brought for that purpose. Altho I refused to Join them in this amusement yet I enjoyed an agreeable Night, as well as the evening; Likewise betook of a good supper. This was the most agreeable part to me however. (Note: The common name given here to this kind of amusement is called a hop.) And the sun arose in its usual Spelndour before anyone took their departure for home.
          In the meantime we bethought ourselves that it is now time to be on board the vessel, however, they Persuaded us to Stay and refresh ourselves by taking some breakfast. For my own part I had no objection. Also the niece of Mr. Page, a Planter at the s. end of this island remained here to breakfast and one or two others. Soon after breakfast we returned on board the Franklin.
          I endeavoured to divert myself by taking a sail in the Yawl Boat with Conckling, which by this time was in complete order; notwithstanding, I Still retained Mary’s looks in my mind. What was Still Worse for me and perhaps

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the Cause of my falling into so great an error at this time was in some degree owning to this she was recommended to me in such a manner that I really Supposed her to be a Second Virginia.
          It so happened that in a day or two Mr. Harrison came on board and very Politely insisted on my coming to their Plantation and there to take dinner with his mother and sisters. Likewise my brother and Conckling received an invitation about the same time. Such a favourable opportunity as this, reader, was by no means disagreeable to me.
          [EDITOR’S NOTE—The Harrisons lived at Oatland. Under date of Dec. 10, 1788, James Harrison purchased from Rebecca Bruce and Elizabeth Moore the tract of land “originally granted to John Arskins on St. Simons Island, bounded northeast by lands of William Harris, southeast by salt marsh, and on all other sides by vacant lands”. This was the tract known as Oatlands and is now the property of F.D.M. Strachan.]
          The day appointed was on Sunday. I must Acknowledge that I thought the time long that I had to Wait. When Sunday came I did not delay the time nor forget to remind my brother and Conckling of their ingagement. After breakfast we got in readiness. (Conckling was naturally of a jovial turn of mind.) He had something to say. On our way stopped at Mr. Sneads about an hour and then one Mr. Hightour accompanied us there (as at this time he made Sneads house his home and was little short of being a merryandrew). On entering the house I was for the first time introduced to Mrs. Harrison and in particular to Mary. Mary treated me with the respect due a stranger and likewise Mrs. Harrison.
          They provided an excellent Dinner in a short time and we spent an agreeable day. In the meantime I gained the good will of the old lady.
          On taking our leave they give us a second invitation; we came back as far as Sneads and there took a dish of coffee, then returned on board. While at Mrs. Harrisons it was hinted to her that I had thoughts of remaining on the island until my brother returned from N. York and if it suited then to continue longer. She readily declared her wish by saying that she hoped I would, Mary here did not remain silent, but seemed Pleased and give her approbation

in saying something to the same purpose and shortly after this her brother was urgent that I should remain on the island; not only this but but {sic} he said to me that he thought I had better come and live with him at his mother’s house. I then told him I would consider on it, and we parted at that time.
          This undoubtedly would have given me an Opportunity of being in company with Mary but for some Private Reasons that God alone knows that I declined going there.
          I now stop here and return to our affairs on board the Franklin. Removed from the Village Landing about a mile south of this into another Creek to take some timber that was there to complete the Cargo. This was attended with some trouble. My brother was obliged here to borrow a Flat and then load the Flat and then Carry it a half mile and then to reload on board the Franklin.
          The same day we got here, the day before mentioned, Mr. Hightour paid us a visit. He was remarkable fond of fishing to pass away the time; went with him in our Yawl Boat some distance from the Place where we then was but we had no success, returned again after fatigueing myself in skulling the boat against wind and tide for half a mile. Hightour continued here until next. He likewise informed us that Mr. Harrison was then employed in providing for the same company that was at Sneads. This was to fulfill a promise he had made when at Sneads.
          In the meantime my brother and Conckling was making every dispatch possible to leave this Creek but did not get ready untill Friday the twenty-ninth of March, nor then till late in the afternoon. On leaving this Creek I give it the name Live Oak Creek. In an hours time came to anchor near the mouth of the Village Creek.
          On this evening the company met at Mrs. Harrisons. As we had all received an invitation some days before this my brother and Conckling got ready and went but let me Observe that I preferred to remain on board the Franklin for several reasons; soon after they was gone the Steward brought the Supper in the Cabin agreeable to my orders and not long after before I lay down in one of the births and gave my mind up to Serious reflection untill midnight and about that hour came up suddenly a thunder gust Which was severe for a short time.

          I cannot but notice here that one of our sailors whose name was George, he was soon on deck and called hands to their duty; by that means prevented the vessel from going on shore. Likewise this said George was one of our best sailors on board the brig John in my West India voyage but while on shore he is not to be depended on that is he will take a drop too much.
          About sunrise George hove up anchor according to his orders received from my brother; but directly after my brother, Conckling and Hightour came on board they related to me everything that had passed since they left. Likewise informed that all there thought it singular or odd that I did not come, particularly Mary and they appeared to be satisfied with this night’s amusement. And at this time the wind and tide were both favourable by which means we made tolerable headway towards the North End. However, at last was obliged to come to anchor and wait for the next tide. Here we improved this opportunity by going in the boat a short distance and there in a little time Loaded the boat with oysters and soon returned again. I cannot but remark that these oysters was better than any we had found before.
          And it was nearly four o’clock before the flood tide answered. We then got up anchor. However the wind was light. Hightour officiated as Pilot at this time but as it happened we soon ran aground on some mud bank but in an hour or less time got off and came to anchor for this night; and in the meantime refreshed ourselves with a good supper of oysters and Soon after turned into our births and about daylight hove up anchor again; and in Less than an hour was at the North end of St. Simons island opposite Mr. Coupers. Here I must notice that I requested my brother to set me on shore, as I declined going any further. He said he had no objection. He then ordered two hands into the boat. I bid them all goodby; and in two minutes landed on the beach. I now felt at a loss what to do. Whether it was best to stop at Mr. Coupers or not as they were intirely strangers to myself. However, at last ventured to the house and as soon as I came there one of the servants invited me to come into the hall and wait untill Mrs. Couper or some of the family got up. I then went in and took a seat but it was not long before a young lady came

into the hall and took a seat also; she spoke to me very politely and was remarkable sociable. (Note: This was on Sunday morning.) In the meantime preparations was going on for breakfast under this young lady’s directions. She politely said to me that I had better stay and take breakfast. I readily consented to this, but it was nearly two hours before breakfast came on the table; then came Mrs. Couper out of her apartment. After the usual compliments passed on such occasions she took her seat at the table and the remainder of the family was called. She likewise asked me to take a seat at the table. I then took a seat with the rest (but it so happened that Mr. Couper was not at the present time).
          As soon as breakfast was over Mrs. Couper went into another room, and the rest of the family elsewhere as they was then getting ready to go as far as the south end of the island. And I was told that all the horses was then in use. I then immediately set off without any ceremony. I had about three or four miles to walk as I was then going to Mr. Sneads. On my way I stopped at Mrs. Harrisons. At this time I found the old lady alone and almost the first word she said to me was as follows, are you now concluded to remain on the island or not. I replied that I believed I should. She then told me that Mary and her sister was gone as far as Mr. Sneads on a visit. She likewise said to me that I better take a walk there and see them and without hesitation I immediately set off and in a quarter of an hour reached Mr. Sneads, this distance being very little short of a mile. On entering the house I was again introduced to the ladies, particularly the niece of Mr. Page, or Miss Stevens. I now take the liberty to say that Miss Stevens is quite an accomplished young lady, free and sociable in her manners. After dinner the Ladies amused themselves by Looking at some pieces of Paintings drawn by me. They paid me this compliment in Saying that these pieces was well done. Mary requested me to draw a piece for herself. This I did agree to with Pleasure and not Long afterwards Presented her with several pieces, and one in particular representing Seraphic affection. This she said that she never would part with. The same evening Mary returned home Miss Stevens accompanied her thither. And nothing very particular worth mentioning untill Tuesday.

At this time the Franklin had got as far as Frederica on her way to the bluff and there to stop and wait. My brother in the meantime landed at Frederica in the Yawl Boat on business; Also to see me, In the afternoon came to Mr. Sneads. I was very impatient to see him on several occasions. Towards sunset we took a walk as far as Mrs. Harrisons. Here we spent an agreeable evening and returned to Sneads, and in a little time after retired to take repose as we had to rise early. And we did not fail for we was up by sunrise and likewise Mr. Snead as he was going as far as the bluff with us; and immediately after breakfast us three set off; and in a half hour reaches Frederica, but did not get ready to leave there until ten or eleven; then my brother and myself went in the Yawl boat and Snead went by land. We was full an hour if not more before we got alongside the Franklin and not without some difficulty which I do not choose to trouble my reader with.
          Mr. Snead came on board the Franklin soon after us. By this time everything was in readiness for sailing. Mr. Snead desired Conckling to set him on shore, without saying anything to my brother or even waiting for me as he well knew that was to remain on the island. Not only this but I had previous to this made an agreement with him to board at his house at three dolls per week; indeed, this was his own offer. At this time my brother was a little angry on the occasion. In the meantime it gave us an opportunity of talking over our own affairs; and likewise he give me all the money that he could spare at this present time, which was about four dolls, as he said I might stand in need of.
          By this time Conckling returned with the boat and Hightour as he was going a few miles further with them; I now had my things put into the boat, which consisted of two small trunks and a box I kept my paints in. I then took my leave of those on board and in a few moments more was on the Landing but I did not take my final Leave of my brother untill next morning; now my brother went back to the vessel, and they got under way immediately but shortly after ran aground and continued in this situation untill sunrise. About eight in the morning my brother came on shore at the bluff and Likewise Conckling to get a fresh supply of water before they went over the bar.

          But now let me observe that when my brother took his leave of me this was a trying moment indeed and not easily described. These are some of my thoughts at the present time. Am I to be left in a strange place without friends and but little money, depending intirely on my own slender abilities.
          After my brother was gone I followed the vessel with my eyes as long as I could see her—ah! with a throbbing heart I now returned to on Mr. Wilsons who at this time kept a publick house here. Mr. Wilson and his wife treated me kindly nor did thy charge me with a cent for the time I remained with them. (Note: the Franklin sailed on the 3 day of April and bound to N. York from St. Simons.)
          I cannot omit one thing, that is just before my brother took his departure from me he said to me that I must do as I thought best—go or stay behind. I then said to him that I had left some of my things at Mr. Sneads in particular all my paintings and that I had now concluded to stay at least until he returned. The same day I Left the bluff to return to Mr. Sneads and was obliged to walk, not being acquainted with the way I had to go; however I set off alone the distance was about seven miles I had to walk or thereabouts; and many parts of the road was exceeding wet at this time insomuch that I had to wade in several places I came to. Likewise I stopped at the first house on my way that I came to here got directions how to proceed and in two hours or less got safe to Mr. Sneads but I felt fatigued both in body and mind. And many times have I since to my sorrow repented that I ever consented to remain on this island but the best resolution we can take is to suffer with Patience what we cannot alter and pursue without repining the road which Providence Who directs everything has designed for us.
          I now think I proper to mention that during the time I resided at Mr. Sneads I will say I was treated with both Politeness and kindness in particular by Mrs. S. She always befriended me as far as it was in her power.
          On the second day of my being here Hightour returned; he Also informed me that the Franklin was gone over the bar and that he was landed at the s. end of the island. (We now take leave of the Franklin at present.)
          I now have to relate my more immediate concerns at

this time for in the preceeding month I had made a proposal to become a teacher of a school as there was one wanted and here I must observe that the only means left me to support myself was this to pay my board, &c. In this I found no great difficulty but soon succeeded in a tolerable manner. Mr. Snead and Mr. Harrison acted their part for me; Likewise some others. Mrs. Harrison agreed to send her youngest daughter so that on the 9th of April 1805 I commenced teacher on St. Simons Isle but not without many ill conveniences. In the first place the school house was out of repair and in the second I had to walk a mile and a half, morning and evening, bad or good weather; often exposed to the hot sun. This was not the worst of it for the greatest part of the time I went without eating anything from eight or nine o’clock morning untill late in the evening.
          But with the blessing of God I endured this with patience and a degree of fortitude beyond my expectations for six months. But I must add that moderate exercise is a great means of preserving health in this climate as I have been taught by experience.
          About nine days after my coming to live with Mr. Snead another Party met at Mr. Shearwood’s in Frederica and here they enjoyed themselves equal to any of the former ones. They kept it up during the whole night. Likewise received an invitation to join them in this kind of diversion but did not except of it, Altho Mary was there. At this time aforementioned alone at Sneads as he and his wife both went. Shortly after they was gone I retired to my bed in hopes of taking some repose, but in this I was disappointed and too soon found myself Sleepless and never closed my eyes this night. Such being now my condition that it required indeed great patience and resolution during the time that I resided here.
          I cannot omit mentioning that while I remained on this island I had several bravadors to guard against Who privately and meanly did all they could to prevent my going to Mrs. H. by making evil reports to Mary in particular but the before mentioned young man befriended me so far as to caution me against them Which afforded an opportunity of escaping from their designs in some degree but it must be supposed that my being a stranger there that these

things would prove detrimental, and indeed they did operate against me, not only in regard to Mary, but many other influences which will appear hereafter.
          While I was thus engaged in my daily calling and not many leisure hours, yet, I found means to address Mary with a poetical piece that I made choice of at this time but I shall not trouble my reader with it here, only that the last part of these lines hinted a wish to possess her on the most honourable terms. These lines certainly met with her approbation. However, this circumstance led me into greater errors perhaps for it led me into greater encouragement and hopes of success Where before I dare not indulge such a hope.
          And likewise I did not fail in going shortly after to see her and was received with looks of cordial welcome. I sat myself down and enjoyed several hours in conversing with Mary for at this time her mother and sister were both from home on a visit to a neighbor’s house and not long after I got here Mr. Harrison and a certain mischief maker took a walk to the same house that Mrs. H. was then at. This give me some uneasiness as I knew this meddlers tongue could not remain silent for long, and so it fell out, for towards the close of the day Mrs. Harrison returned home but not in a very good humor. But let me observe that I did not remain Long without knowing the cause for she immediately related to Mary what she had heard that I had said about her; but Mary took my part so far as to contradict whatever this person had said and I knew within my own mind that nothing had been said about her While she was absent yet I was dissatisfied and did not remain long here after this affair, but set off to go to my lodgings and on the way was caught in a shower of rain and at the same time met with Mr. H. on the way home. He insisted that I should go back with him but I begd to be excused and so we parted for the present and I soon got back to Sneads.
          By this time the said mischiefmaker had returned and we soon after retired to our partment, as we slept in the same room together in general. However, he said but little to me or I to him. This night as I was somewhat wet I made hast to get to bed but was apprehensive that I should take cold for here I cannot but observe how careful a person ought to be in regard to getting wet or being exposed

in the rain. However, I did not receive any harm. In the morning I arose early and after breakfast went about my daily calling and its now time to say something about my brother.
          One day I was employed in teaching a gentleman by the name of Hadlock who kept a store at Frederica and was likewise Postmaster came riding up to the door and hand me a letter. The contents of this letter was of utmost (Note. This gentleman was an acquaintance of mine). importance to me.
          This was from my brother dated Savannah June the second 1805. He mentioned that the Franklin was cast away about the first and Totally lost on the south breakers off Tybee bar on the return. Part of the cargo was saved and let me observe that Mr. Conckling was at this time captain. And Likewise my brother came passenger in some other vessel to Savannah from N. York. This was a terrible blow to me at this time indeed. Here at once I was disappointed in not seeing my brother; not only this but of the means of getting away from this island.
          Towards sunset I returned to Mr. Sneads. It would be vain to attempt describing to you my feelings at this time but it was the cause of my spending many weary days and sleepless nights.
          On the same day that I received my letter from my brother I received one for Snead which my brother had wrote to him. This in consequence of some money that my brother lent to Mr. Snead when he arrived at Savannah fro N. York but the amount I do not know at present.
          The next letter that I received from my brother he was then at St. Marys. He tells me in this letter that he was bound to N. York in a few days And that I should hear from him soon. But the Providence of God orders things quite different from our expectation as will appear hereafter.
          I now hav to relate the loss of Mr. John Harrison, Mary’s brother, whose loss I sensibly felt. He was sick about a week with the pleurisy as supposed and died on the sixteenth of June. I was at his mother’s house at the time of his death and set up that night and remained here until the following night. Then went back to Sneads to take some repose and be in readiness against the next day to attend at the funeral of my friend Mr. Harrison. Captain

but I have reason to believe you did not write it but in the meantime I have reason to doubt your friendship. You knew that part of these lines were designed to shew how much I took a part with you in the loss of your brother. This circumstance, Miss, deprives me of every future hope and you know the principal motive on which I still visit you. Believe me Your friend R. Durfee
          This letter I sent to Mary. Not many days had passed before I made some discoveries relating to this affair. I had reason to suspect a certain person living in the same house with me. Indeed this was confirmed by the young woman then living in the house. Her name was Margaret Nutting, as a proof of this mean action. Whereas I think a person of any honour would never be guilty of such a thing as this. However, I leave my readers to judge as they think best.
          I then called on the young man living with Mrs. Harrison whose friendship I might rely on at this time and was fortunate enough to meet him not far from the house. And he positively assured me that Mary never had been guilty of such a thing as this.
          In about two hours I came back to Sneads. The next day towards evening I revisited Mary. She treated me in her usual manner. She likewise said to me that there was some ill-minded person Who wished to make a disturbance and she then said it was her intention to treat me well and always would be glad to see me. Her mother repeatedly said the same thing to me. After spending a tolerable agreeable evening I returned to Sneads a little more reconciled than I was.
          I now notice that Mr. Snead’s brother, Tilman, Previous to the death of Mr. Harrison came up from the country near Augstia, G.A. to live with his brother John and assist him as he was about setting up a store or entering the grocery line at Frederica about three miles from his place of residence. I still with Snead continued. However, I must observe that in a short space of time this business relating to the store was given over and everything removed to the plantation where they then lived to the

great surprise of everyone here. For my own part I shall not pretend to say what was the cause.
          It is now time to return to my own affairs. Mr. Hightour was a fellow boarded in the same house most of the time I remained with this family I was treated with kindness and respect. They seemed to enjoy life. I spent many agreeable evenings when I returned from my business. They had several parties of pleasure during my stay with them.
          On the first of November discontinued the employment I then was in and on the fourth went to Frederica to board with Mr. Hadlock Who kept a store and the Post Office and boarded at Mr. James Shearwood’s. It was by his request that I came here. In the meantime Mr. and Mrs. Snead took a journey up the country but left a housekeeper. Mr. H. intrusted me with his business. During his absence, he went to Savannah, I made out tolerable well. Mr. Hadlock agreed to pay my board. He was gone a fortnight. He then returned with a fresh supply of goods.
          Soon after this I declined staying longer with him. However, I still continued with Mr. Shearwood and instructed his two daughters in drawing and writing until December the second and on that day returned to Mr. Sneads. They returned previous to this. Mr. Snead brought one of his sisters, an agreeable young woman. I have omitted. Miss Susan Snead left here for Savannah to a boarding school about March and soon after a dispute took place between Snead and Hightour about settling the crop of cotton, having planted together. I shall not trouble my readers with the whole affair.
          While I lived with Mr. Snead I took a likeness of himself and wife and brother. After this, the last February I received an invitation from Mrs. R. Wright living about two miles from Sneads. I accepted of her invitation and on Monday March 31 came to live with Mrs. W.
          Not long after my leaving Sneads one evening by some accident his dwelling house took fire. At this time there was a considerable cotton in the upper loft. In a short time the house was burnt down with the cotton but most of the furniture saved. Himself and family removed to Frederica or old town. I was realy sorrowful for their

misfortune. Mrs. Snead visited Mrs. W. several times and Susan Snead returned from Savannah and came to spend the day once or twice. Mrs. W’s daughter was about the same age. Miss Snead left this island and returned home to her mothers. This was the last time I saw her. She bid me farewell.
          At this present time while writing I am scarcely able to sit up the day, being at Mrs. Wright’s on Friday, August 17th. I was attacked with a most severe fever which confined me to my bed in an upper room nearly a fourth part of a year.
          On the third day of my illness I was seriously alarmed for nothing but the prospect of death Presented itself to my mind day and night. I have desired the Almighty’s aid and assistance for my disease seemed to resist all medicines at this time. On the fourth day it Proved to be remitting fever but of an inflammatory kind and dangerous. It continued without much intermission for a long time and I also had a most severe ague attending this fever sometimes twice in one day. In the meantime this good lady Mrs. W. afforded me all the assistance in her power. She provided everything needful and allowed me one or two boys to wait on me during my illness. One slept in my room at night. I cannot omit mentioning that it appeared to me that I was directed there by the generous hand of the Providence of God. May I ever live under Thy Almighty care the remainder of days, Particularly should I survive.
          I was so fortunate as to gain the good will and friendship of Mrs. W. Mrs. W. after some time and difficulty procured for me some Peruvian bark. After taking three or more doses of this it seemed to check the ague but the fever still continued without little abatement. However, it was a month or more before I recovered so as to sit up a few moments but soon again had a relapse.
          By this time I was intensely discouraged. How many sleepless nights and with what anxiety have I waited in expectation to hear the crowing of the fowls. This is some consolation to a sick person. Does not the cock that crows bid us hope in the darkest hour before day. I here observe one thing. When the mind is discomposed how difficult it is to affect a cure of any disease.
          I had some cause to think I never should recover at all.

I made several attempts to sit up on my bed but failed in this I was so feeble and this increased the Palpitation of heart and other Symptoms then it obliged me to lay down again. Thus in this situation I remained for a length of time then I made out to put on my clothes and sit on my bed a short time. Then Mrs. Wright thought it best to have me removed down below in a bed room more convenient for her and myself. This soon revived my spirits. Yet I could put on my clothes and sit up most every day. How many sleepless nights I have endured in this illness and never closed my eyes.
          During some weeks after my being removed down in this apartment a Physician residing on this island called to see Mrs. W. and advised me to make use of this medicine—one teaspoonful of cream Tartar and one of sulphur. This I took every evening and a dose of barks in the morning. I soon found relief but many things seemed to prolong the time of my final recovery so as to be able to walk out.
          I cannot but mention here the advantage of studying Doctor Buchanan’s Family Physician and other Authors.

          I had scarcely been out of the doors before I was unjustly fined 3 dolls and 50 cents for not attending muster. Here I leave every person of feeling to judge where this was right or wrong. This circumstances was on the 20th of May. After my recovery I continued teaching Mrs. W’s daughter drawing and her two sons Writing. While I lived with Mrs. Wright most of the Time was Treated with Attention and respect. I enjoyed myself tolerably well, particularly before my illness.
          I spent my leisure hours in improving the garden with the assistance of a negro boy. This was amusement and healthy employment. Mrs. W. was a religious woman and by her request I was employed many evenings in reading moral and religious books. This made the time more agreeable. I remained with Mrs. W. about a year. I have not detailed in full.
          1810, being at this period living at Francis Hopkins, Esq: I received a friendly letter from Mrs. Rebecca Wright wherein she solicited me to return to St. Simons and that she would employ me again. However, I declined going but it was not for want of respect for this worthy friend but previous to my leaving there some trifling misunderstanding took place between us. But I wrote her a few lines: I feel it a duty of respect to write you Altho you have thought I was Undeserving of that honour. But I am conscious I have never injured you but still deserve well of you and now entreat you to continue your friendship Toward me for Neither Time nor distance will the least change that duty of gratitude which I owe to you for the many obligations which I received from your hands, &c. I also informed her I was engaged for the present, &c. (Note: Previous to my leaving Mrs. Wright’s my friend Mr. Hadlock was taken ill and died. According to his own request I read prayers over him at the grave).

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          Frederica, on the Island of St. Simons, nearly in the latitude 31º 15, is one of the first towns built in the State of Georgia and was founded by Gen. Oglethorpe in 1736. The fortress was regular and well constructed, chiefly tabby walls. Some part of the work is made of brick and is now in ruins. In the town there are one or two houses remaining. A few houses and stores have been built. The river is on the west side. You have an extensive view of marshes from the town and creeks &c. Salt water abounds with oysters &c. There are several swamps on this island and one in particular called Bloody Swamp on the account of the battle fought here.
          The principal islands of G.A. are Skidaway, Warsaw, Ossabaw, St. Catherines, Sapelo, St. Simons, Jekyl, Cumberland and Amelia Island &c. (Blackbeard belongs to the U.S.)
          Rivers: Ockmulgee, Oconee, Ogeechee, Altamaha, Savannah, and the St. Tillie.
          Trees: live oak, cypress, pine, sweet bay or red bay, hickory, red oak, and black laurel trees. Tupelo grows in swamps generally. Magnolia, cassina, holly or holly hock tree, loblolly, ash, 2 kinds, oranges and figs 2 kinds cultivated here, peaches and wild plum, yellow wild cherry tree and mulberry, sassafras trees and maple, poplar, red cedar in plenty, chinquepin, a dwarf chestnut, Juniper tree, pomegranate

tree, locust tree, cabbage tree, tallow tree, Pride of India a flowering tree.
          Cotton plant, 2 kinds, green seed and black cultivated here and sugar cane with success and rice but little indigo. Sweet potatoes several species. Nectarine tree cultivated here. Also the castor oil tree or Palm Christy and the beautiful rose called by some Multifarious rose or Multi Flora. It has a great number of flowers on every branch; it runs like a vine. The Cherokee rose has a white flower, single leaved, runs also.
          Note: From Tybee Inlet to the bar on the entrance of St. Simons the course is S by W and the distance about 19 leagues or 57 miles. On the bar of St. Simons you will have at three-quarters flood about 19 feet water. The width of the bar is about three-quarters of a mile. This bar lies 9 or 10 miles from St. Simons fort or light on the south end. This bar or shoal lies in or about 31º15. Frederica on this island is nearly the same latitude. Brunswick Town, lat. 31º10’. Doboy, bar of Sapelo island, lies in lat. 31º11’. At high water you have about 3 fathom or about 3 1/2. On the south end of Sapelo Island in 1820 was erected a light house, revolving light, 15 lamps and reflectors. This light house is painted in horizontal stripes, red and white. It stands on the beach.

          However, the glories of Frederica are in the past. There are to-day less than two score dwellings within the confines of the town that two hundred years ago had a thousand inhabitants and there is nothing left to show where the town stood save the ruins of the fort and fortifications and a few graves.
          Frederica was essentially a military settlement, founded with the sole purpose of protecting the English settlements from Spanish encroachment. It was here that the Spaniards were driven out and that Shakespeare’s language and Runnymede’s Charter were given to this great country of ours.
          Following the Battle of Bloody Marsh, when the danger of Spanish invasion was no more, Oglethorpe returned

to England and there he stayed. His regiment was gradually withdrawn from the Island and the population decreased until at the time of the Revolutionary War there were few families living there. But St. Simons was destined to know another period of activity—to become an agricultural community.
          After the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, in the early part of the 19th century, cotton became a staple crop for St. Simons. Many planters moved there from other sections, brining their slaves with them, and cotton and rice were planted on a large scale.
          The first sea island cotton grown in America was grown on St. Simons from seed brought from the Island of Anguilla in the West Indies.
          An extensive plantation on the mainland in Glynn County, originally owned and developed as a cotton plantation by the Hazlehurst family and by them called Anguilla, because it was here that the first sea island cotton was planted on the mainland, has given its name to the railroad station nearby. Anguilla, once owned by the Townsends, is now the property of J.B.D. Paulk.
          A letter from Thomas Spalding of Sapelo Island, giving an account of the introduction of sea island cotton into America, will be of interest here. This letter, which appeared in a Georgia paper under date of June 17, 1828, is as follows:
          “To the Editors of the Georgian,
          “Gentlemen:
          “There was some months past a notification in your paper (copied from the Charleston Courier) requesting a communication upon the subject of the introduction of cotton in Georgia and Carolina.
          “It has been intimated to me that possibly this notification has originated in some one desirous of information, in order that it might enter into some more general work; and as I am at present perhaps the only person alive who recollects distinctly the introduction of the sea island cotton, I have addressed this letter to you.
          “It is known to many that cotton was cultivated for domestic purposes from Virginia to Georgia, long anterior to the Revolutionary War. Jefferson speaks of it in his

Notes on Virginia. Bartram speaks of it in his Travels as growing in Georgia. And I have understood that twenty-two acres were cultivated by Col. Delegal upon a small island near Savannah before the Revolution; but this was the green seed or short staple cotton. Two species of the same family then existed in this country. The real green seed, and a low cotton resembling it in blossom, both being of a pale yellow approaching to white; one with the seed covered with fuzz, the other with fuzz only upon the end of the seed.
          “To explore the first introduction of the short staple in this country would now in all human probability be impossible: but we may very well suppose it was by one of the southern Proprietary Governments; and possibly from Turkey, the trade of which country with England was then of much higher consideration than it has subsequently become.
          “Nor would it have escaped these proprietors, many of whom were enlightened men, that the climate of Asia Minor, where cotton grew abundantly, was analogous to the climate of the provinces south of Virginia.
          “Just about the commencement of the Revolutionary War, Sir Richard Arkwright had invented the Spinning Jenny, and cotton ginning became a matter of deep interest in England. Cotton rose much in price, its various qualities attracted notice, and the world was searched for the finer kinds. The Island of Bourbon was alone found to produce them, and yet the Bourbon cotton greatly resembled in its growth our green seed cotton; although it cannot be its parent plant, for all attempts to naturalize it in Georgia (which were many and repeated) have failed. It gave blossom, but was cut off by the frost in the fruit, nor would it ratoon or grow from the root in next year: in which too it resembles the green seed cotton of our country. This is all that I am able to say and perhaps all that is necessary to be said of the short staple cotton.
          “The Sea Island Cotton was introduced directly from the Bahama Islands into Georgia.
          “The Revolutionary War that closed in 1783 had been a war, not less of feeling and of opinion than of interest, and had torn asunder many of the relations of life, whether of blood or of friendship. England offered to the unhappy

settlers of this country who had failed her standard a home but in two of her provinces. To the provincials of the north she offered Nova Scotia. To the provincials of the south she offered the Bahama Islands. Many of the former inhabitants of the Carolinas and of Georgia passed over from Florida to the Bahamas with their slaves, but what could they cultivate?
          “The rocky and arid lands of those Islands could not grow sugar-cane. Coffee would grow but produced no fruit. There was one plant that would grow and that bore abundantly, it was cotton. The seed, as I have been informed by respectable gentlemen from the Bahamas, was in the first instance produced from a small island in the West Indies, celebrated for its cotton, called Anguilla. It was therefore long after its introduction into this country called Anguilla seed.
          “Cotton, as I have already stated, had taken a new value, by the introduction of the spinning jenny into England. The quality of the Bahama cotton was then considered among the best grown. New life and hope were imparted to a colony and a people with whom even hope itself had been almost extinct. This first success, as is natural to the human mind under whatsoever influences it may act, recalled the memory of the friends they had left behind them. The winter of ’86 brought several parcels of cotton seed from the Bahamas to Georgia. Among them (in distinct remembrance to my mind) was a parcel to the late Governor Tatnall of Georgia, from a near relation of his, then surveyor general of the Bahamas; and another parcel at the same time was transmitted by Col. Roger Kelsal, of Exuma (who was among the first if not the very first successful grower of cotton) to my father, Mr. James Spalding, then residing on St. Simons Island, Georgia, who had been connected in business with Col., Kelsal before the Revolution. I have heard that Governor Tatnall, then a young man, gave the seed to Mr. Nichol Turnbull, lately deceased, who cultivated it from that period successfully.
          “I know my father planted his cotton in the spring of 1787 upon the banks of a small rice field on St. Simons Island. The land was rich and warm; the cotton grew large and blossomed, but did not open its fruit. It however rationed or grew from its root the following year. The difficulty

was now over. The cotton adapted itself to the climate and every successive year from 1787 saw the long staple cotton extending itself along the shores of Georgia, where an enlightened population engaged in the cultivation of indigo, readily adopted it.
          “All the varieties of the long staple, or at least the germ of those varieties, came from that seed.
          “The same cotton seed planted on one field will give quite a black and naked seed; while the same see planted on another field, different in soil and situation, will be prone to run into large cotton, with long bolls or pods and with seed tufted at the ends with fuzz.
          “I should have great doubts if there is any real difference in these apparent varieties of the long staple cotton. But if there is, all who observe must know that plants when they have once intermingled their varieties, will require attention for a long series of years to disentangle them.
          “Subsequently to 1787, as the cultivation of the cotton extended and became profitable, every variety of the cotton that could be gleaned from the four quarters of the world have been tried, but non of them but one has resulted in anything useful.
          “Mr. James Hamilton, who formerly resided in Charleston, and now resides in Philadelphia, was indefatigable in procuring seed which he transmitted to his friend, Mr. Couper, of St. Simons.
          “Mr. Couper planted some acres of Bourbon cotton; it grew and blossomed, but did not ripen its fruit, and perished in the winter.
          “Mr. Hamilton sent a cotton plant from Siam; it grew large, was of a rich purple color, both in foliage and in blossom, but perished also without ripening its fruit.
          “The Nankin cotton was introduced at an early period, the same that Mr. Secretary Crawford introduced the seed of some years back. It was abundant in produce, the seed fuzzy and the wool of a dirty yellow color, which would not bring the price even of the other short staple cotton. But I knew it to produce three hundred weight to the acre, on Jekyl Island, Georgia. The kidney seed cotton, that produces

the seed all clustered together with a long strong staple extending from one side of the seeds (and which I believe to be the Brazilian or Pernambuco cotton) was tried and was the only new species on which there could have been any hesitancy; but this too was given up because not as valuable and not as productive.
          “I have given the names of gentlemen because I had no other means of establishing facts. I am respectfully yours, etc.” (signed) THOMAS SPALDING Sapelo Island, April, 1828.”
          The favorite lands for the cultivation of sea island cotton were those of the light soil of the islands fringing the coast of Georgia and South Carolina.
          At first the tangle of live oak and palmetto roots practically prohibited the use of the plow; and afterward the need of heavy fertilization kept the acreage so small in proportion to the laborers that hoes continued to be the prevalent means of tillage. About three acres was the average for each hand.
          The fields were plowed in winter, bedded in early spring, planted in April or May, cultivated through July and harvested from September to December.
          The bolls did not open wide and the fields had to be picked frequently to save the precious lint from damage by the weather. The pickers averaged about twenty-five pounds of seed cotton a day.
          Preparation for market required great care. First, the cotton in the seed was dried on a scaffold; then whipped for the removal of trash and dirt; and carefully sorted into grades by color and quality before it went to the roller gins.
          After this the beautiful white lint cotton was spread upon tables where women picked out every flaw and the final step in preparing it for market was the bagging.
          A few of the more prosperous planters equipped their gin houses with steam power, but most of them retained the system of a treadle for each pair of rollers, believing that a finer quality of cotton could be produced thus.
          Plantation gin houses were equipped with a dozen or two foot-power gins, a room for whipping the seed cotton, and tables for sorting and moting (picking out the small

undeveloped seeds that clung to the lint and which the gin failed to remove).
          The cotton, packed into long bags, was then ready for shipment to market. IN those days a standard bale weighed three hundred pounds.
          It was reckoned that, after the cotton was picked, the work required to prepare such a bale for market required the following labor: Drying, one day; whipping, two days; sorting (at an average of fifty pounds of seed cotton per day per laborer), thirty days; ginning (each laborer handling one hundred and twenty-five pounds of lint cotton) twelve days; moting, seven days; inspecting and packing, two days—a total of fifty-four days.
          Basil Hall, who visited this country in 1829, describes a roller gin, as follows: “It consists of two little wooden rollers, each about as thick as a man’s thumb, placed horizontally and touching each other. On these being put into rapid motion, handfuls of the cotton are cast upon them, which of course are immediately sucked in…A sort of comb fitted with iron teeth…is made to wag up and down with considerable velocity in front of the rollers, lies parallel to them, with the sharp ends of its teeth almost in contact with them. By the quick wagging motion given to the rollers are torn open just as they are beginning to be sucked in. The seeds, now released….fly off like sparks to the right and left, while the cotton itself passes between the rollers.”
          The yields and proceeds from the cultivation of sea island cotton were not great. It was estimated that an average yield per acre was one hundred and thirty-seven pounds of lint cotton, worth an average of twenty-three cents per pound, and the net proceeds per laborer averaged $83 per year.
          The following were some of the famous plantations of St. Simons Island:
          Hampton, or Butler’s Point; Cannon’s Point; St Clair; West Point; Pike’s Bluff; Kelvin Grove; Retreat; Hamilton; Harrington Hall; The Grove; and Orange Grove.

          Perhaps the best known plantation on St. Simons Island devoted mainly to the production of Sea Island cotton was Retreat, which became the property of James Spalding by a Colonial grant.
          Mr. Spalding was born in County Perth, Scotland, in 1734, and was said to be the heir to the estate and barony of Ashantilly. He came to Georgia [MDC marked out & wrote “America”] in 1760 and made his home at Retreat on St. Simons Island. The residence he built was standing until a few years ago when it was destroyed by fire. It was a most unique house, every timber in its frame being of hand-hewn live oak, put together with hand-wrought nails.
          He also owned and at one time lived in General Oglethorpe’s house near Frederica. It was here that his son, Thomas, was born in 1774.
          In his Travels in North America, published in 1792, William Bartram tells of his visit to St. Simons, March 1774:
          “I arrived at Frederica, on the island of St. Simon, where I was well received and entertained by James Spalding, esq.
          “A very large part of this island had formerly been cleared and planted by the English, as appeared evidently to me, by vestiges of plantations, ruins of costly buildings, highways, etc., but it is now overgrown with forests. Frederica was the first fort built by the English in Georgia, and was founded by General Oglethorpe, who began and established the colony. The fortress was regular and beautiful, and was the largest, most regular, and perhaps most costly, of any in North America of British construction: it is now in ruins, yet occupied by a small garrison; the ruins also of the town only remain; peach trees, figs, pomegranates, and other shrubs, grow out of the ruinous walls of former spacious and expensive buildings, not only in the town, but a distance in various parts of the island; yet there are a few neat houses in good repair, and inhabited: It seems now recovering again, owing to the public and liberal spirit and exertions of J. Spalding, esq., who is president of the island, and engaged in very extensive mercantile concerns”.

          James Spalding married Margery, the eldest daughter of William and Mary (McKay) McIntosh and the granddaughter of John Mohr McIntosh of Darien.
          Spalding was a prosperous merchant, a member of the firm of Kelsal & Spalding, and was prominent in civic affairs. He was a delegate from St. Patricks Parish and from St. James Parish to the House of Representatives from 1771 to 1773. He represented Glynn County in the Georgia House of Representatives in 1788 and became a member of the Executive Council the following year.
          In 1790 he was named a Commissioner to build a “Court House and gaol” for this county and was also a Commissioner for Glynn Academy. In 1789 he was Associate Justice and, later, Justice of the Inferior Court of Glynn County.
          James Spalding died in Savannah on November 10, 1794 and was buried in the vault of his wife’s uncle, Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, in Colonial Cemetery.
          The Georgia Gazette of that week had the following notice of his death: “Died last Tuesday morning in this city on his way to Augusta, James Spalding, Esquire, member of the Assembly from Glynn County, in the 60th year of his age, near forty of which he has lived in this country.”
          Margery (McIntosh) Spalding, who died in 1818 at the age of sixty-four years, is buried in the Spalding lot in St. Andrews Cemetery, Darien.
          Near the close of the eighteenth century Major William Page and his wife, Hannah (Timmons) Page, having come to St. Simons to visit their friend Major Pierce Butler of Hampton, were so charmed with St. Simons that they decided to make their home here. Accordingly, they purchased Retreat.
          Major Page was the son of a planter in Prince William Parish, South Carolina. He joined the Revolutionary forces at the age of sixteen and fought under Gen. Francis Marion.
          At the close of the Revolutionary War, Major Page and his wife moved to Georgia and purchases Ottassee plantation in Bryan County, now called New Hope, before coming to Glynn County.
          Major Page had only one child, a daughter, Anne, who in 1824 became the wife of Hon. Thomas Butler King, for

sixteen years a representative in the U.S. Congress from this district. Mr. King was necessarily absent from St. Simons a greater portion of his time, attending to his duties at Washington. In his absence the entire management of this extensive plantation was directly under his wife, who was a most unusual woman. She was not only possessed but she also displayed a great business ability in the management of the estate (she would tolerate no flower in her garden that was not fragrant). Her methods of selecting the seed and cultivating the Sea Island cotton grown on the plantation were so superior that Retreat Brand cotton brought 50 cents a pound when other brands produced on the same island were bringing only 42 cents a pound.
          Mrs. King’s Rose Garden at Retreat was famous. Thomas Higginson, who visited here in 1863, said it was “the loveliest spot I have seen in the South, filled with hyacinthe odors”.
          This garden, containing ninety-five varieties of roses, was in the shape of a horse shoe, bordered by a hedge of oleanders. The walks in and around the rose garden added interest to the place. The shell walk was bordered with oaks, the cedar walk with cedar trees, and the rose walk lay between two rows of rose bushes.
          An olive tree which is standing at Retreat now is said to be one of the shipment brought over from France in 1825 by John Couper of Cannon’s Point. Dates were also raised at Retreat.
          The old tabby building which was used as a barn for storing the corn and fodder of this plantation has been remodeled and is now the club house of the Sea Island Golf Course. One end of the lower floor was used to house the saddle and carriage horses of the plantation.
          A wooden barn, four stories high, which was used to store the Retreat cotton, stood nearby but was burned when the residence was destroyed. This large barn contained the cotton gins and the equipment for grading and baling the cotton which was loaded on vessels at the wharves of Hamilton Plantation and shipped to European markets.
          After the Light House was destroyed by Confederate soldiers during the War Between the States and until the

          Hamilton Plantation is located at Gascoigne Bluff, which has always been one of the principal landing places on Frederica River.
          From the many oyster shell banks found at Gascoigne Bluff, one may be sure that this was a favorite spot in the days when the red skins roamed these woods. Broken bits of pottery, mixed with the shells, may be found here today.

          No doubt the Spanish missionaries used this Bluff for their landing place since it was the main landing at the south end of St. Simons.
          When Oglethorpe left England with the settlers for Frederica his vessels were convoyed by the British sloop-of-war, Hawk, Capt. James Gascoigne, since a trip at sea in those days was a dangerous undertaking. The Hawk became separated from the Symond and the London Merchant and reached Georgia after Oglethorpe.
          Capt. Gascoigne came to Frederica, however, and took up his headquarters at this bluff which bears his name. He was placed in charge of the vessels which Oglethorpe had stationed here as a part of the defense of the Colony of Georgia. Gascoigne Bluff became, therefore, Georgia’s first naval base. Here was located the careening ground for repairing vessels, together with two wells and a bakery. Capt. Gascoigne made his home here and operated a plantation which was destroyed by the Spaniards in the Invasion of 1742.
          Gascoigne Bluff, formerly the estate of Major Alexander Bissett, and Hawkins Island, lying to the north of it and formerly owned by Dilworth and, later by William Oakman, became the property of Richard Leake. Leake married Jean, the daughter of Clement Martin, the elder, of Jekyll Island; their only child, Sarah, married Thomas Spalding of Sapelo Island. Jean (Martin) Leake is buried in the Spalding lot in St. Andrews Cemetery, Darien.
          This tract of land was one of the first place in the United States where sea island cotton was produced. Bissett planted it here in 1786 and Leake cultivated it in 1788.
          Richard Leake was prominent in the affairs of the community, having been the local member of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1789 and a member of the Executive Council the following year. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1789 and was also appointed Justice of the Inferior Court and Justice of the Peace of Glynn County.
          The timbers for the building of the first vessels of the American Navy, among which was Old Ironsides, were cut at Gascoigne Bluff and Hawkins Island and loaded at this bluff for shipment north where the vessels were built.
          James Hamilton with his friend, John Couper, came

from Scotland to America and settled on St. Simons Island in 1793. Mr. Couper lived at Cannon’s Point, while Mr. Hamilton made his home at Gascoigne Bluff and called his plantation Hamilton.
          Mr. Hamilton, while living on St. Simons, took an active part in the civic and religious affairs of the community, being one of the first vestrymen of Christ Church, Frederica, when it was organized in 1808.
          This plantation was one of the most important ones on St. Simons. Fanny Kemble said it was “by far the finest estate on St. Simons Island”. The wharf which was built here became the shipping point for the island. The famous sea island cotton grown on St. Simons was loaded here for shipment to foreign ports.
          A terrible tragedy occurred here in 1850. [MDC marked out and replaced with 1852.] The Magnolia, one of the early side-wheel steamboats that plied the inland waters from Savannah to Florida, carrying both passengers and freight, had loaded cotton at the wharf at Hamilton and was preparing to leave when the boiler exploded. Passengers and freight were hurled in every direction. Most of the passengers had been on the side of the boat near land watching a tame fawn grazing nearby when the explosion took place, and, as it happened, were as far removed from the boiler as it was possible to be. Had it not been for this, more of them would have been killed. As it was, many lives were lost and dozens terribly burned and wounded.
          William Audley Couper who was living at Hamilton at that time, improvised a temporary hospital on the second floor of his barn—a large tabby building still standing at Hamilton. Bales of cotton were cut open to make beds, and doctors were brought from Brunswick and from Darien, some of whom remained for weeks ministering to the sick.
          The survivors of the Magnolia sent Mr. and Mrs. Couper a silver pitcher, suitably inscribed, as a token of their appreciation of the kindnesses shown them. This pitcher is now in the hands of the Charles Marshall family of Lindale, Ga., Mrs. Marshall having been Anna, the eldest daughter of William Audley and Hannah Page (King) Couper.
          After the War Between the States, when Plantation Days were at an end, Hamilton was bought by the Dodge-Meigs Co., which erected a large sawmill here. In 1876

this mill was put in operation and was said to have been at that time the third largest mill in the United States, capable of handling 125,000 feet of lumber a day. Later, this mill was owned and operated by the Hilton, Dodge Lumber Co., which continued operations until 1906. [MDC marked out and replaced with 1903.]
          In 1874 there was located on Gascoigne Bluff, just where the Sea Island Yacht Club stands today, a saw mill, owned and operated by Urbanus Dart, Sr., and his three sons Urbanus Jr., Jacob E., and William R. Dart. This mill cut the timbers which were used in building the Brooklyn Bridge.
          Hawkins Island and Hamilton Plantation are now the property of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene W. Lewis of Detroit, who are developing a beautiful estate where they may spend their winters far from the biting cold of the north.

          One of the famous estates on St. Simons Island was Hampton or Butler’s Point, the property of Major Pierce Butler, who came to Georgia from South Carolina.
          Pierce Butler was born in Ireland on July 11, 1744, being the third son of Sir Richard Butler and descended from the Duke of Ormond.
          It was as a major in the British Army that Butler came to America, where he was stationed in Boston. He resigned, however, before the Revolutionary War, married Mary Middleton, a South Carolina heiress, and settled in Charleston, S.C., where he became prominent in the affairs of that state.
          He was a delegate from South Carolina to the Congress of 1787 and the following year served as a member of the Convention that framed the Federal Constitution. He was United States Senator from South Carolina from 1789 to 1796 and again from 1802 to 1804, and was also a member of the Commission to decide the boundary line between the States of South Carolina and Georgia.
          Major Butler was said to be stiff and ceremonious in his manner. Claude G. Bowers gives the following description of him, which is interesting: “A handsome widower...maintaining an elegant establishment in Philadelphia, who affected to be a Democrat and carefully selected his associates

from among the aristocracy; a South Carolinian with a reverence for wealth”.
          Washington considered Butler as a possible Ambassador to England; but, when the appointment was made, it was John Jay who received this honor.
          Moving to St. Simons, Major Butler established a magnificent estate, owning as many as a thousand slaves and cultivating three plantations—Hampton, on St. Simons; Butler’s Island, in the Altamaha River opposite Darien; and Woodville, several miles further up the Altamaha above Butler’s Island.
          Major Butler was a stern disciplinarian, governing the slaves on his plantation with military strictness. They were not allowed to visit the slaves on the adjoining plantations, not even those in close proximity. Although it was the custom at Christ Church, Frederica, to hold a service at three o’clock on Sunday afternoon for the slaves on the plantations of the Island, the slaves from Hampton were not allowed to attend. Major Butler seemed to feel that he could not control his slaves unless he kept them away from outside influences. Hampton was the only plantation in this section where such conditions existed, for the slaves from the other plantations not only visited among themselves, but attended church regularly.
          The Butler plantations were models of efficiency. Everything needed was manufactured on the plantation from shoes and clothes to furniture and tools.
          After a visit to Butler’s Island, Sir Charles Lyell wrote: “The negro houses were neat and whitewashed, all floored with wood, each with an apartment called the hall, two sleeping rooms, and a loft for the children.”
          Sea Island cotton was the main crop at Hampton, while rice was cultivated at Butler’s Island.
          In 1804, while Vice-President of the United States, Aaron Burr challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel in which Hamilton was killed. Feeling very keenly the criticism aroused by the death of Hamilton, Burr sought refuge in the South, where dueling was not frowned upon, and came to St. Simons to visit his old friend, Major Butler, with whom he had served in the Senate of the United States. Stormy weather prolonged his visit to a month’s stay, and it was while here that he wrote many of those

famous letters to his “beloved Theodosia”, his only daughter and the idol of his heart.
          In Parton’s Life of Aaron Burr there is a glimpse of St. Simons:
          “About the middle of August, Colonel Burr, accompanied by Samuel Swartwout, and attended by his faithful slave, Peter, a good-humored blunderer of fifteen, secretly embarked for St. Simons, an island off the coast of Georgia, then the residence of a few wealthy planters. He had old friends upon this island, and the arrival of a Vice-President was itself an event to excite the few inhabitants of a place so remote from the great world. He was welcomed, on his arrival, to a mansion luxurious and hospitable, and the resources of the island were placed at his disposal. He was serenaded by the island’s only band of music. He saw no more averted faces and lowering brows, and heard no more muttered execrations, as he passed. His southern friends, as he found, had very different feelings with regard to the duel from the people at the north, and the society of St. Simons bestowed every mark of consideration upon him that hospitable minds could suggest. ‘You have no idea’, he wrote to Theodosia, ‘of the zeal and animation of the intrepidity and frankness, with which Major Butler (his host) avowed and maintained—but I forget that this letter goes to Savannah by a negro, who has to swim half a dozen creeks, in one of which, at least, it is probably he may drown….’
          “After a month’s detention at St. Simons by the devastations of a hurricane, he crossed to the mainland and made his way with immense difficulties, traveling four hundred miles of the distance in an open canoe, to his daughter’s home in South Carolina. He was almost black from exposure when he arrived”.
          Burr wrote Theodosia that he was “comfortably settled” at the house of Major Butler. He informed her that “the plantation affords plenty of milk, cream, and butter; turkeys, fowls, kids, pigs, geese, and mutton; fish, of course, in abundance. Of figs, peaches, and melons there are yet a few. Oranges and pomegranates just begin to be eatable. The house affords Madeira wine, brandy, and porter. Yesterday my neighbor, Mr. Couper, sent me an assortment of French wines, consisting of Claret, Sauterne, and Champagne,

all excellent; and at least a twelve months’ supply of orange shrub, which makes a most delicious punch. Madame Couper added sweetmeats and pickles. The plantations of Butler and Couper are divided by a small creek, and the houses within one-quarter of a mile of each other; accessible, however, only by water. We have not a fly, moscheto, or bug. I can sit a whole evening, with open windows and lighted candles, without the least annoyance from insects; a circumstance which I have never beheld in any other place. I have not even seen a cockroach”.
          Since Major Butler was absent at this time, Burr seemed to enjoy the companionship of the Coupers at Cannon’s Point. He described “Madame Couper” as “still young, tall, comely, and well bred”. In one of his letters he tells the tragic story connected with the arrival in America of Ann Amelia Nicolau, who married Henri duBignon of Jekyll Island. Burr wrote:
          “At Mr. Couper’s, besides his family, there are three young ladies, visitors. One of them arrived about three months ago from France, to join a brother who had been shipwrecked on this coast, liked the country so much that he resolved to settle here, and sent for this sister and a younger brother. About the time of their arrival, the elder brother was accidentally drowned; the younger went with views to make an establishment some miles inland, where he now lies dangerously ill. Both circumstances are concealed from the knowledge of Mademoiselle Nicholson [Nicolau]. In any event, she will find refuge and protection in the benevolent house of Mr. Couper.”
          While in Georgia, Burr visited Darien and St. Marys. He also rode to Gascoigne’s Bluff and to Frederica. His impressions of Frederica are as follows: “At present, nothing could be more gloomy than what was once called Frederica. The few families now remaining, or rather residing there, for they are all newcomers, have a sickly, melancholy appearance, well assorted with the ruins which surround them.”
          After writing that there were no insects at Hampton, he found a few on other parts of the island. He wrote, “At Frederica and Gaston’s [Gascoigne’s] Bluff we were convinced that insects can subsist on this island. Moschetos, flies and cockroaches abounded.”

          While on St. Simons, Burr visited many of the plantations. At Cannon’s Point he is said to have scratched his name on a pane of glass, which was pointed out to visitors for many years, but which was lost when the house was destroyed by fire.

          Frances Anne Kemble, an English actress and a member of that family which gave to England many fine actors, including Sarah Siddons, the great tragedienne, came to America in 1832, accompanied by her father and her aunt Dall, her mother’s sister.
          Fanny Kemble, as she is generally called, was a woman of remarkable endowments. Besides being a writer of prose and verse and a playwright, she was in addition an actress and dramatic reader.
          Her debut had been made in London in 1829 as Juliet with her father as Mercutio and her mother Lady Capulet. Her success was immediate and remarkable.
          Shortly after her arrival in America she toured the principal cities where she was welcomed with open arms. In her early twenties, “she was lithe and graceful, with black hair and brilliant eyes, set forth by expressive features”. Hers was a voice of uncommon range and power, which contributed largely to her success.
          Writing to a friend of her conquests on this tour, she said: “The phlegmatic Bostonians seemed almost beside themselves with excitement and enthusiasm; they shouted at us, they cheered us, they crowned me with roses”.
          The great men of this country were attracted by her talents. One writer has said: “Of all the great artists who played at the capital (Washington) none created such a furore as Fanny Kemble. The elder statesmen were captivated by her art and charm. John Marshall and Justice Story were regular attendants, and the Chief Justice was lustily cheered as he entered the box. When she played Mrs. Haller in The Stranger, the audience was moved to tears, the Chief Justice shed them in common with younger eyes”.
          Even this learned Justice of the Supreme Court, Joseph Story, wrote poetry to the brilliant actress:

“Genius and taste and felling all combine
To make each province of the drama thine.
She first to Fancy’s bright creation gives
The very form and soul; it breathes—it lives.
She next with grace inimitable plays
In every gesture, action, tone and gaze.
The last to nature lends its subtlest art
And warms and wins and thrills and melts the heart.
Go, lovely woman, go. Enjoy thy fame,
A second Kemble with a deathless name.”

          In 1834 Fanny Kemble married Pierce Butler, the grandson of old Major Pierce Butler of South Carolina and Georgia. During the two years preceding her marriage, when she appeared on the American stage, he had followed her from place to place, frequently appearing as a volunteer musician in the orchestra.
          Although the Butlers had vast holdings in Georgia, they never lived there in the sense that they would call it home. The Butler mansion in Philadelphia was an elegant establishment, possibly the finest of its day in that city. However, Pierce Butler and his talented wife spent most of their time at Brambleton, the Butler country place six miles from Philadelphia.
          To understand Fanny Kemble thoroughly one must read her autobiography, which is in the form of letters written her friends; later these letters were collected and published in two volumes, Records of a Girlhood and Records of Later Life. No matter where she went, she found few people to admire. Six years after arriving in America she wrote, “the Sedgwicks are almost the only people among whom I have found mental companionship since I have been in this country.”
          From the very beginning, her marriage must have been an unhappy one. She was bitterly opposed to slavery and claimed that she did not know when she married that her husband owned slaves.
          To begin with, she had hated the thought of leaving her beloved England and only the hope that the American tour might recoup her father’s “troubled fortunes” had persuaded her to make the trip.
          Not even Time, the great healer, could erase from her

mind the bitterness which she came to feel for her husband. In her autobiography, published when she was seventy years of age, she thus describes her first view of New York City:
          “A thick fog covered the shores, and the rain poured in torrents; but had the weather been more favorable I should have been nothing of our approach to the city, for I was crying bitterly…..The foreboding with which I left my own country was justified by the events. My dear aunt died, and I married in America….”
          Believing she would be able to persuade her husband to free his slaves, she desire very much to come South and

PHOTO OF FANNY KEMBLE HOME ON BUTLER’S ISLAND

see the conditions under which they lived on the Butler plantations. She wrote friends she hoped to teach them to read.
          Finally, in December, 1838, Pierce Butler and his wife and two children, Sally, aged three years, and Fanny, aged seven months, came to Georgia. It so happened this was only visit Fanny Kemble ever made to the region over which she came to exercise such a far-reaching influence.
          They went first to the rice plantation on Butler’s Island in the delta of the Altamaha River, staying there until March, when they moved to Hampton, or Butler’s Point, on St. Simons Island.
          Fanny Kemble plainly showed the negro slaves that she thought they were mistreated and, since she came South

expecting to hear of such harsh treatment, naturally that is what she did hear.
          She insisted that the slaves should not call her Missus, explaining to them that she had no ownership over them and that she held such ownership sinful; that though she was the wife of a man who pretended to own them, she was in truth no more their mistress than they were hers.
          By listening to their small grievances and encouraging them in their complaints, she succeeded in creating quite a little disturbance among the negro slaves of the Butler plantations. Finally, her husband informed her he would hear no more complaints from the slaves if they came through her.
          The records she kept while here during the winter of 1838-39 were in the form of a diary or journal which she had promised to keep for her friend, Elizabeth Dwight Sedgwick.
          Although she did not love her husband and she abhorred slavery, yet she was keenly alive to the beauties of the land in which she was staying and her letters and journal written at this time contain many passages that are gems.
          The beauties of the Butler’s Island rice plantation she describes as follows:
          “As I skirted one of these thickets today, I stood still to admire the beauty of the shrubbery. Every shade of green, every variety of form, every degree of varnish, and all in full leaf and beauty in the very depth of winter. The stunted dark-colored oak; the magnolia bay (like our own culinary and fragrant bay), which grows to a very great size; the wild myrtle, a beautiful and profuse shrub, rising to a height of six, eight and ten feet, branching on all sides in luxuriant tufted fullness; most beautiful of all, that pride of the South, the magnolia grandiflora, whose lustrous dark green perfect foliage would alone render it an object of admiration, without the queenly blossom whose color, size, and perfume are unrivaled in the whole vegetable kingdom. This last magnificent creature grows to the size of a forest tree in these swamps. Under all these the spiked palmetto forms an impenetrable covert, and from glittering graceful branch to branch hang garlands of evergreen creepers, on which the mocking-birds are swinging and singing even

now; while I, bethinking me of pinching cold that is at this hour tyrannizing over your region, look round on this strange scene—on these green woods, this unfettered river, and sunny sky—and feel very much like one in another planet from yourself.”

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          “But then the sky—if no human chisel ever yet cut breath, neither did any human pen ever write light; if it did, mine should spread out before you the unspeakable glories of these Southern heavens, the saffron brightness of morning, the blue intense brilliancy of noon, the golden splendor and the rosy softness of sunset. Italy and Claude Lorraine may go hang themselves together. Heaven itself does not seem brighter or more beautiful to the imagination than these surpassing pageants of fiery rays, and piled-up beds of orange, golden clouds, with edges too bright to look on, scattered wreaths of faintest rosy bloom, amber streaks and pale green lakes between, and amid sky all mingled blue and rose tints, a spectacle to make one fall over the side of the boat, with one’s head broken off with looking adoringly upward, but which, on paper, means nothing.”

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          On St. Simons Island, she was always discovering new beauty spots and her charmingly written descriptions are given below:
          “The scene just beyond the house [at Hampton] was beautiful; the moonlight slept on the broad river, which here is almost the sea, and on the masses of foliage of the great Southern oaks; the golden stars of German poetry shone in the purple curtains of the night, and the measured rush of the Atlantic unfurling its huge skirts upon the white sands of the beach (the sweetest and most awful lullaby in nature) resounded through the silent air.”

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          “The wood paths which I followed between evergreen thickets, though little satisfactory in their ultimate result, were really more beautiful than the most perfect arrangement of artificial planting that I ever saw in an English park; and I thought, if I could transplant the region which I was riding through bodily into the midst of some great

nobleman's possessions on the other side of the water, how beautiful an accession it would be thought to them.”

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          “A young slip of a moon glimmered just above the horizon, and ‘the stars climbed up the sapphire steps of heaven’, while we made our way over the rolling, rushing, foaming waves, and saw to right and left the marsh fires burning in the swampy meadows, adding another colored light in the landscape to the amber-tinted lower sky and the violet arch above, and giving wild picturesqueness to the whole scene by throwing long flickering rays of flame upon the distant waters.”

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          “We drove home by moonlight; and as we came towards the woods in the middle of the island, the fireflies glittered out from the dusky thickets as if some magical golden veil was every now and then shaken out into the darkness. The air was enchantingly mild and soft, and the whole way through the silvery night delightful.”

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          “We rowed home through a world of stars, the steadfast ones set in the still blue sky, and the flashing swathes of phosphoric light turned up by our oars and keel in the smooth blue water. It was lovely.”

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          “How can I describe to you the exquisite spring beauty that is now adorning these woods, the variety of the fresh new-born foliage, the fragrance of the sweet, wild perfumes that fill the air? Honeysuckles twine around every tree; the ground is covered with a low, white-blossomed shrub more fragrant than lilies of the valley. The acacias are swinging their silver censers under the green roof of these wood temples; every stump is like a classical altar to the sylvan gods, garlanded with flowers; every post, or stick, or slight stem, like a Bacchante’s thyrsus, twined with wreaths of ivy and wild vine, waving in the tepid wind. Beautiful butterflies flicker like flying flowers among the bushes, and gorgeous birds, like winged jewels, dart from the boughs.”

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          In 1846, Fanny Kemble permanently forsook her husband’s home and two years later they were divorced.
          After this she returned to the stage, appearing as a

Shakespearean reader and, since her greatest charm lay in her voice, her appearances were immediately successful.
          In Boston, where she gave As You Like It, we have this record of her appearance:
          “A small, low table was in the center of the stage. Fanny Kemble walked in a stately manner upon the platform, bowed very low and respectfully before her audience, as if in the presence of royalty; then with court dignity, passed to the other side of the table and repeated the same profound salutation. After this she slowly took her seat behind the table and placed her feet on a rug beneath it. After concluding other preliminaries she announced the subject of her reading. Her voice was full, rich, melodious, and capable of every variation of expression. Her face was calm, heavy and serious in repose for she reserved her wealth of expression for the numerous characters represented in the reading of the play.”
          A critic of that time said of her: “There was a plain woman, 60 years of age, in simple evening toilet, who, without any scenery, music or assistance of any kind, held her audience from three to four hours, to hear her read entire plays from Shakespeare and this, too, while seated at a table. Her rendition of The Tempest can never be effaced from memory. No company of stars with scenery and music can present to the soul’s eye such a panorama of that great play as did this solitary inspired reader.”
          Mrs. Kemble’s audiences were made up of the most cultured people of every city that she visited. After attending one of these readings, the poet Longfellow wrote a sonnet addressed to her, opening with the line,

“O precious evenings! all too swiftly sped!” and ending—
“O happy Poet! By no critic vext!
How must thy listening spirit now rejoice
To be interpreted by such a voice!”

          Fanny Kemble lived in Lenox, Mass., from 1851 to 1856. She built a home called The Perch and the finest boulevard in the town was named in her honor, Kemble Street. She gave to the Congregational Church a large clock that for fifty years told the hours for the villagers.
          During the War Between the States, Fanny Kemble was

in England. She saw that England was friendly to the South and that sentiment favored the loan the Confederate States wished to negotiate with which to finance the war. Wishing to change this sentiment, she decided to publish the journal she had kept while in Georgia. This was done, the book appearing under the title Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, 1838-39.
          Its publication caused a sensation. John Bright, a leader in the House of Commons, after reading it made a speech in Parliament that is said to have turned the tide against the South. The loan was not made, a fact which helped materially in deciding the fate of the Confederacy.
          Fanny Kemble’s daughter, Sally, married Owen Wister, the elder, and their son is the famous novelist, Owen Wister. Mrs. Wister was very much like her mother in her attitude toward affairs, while the younger daughter, Fanny, was an ardent admirer of her father.
          Pierce Butler, although he lived in the North, sympathized with the South in the conflict between the States, visiting the prison camps and doing what he could for the Confederate soldiers he found there.
          Following the war, he and his daughter, Fanny, came South and lived on the Butler plantations in an attempt to make them pay.
          After her father’s death, Fanny Butler remained here till her marriage to the Rt. Rev. J.W. Leigh, the younger son of Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey, who had a charge at Darien.
          Frances Butler Leigh (Fanny Kemble’s daughter) published an account of her stay on the plantations under the title Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation Since the War. In this book she refers to her mother only once, and then very casually. Yet, it would seem that her sole purpose in writing the book was to show that her mother in her Journal gave a distorted picture of life on the plantations.
          When old Major Pierce Butler espoused the cause of the Colonies and fought against the Mother Country, the members of the family in England severed “friendly relations”. However, this was all smoothed out when Alice Leigh, the daughter of Frances Butler Leigh and the granddaughter of Fanny Kemble, married Lord Butler, a distant cousin.

Lady Alice Butler visited Georgia recently and made the acquaintance of many who had known her mother in years past.

          Major Butler’s only child, a daughter, married a Philadelphia physician by the name of Mease. Their two children, John and Pierce, took the name Butler and inherited the Butler estates jointly.
          This grandson of the old Major, Pierce Butler, married Frances Anne Kemble, better known as Fanny Kemble, a noted English actress.
          After the death of old Major Pierce Butler in 822, the plantations went to these two grandsons who lived in Philadelphia and left the management of their southern estates in the hands of Roswell King and his son, Roswell King, Jr., of Darien.
          In 1838, when the Kings decided to move to North Georgia, where they founded the town of Roswell, the Butlers came to Georgia for a short stay.
          The plantations did not yield any considerable revenue, finances became strained, and the panic of 1857 caused the sale of Pierce Butler’s half of the plantation slaves. The slaves were sold at auction in Savannah where the 429 men, women, and children brought $303,850.00 or an average of more than $708 per head. The slaves were sold off in family groups of two to seven persons each.
          During the War Between the States, Pierce Butler, who lived in Philadelphia at that time, did much to relieve the distress of Confederate soldiers in northern prison camps.
          Coming south in 1866 with his daughter, Frances, Pierce Butler found his former slaves on the verge of starvation and willing to work for their old master.
          Butler offered them a plan of cropping his land on a half-and-half basis, which they readily accepted.
          An agent of the Freedman’s Bureau, suggesting to one of them that Butler might not be acting in good faith, said: “Why, Bram, how can you share so much for your master? He sold you a few years ago”.
          “Yes sir”, replied the old negro, “he sold me and I was very unhappy, but he came to me and said, ‘Bram, I am in

great trouble; I have no money and I have to sell some of the people, but I know where you are all going to, and will buy you back as soon as I can’…and now that we are free, I came back to my old home and my old master, and stay here till I die”.
          However, the freemen “remained the same demonstrative and noisy childish people they had always been”. They were not yet accustomed to this new freedom and could not bring themselves to regular work. Frances Butler Leigh wrote: “I generally found that if I wanted a thing done I first had to tell the negroes to do it, then show them how, and finally do it myself. Their way of managing not to do it was very ingenious, for they were perfectly good-tempered, and received my orders with ‘Dat’s so, missus; jus’ as missus says’, and then somehow or other left the thing undone”.
          In 1867 Pierce Butler died in Darien; his daughter, Fanny, in an attempt to operate the plantation continued to reside here for several years.

          It was customary for the Butler negroes who worked the cotton fields on Little St. Simons to make the daily trips back and forth from Butler’s Point in boats, for there were no dwelling houses on Little St. Simons, the only structure being a hurricane house built to withstand the tropical gales.
          In September, 1804, a storm came up while more than a hundred of the Butler negroes were working on Little St. Simons.
          The head man, “Driver” Morris, a very intelligent negro, realizing the futility of attempting to return to Butler’s Point in such a gale, ordered the negroes into the hurricane house and by his clear thinking saved their lives. “Upwards of a hundred negroes” from a neighboring island who rushed to their boats and attempted to reach their homes in the storm were drowned, while through the presence of mind of Driver Morris not one of these Butler negroes was lost.
          This hurricane occurred while Aaron Burr was visiting at Hampton and at a time when he had gone to Cannon’s Point in a small boat to see Mr. Couper, who was seriously ill.

          In one of his letters to Theodosia, Burr, described the storm which came up so quickly and with such fury that he was forced to spend the night with the Coupers.
          Major Pierce Butler, wishing to reward Morris for his splendid conduct, offered him his freedom, which he declined. Major Butler then presented him with a sum of money and a silver cup, on which was engraved the following inscription:

“To Morris
from
P. Butler,
For his faithful, judicious, and spirited conduct in
the hurricane of September 8, 1804, whereby
the lives of more than 100 persons were,
by Divine permission, saved.”

          This cup passed from Morris to his son, to his grandson, and to his great grandson, Morris Seagrove of Brunswick, who received it in 1926 on the death of his cousin, John Bull Sampson, a grandson of Driver Morris.
          Morris Seagrove was the fifth person to hold the cup and he prized it very highly. He says it was always understood that the cup should go to the “boy chile” of the family and, since he had no “boy chile” to whom to leave it, he has given it to Miss Alice for her boy. Miss Alice is Lady Alice Butler of England, a great great granddaughter of Major Pierce Butler who gave the cup to Driver Morris.
          York Hazzard, [MDC crossed out and wrote Liverpool] the only Butler slave who is still living, is also a descendant of Driver Morris. York, who lives in Darien, is ninety-four years old and can talk interestingly of the days ‘fore de war. The pride in his voice and the straightening up of his body when he talks of the Butlers tell of his love and loyalty for his former master and members of that master’s family.
          York [MDC crossed out and wrote Liverpool] says he was in Brunswick cooking for the Confederate soldiers when a Yankee gunboat came across the bar and began to shell the town. The place was abandoned and York and a man belonging to Mr. Troup took the horses to Camp Walker for safe keeping.
          After the war York [MDC crossed out and wrote Liverpool] was one of the boatmen who rowed Miss Fannie (Mrs. Leigh) on the river.

          He is very proud of being a Butler negro and of the pension which Miss Alice (Lady Butler) sends hi m every month.

          Kelvin Grove was originally the home of Thomas Cater, whose only son, Benjamin, married Ann Armstrong. An only daughter of this marriage, Ann Cater, married James P. Postell of South Carolina and in this way the plantation came into the Postell family.
          The old Cater home was built of tabby, being one of the few homes on St. Simons built of that enduring material.
          James P. Postell possessed a splendid library of valuable books on many subjects, including the best literature of that day, as well as scientific works. He was a conchologist of note, classifying and labeling a valuable collection of shells, which was sold to Roanoke College.
          A notice in The Brunswick Advertiser of August 9, 1876 says:
          “Roanoke College of Virginia has purchased that superb collection of shells owned by Mr. James Postell of St. Simons. It consists of 6,000 varieties of the rarest kinds and quite a number of each variety. This collection, the labor of years of Mr. Postell’s life, is probably one of the finest on the continent and well worth triple the amount paid for it. Roanoke College might well be proud of such a collection.”
          Kelvin Grove, the site of the Battle of Bloody Marsh that decided the destiny of this section, is now the property of Mrs. Maxfield Parrish, the wife of the artist.

          West Point and Pike’s Bluff, the two plantations that adjoin the old town of Frederica on the north, belonged to the Hazzards; West Point being the home of Col. William Hazzard, and Pike’s Bluff that of Dr. Thomas Hazzard.
          At West Point the “big house”, as the home of the master was called, having been built of wood, has fallen into decay, but the tabby buildings that were the slave quarters are still standing.

                Orange Grove was located on Dunbar Creek about two miles south of Fort Frederica.  This tract was owned by James Bruce and came into the Wright family by the marriage of Rebecca Bruce to Samuel Wright.
                Samuel Wright of Glynn County was born about 1738.
                In 1790, he was appointed Vendue Master of Savannah, which position he resigned the following year.  One would suppose that his resignation was on account of his marriage on August 14, 1790 to Rebecca Bruce, the daughter of James Bruce, a merchant of St. Simons Island.
                In 1791 and 1792 he served as Commissioner of Glynn County Academy and was the Glynn County member of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1791 and of the Senate in 1792, 1793, 1794-5, and 1798.  He was appointed Commissioner of Frederica Nov. 27, 1799, and Justice of the Inferior Court of Glynn County Dec. 24, 1791, serving in this capacity until the date of his death May 4, 1804.
                Samuel and Rebecca (Bruce) Wright are buried in the cemetery at Christ Church, Frederica.
                In addition to the civil service given above, Samuel Wright was commissioned Major of the Glynn County Regiment of Militia on Nov. 4, 1793.
                Samuel Wright and his wife Rebecca had three children—Samuel, who died without issue; James Bruce; and Mary Wright.
                James Bruce Wright married Ann Burnett, the daughter of Moses and Rebecca (Moore) Burnett.
                Mary Wright married George Abbott of St. Simons Island, and their daughter Ann married a Mr. Gowen.
                Many descendants of Samuel and Rebecca Wright live in this county.

                On the eastern shore of St. Simons, just north of the Village lies Brailsford, or St. Clair, as it was called in the

olden days.  Here are to be seen the ruins of an old tabby building, which it is believed was one of the early Spanish missions.
                The people on St. Simons in Plantation Days knew this was a very old building and they called it “Oglethorpe’s Home” as they wanted to place it in the oldest civilized era of which they had any knowledge.  However, Oglethorpe built no structures on this part of St. Simons and this must have been built long before the coming of the English.
                Fanny Kemble in her Journal, writes that Capt. Fraser, who married Margaret, [wife was Ann Sarah Couper—ALH] the daughter of John and Rebecca (Maxwell) Couper, told her, “that at St. Clair General Oglethorpe, the good and brave English governor of the State of Georgia in its colonial days, had his residence, and that, among the magnificent live oaks which surround the site of the former settlement, there was one especially venerable and picturesque, which in his recollection always went by the name of General Oglethorpe’s Oak”.
                Rev. J.W. Leigh, who married Frances, the younger daughter of Fanny Kemble and Pierce Butler, in Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, tells of a visit here, as follows:  “At St. Clair we stopped to have a look at the ruins of the house once occupied by General Oglethorpe…”
                The oak which Fanny Kemble describes fell many years ago; the fallen trunk has been pointed out to the writer by John Stevens of Frederica who said that in his boyhood it was called “Old England”.
                This oak stood west of the old tabby house and a short distance south are the graves of the two children of Major William Mackintosh.
                St. Clair is now the property of F.D.M. Strachan of Brunswick.

                The last slaves brought from Africa to the United States were landed on Jekyll Island.
                A short time before the outbreak of the War Between the States, the Wanderer, a sailing vessel built in Maine for the illicit slave trade, made a trip to the coast of Africa for a cargo of negroes.  It is said that the officers of the vessel had on hand a plentiful supply of knives, beads, and pretty

trinkets with which to entice the negroes.  The plan worked well and when about 350 men, women and children had come aboard, the anchor was raised and the vessel sailed for America.
                When they reached St. Andrews bar, they stopped to get a pilot.  At that time, James A. Clubb was lighthouse keeper on Little Cumberland Island and also acted as pilot for that bar; so it was Mr. Clubb who brought the ship in.
                The officers of the Wanderer attempted to surround the whole affair with great secrecy, but, in some way, the federal authorities heard of the arrival of the slave ship and the officers were arrested and imprisoned at Savannah.  It was fortunate for them that the outbreak of the War Between the States at this time put a stop to the proceedings.
                About 50 of the negroes had died in passage, the federal authorities captured about 100 more, and the others were sold into slavery, many of them being purchased by citizens of this section.
                Many Brunswickians will remember two of the unfortunate passengers of the Wanderer—Clementine, familiarly known as “Steamboat”, and her brother Tom, who were about grown when brought here.  Clementine was the property of the duBignons, while Tom belonged to the Floyds of Fairfield, Camden County.
                Quite an interesting story is told of the ironical situation that arose in connection with the prosecution of the officers of the Wanderer.  The vessel had been built with northern money and manned by northern men for the undisguised purpose of supplying southern planters with slaves.  In the suit against the officers of the vessel, the prosecuting attorney was Henry R. Jackson, of Savannah, who became a General in the Confederate Army an fought, as it was supposed, to hold intact the institution of slavery.  Yet Capt. Farnum of the Wanderer, who had illegally brought slaves into the country for pecuniary gain, became a colonel in the Union Army and fought to free the negroes whom he had sold into slavery.

                On the west shore of St. Simons, almost opposite Twitty Park, is a bluff known as Ebo Landing, where slave ships

used to land their human cargoes and hold them in camps until they were sold.
                Rather than submit to a life of servitude, a group of Africans of the Ebo tribe, who were encamped here, marched into the water and were drowned.  To this day no negro fisherman on St. Simons will drop a hook at Ebo.

               On either side of Frederica Road and within the settlement known as Harrington, there is a pond where in olden days the negroes were baptized.  It is called Obligation Pond for here they took their obligation to the Lord.

                When the Hilton-Dodge Lumber Company operated their sawmill at Hamilton, this part of St. Simons was a busy community.
                About this time two Jews, the Levison brothers, opened a store near the Bluff and the negroes employed at the mill named the settlement which grew up around the store Jewtown.
                Today, the inhabitants of Jewtown are all negroes, the descendants of the old slaves of St. Simons Island.

                The white man who has never lived among the true Southern darkies cannot know or appreciate the fine spirit of loyalty which the slave had for his master.  Many stories are told of the heroism of these people in the trying days of the War Between the States, but none can rival that of Neptune Small.
                Neptune was a slave, the property of Thomas Butler King.  He was about grown at the outbreak of the War Between the States and when Mr. King’s son, Lord King, enlisted as a Confederate soldier, Neptune accompanied him as his body-servant.
                At the Battle of Fredericksburg it was necessary to send dispatches through a very dangerous section—a mission that meant almost certain death.  The commanding

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officer asked for volunteers and Lord King offered.  He accomplished the mission, but fell on the battle field, his body pierced by seventeen bullets.  None of his comrades dared the shower of shot and shell to recover his body, but faithful Neptune did this and even more.  He brought the body home and it lies today by the side of the father and mother in the little church-yard at Frederica.
                Mr. King now told Neptune that he could stay at home and need not return to war, but Neptune wanted to join Mr. King’s other son, R. Cuyler King, whom he affectionately called “Marse Tip”.  This he was allowed to do.
                Though many miles away, Neptune’s thoughts were ever on St. Simons.  Once when they were camped in the mountains of Virginia, lying on the hillside and watching the full moon rise through the trees, Neptune said, “High water on de bar, Marse Tip”.

                The slaves that came directly from Africa to this section brought with them many queer customs.  One of these was that of burying their dead at night, each mourner carrying a lighted torch, or pine knot.  It was a weird sight to see a funeral procession marching through the woods at night.  After the corpse had been lowered into the ground, they would stand in a circle around the grave and throw the lighted torches as far as they could behind them.  Although these pine knots could be found in great numbers near the burying ground, no negro could be induced to touch one of them because he believed it would bring “bad luck”.

               Many tales could be told of the love and devotion of the negro “mammies” for the babies that were their special care.  Indeed, in the thoughts of the “mammy” these babies always “belonged” to them and often the negro mammy followed her “baby” to her new home when she married and set up housekeeping for herself, and became the “mammy” of another household.
                The descendants of the slaves that were on St. Simons before the emancipation of the negro are there today and

are a superior group of negroes.  They are proud of the traditions of their fathers and live peaceful and happy lives.  A majority of them own small farms which they plant with what to them are the necessities—potatoes, corn, sugar cane, etc.—and stock with a few chickens, hogs, and a cow.  The “cow, hog and hen” program is not new to St. Simons.
                Of the many interesting stories that might be told concerning the loyalty of the slave for his master, the tale of Maum Pender is one of the most interesting.
                Maum Pender was attached to one of the plantations on St. Simons and refused to leave her mistress even after the Emancipation Proclamation.  Finally, the mistress told Pender she would have to go since there was not enough there to feed the household.  Pender said, “Miss Annie, how I gwine leave you?  You can’t do de work.”
                Two of the other servants on this plantation, Clarissa and Mary, went to Savannah and got work so as to support themselves.  The first money they earned was used to buy shoes for the children of their former “missus” back on the St. Simons plantation.
                Mary is still living and when she comes home always goes to see her “chillum”.  Needless to say, she is happily received.

                Social intercourse among the many plantations on St. Simons was carried on mainly by water, the planters taking great pride in the construction of their boats, and selecting for them such names as Lady Love, Star and Lightning.  Naturally, these boats were rowed by slaves, who seemed to feel that the reputation of their masters depended on their skill in rowing and singing, for they invariably sang as they rowed.
                Just as there was a spirit of rivalry among the planters to have the best boat, there was also a desire on the part of the slaves to sing the best songs.  The oarsmen of one plantation would never sing the songs belonging to another plantation, but would try to compose a song that would be finer than that sung by the neighboring oarsmen.  So well did these songs become known on the plantations that, when a boat had passed in the night, one would know the

plantation to which it belonged by the songs that were being sung.
                Many of these songs are still sung by the negroes of this section, having been handed down from generation to generation, and they should be collected and put into permanent form before they disappear.  Fame and fortune await the one who will preserve for all time the simple melodies of these people.
                Major F.K. Huger gives this boat song as one he has heard sung in his boyhood days by the slaves on the rice fields:

“One mo’ mo’ner, jis cum home,
Two mo’ mo’ner, jis cum home,
T’ree mo’ mo’ner, jis cum home,
                Fer ter ring dat hebbenly bell

“Sister Lyddy, Oh! Cum ring dat bell,
“Sister Lyddy, Oh! Cum ring dat bell,
“Sister Lyddy, Oh! Cum ring dat bell,
                Fer ter call dat mo’ner home.”

                The names of the negro women of the plantation were generally used and the words repeated over and over, introducing different names, while the sweep of the oars synchronized with the rhythm of the song.
                The negro has rhythm and melody and gives expression to it, naturally, at his work or play.  The work songs, or “chanteys” are beautiful examples of this.  Many of the old “chanteys” can be heard on St. Simons today.  The “spirituals” of the Coastal Georgia slaves are sung by their descendants, the isolation of the islands tending to keep them pure—that is, free from outside influences.

                Sea Island Beach, on the eastern shore of St. Simons an washed by the waters of the Atlantic, is being developed as a year-round resort where one may enjoy the advantages of Georgia’s delightful coastal islands, with the added attractions of golf, tennis, swimming, boating, fishing and hunting.

                Here is located the handsome resort hotel, The Cloister, and the Casino with its magnificent swimming pool.
                Sea Island Drive gives a view of the beautiful homes and the natural beauty of palm and pine on the island once known as the Isle of Palms.

                The first white man to settle the lands now occupied by the City of Brunswick was Mark Carr.  Carr’s settlement was near the river between what is now Dartmouth Street and First Avenue, and until a few years ago the ruins of the tabby buildings could be seen.  Carr claimed 1,000 acres of land on this peninsula, which was then called Plug Point.
                An interesting item in connection with this plantation is found in the Minutes of the Trustees of the Colony of Georgia at a meeting held Saturday, February 11, 1744, at Queen’s Square, Westminster, London:
                “Lt. Col. Alexander Heron of Gen. Oglethorpe’s Regiment attending the Board and being examined in relation to the state of the Island of St. Simons and the southern part of the Province of Georgia says…..that he has often seen Capt. Carr’s plantation and never saw so fine a one in all Virginia; that William Ruff who lives at the said plantation produced last year a barrel of tobacco as good as any in Virginia, which was purchased for the Regiment.”
                (The above furnishes a suggestion as to the reason for the queer name, Plug Point.)
                Lieut. George Cadogan attending the meeting said:
                “That he has seen Capt. Carr’s plantation which is very thriving, and that he saw twelve hundred bushels of corn which were raised on the said plantation in the Year of the Invasion (1742)”.
                In 1744 Carr had cleared about 300 acres and had a field here, so that in 1771, when the Provincial Council decided to lay off the City of Brunswick at this place, they gave him, in exchange for lands he claimed, 500 acres of land at the Hermitage, 500 acres on Blythe Island, and 500 acres on Cowpen Creek.
                Mark Carr left this locality and moved to St. John’s Parish where he became prominent.  In 1755 he was the

Representative from the Midway District and Tax Collector and Assessor for Midway and Newport; he was Justice of the Peace from 1759 to 1762.  In 1758 he gave the land for the Town of Sunbury, which tract had been granted him by the Crown.
                Mark Carr and his wife, Jane Perkins, of Doncaster, York, England, had a daughter, Mary, who married Henry Meyers of Liberty County on Jan. 29, 1785.  Another daughter, Judith, married John Poulson.  It is believed there were other children, but it has not been possible to establish definitely who they were.  In 1811 the Georgia Legislature heard “the petition of John Lines and Jane M. Meyers, only surviving heirs of Mark Carr as far as regards the State’s claim to Carr’s Island.

                At the time of the founding of the Colony of Georgia by the great philanthropist, James Edward Oglethorpe, the land now occupied by the City of Brunswick was Spanish territory.  It was not until the Treaty of Paris in 1763 that Spain formally ceded to England all lands north of the St. Marys River, the present boundary line between Georgia and Florida.
                Realizing the many natural advantages for the building of a city offered by this site, the Council, or legislative body, of the Royal Province of Georgia, at a meeting held in the capital city of Savannah in 1771, laid off the City of Brunswick, named the streets and parks, and ordered a survey to be made.  Thus, we have English names perpetuated here.  The city itself was named in honor of the King of England, George III, who was of the house of Hanover, or Brunswick.  He was also honored in the naming of George street and Hanover Park.
                Others who were honored in the naming of the streets and parks were:
                James Edward Oglethorpe, the founder of the Colony;
                Earl of Egmont, the first president of the Board of Trustees;
                George Carpenter, one of the Trustees;
                Earl of Hillsborough, Commissioner of Trades and Plantations;

                Duke of Richmond, who aided the Colony;
                Duke of Gloucester, member of the King’s Cabinet;
                Duke of Newcastle, Colonial Secretary at the time of the founding of Georgia;
                Earl of Halifax, Colonial Secretary at the time of the founding of Brunswick;
                James Habersham, President of Colonial Council;
                Gen. Wolfe and Col. Grant, heroes of the Battle of Quebec;
                William Reynolds [MDC entered John here], Henry Ellis, Sir James Wright, Royal Governors of the Colony of Georgia.
                Gen. Monk, known as the King Maker, and, later Duke of Albemarle;
                Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of England.
                Union street was named in honor of the union of England and Scotland as one kingdom.
                Sir James Wright, who was Governor of Georgia at the time of the founding of Brunswick, had pretentious aspirations for the town as will be seen by a letter written under date of June 3, 1771, to Henry Laurens, Esq., of Charleston, S.C., by the Hon. James Habersham of Savannah, who as President of the King’s Council assumed the duties of governor in the absence of Gov. Wright:
                “….Tomorrow being the King’s birthday, and our land day, as it is called,…..I shall put in for a town lot or two at Brunswick, or Plug Point, and a water lot for you, and I shall probably engage that you will do as much on them as any that may apply….You see how free I am with your pocket.  Our Governor really thinks at some period that it will be the capital of this fine country, but if I was publicly to say so here, I do not know but I might almost run the risque of being hanged….”
                Petitioners for lots in Brunswick bound themselves to build “a good and Sufficient dwelling house not less than 30 foot in length and 18 foot in width with a good brick Chimney thereto”.  Failure to do this would eventually cause the property “to revert to his Majesty, his heirs and Successors”.
                As originally laid off in 1771, Brunswick was a rectangular tract of land consisting of 383 1/2 acres, bounded on the north by F Street, on the east by Cochran Avenue, on the south by First Avenue, and on the west by the river

front.  The first lot was granted June 30, 1772, and up to the Revolutionary War 179 lots had been granted.  However, about this time Brunswick lost most of her citizens, since they were practically all Tories and fled to England for protection.
                From 1783 to 1788 a number of these lots were regranted and there collected in Brunswick a few families who seemed desirous of securing an education for their children.  Indeed, the history of the town is so interwoven with the history of the schools that one cannot be given without the other.  In fact, at one time the affairs of the town and those of the schools were administered by one body of Commissioners.
                On February 1st, 1788, the General Assembly passed an Act appointing Henry Osborne, George Handley, Christopher Hillary, John Braddock, William Stephens, John Houston, Gen. Lachlan McIntosh, and James Seagrove, as Commissioners and directing them to survey and sell lots in Brunswick; the money from this sale to be used for the erection and maintenance of the Academy.  The present Board of Education and the present Glynn Academy are the successors of the Commissioners and the Academy authorized by this Act of the General Assembly of 1788.  It is to be regretted that we have no record of the kind of building erected, its location, or its first teachers.
                A large tract of land surrounding Brunswick on three sides had been laid off and designated as Commons.  It was intended to rent or lease the Commons and to apply the money raised in this manner to the support of the Academy.
                In 1796, George Purvis, Richard Pritchard, Moses Burnett, Jno. Piles, and Jno. Burnett were named as Commissioners to sell the lots in Brunswick and to lease the Town Commons, the proceeds to be used for the Academy.
                With the removal of the county site from Frederica to Brunswick and the consequent need of a court house and jail, the General Assembly passed another act, approved February 3, 1797, appointing Commissioners and authorizing them to sell 500 acres of Commons; one-half of the proceeds to go to the erection of the court house and jail and one-half to the support of the Academy.  The Commons surveyed and sold at this time included that part lying to the south and east of the original boundaries of Brunswick

and consisting of the following tracts:  the Piles tract and the Benjamin Hart tract, lying south of Old Town; the McKenzie tract, now Habersham Park; the Clubb tract, now Dixville; the Wilson tract, now Windsor Park; Urbana; and Mayhew.
                A description of the town, written about this time, is as follows:
                “It has a safe harbor and is sufficiently capacious to contain a large fleet.  Although there is a bar at the entrance of the harbor, it has depth of water for the largest ship that swims.  The town is regularly laid out but not yet built.  From its advantageous situation, and from the fertility of the back country, it promises to be one of the most commercial and flourishing places in the state.  It lies nineteen miles south of Darien….”
                When the General Assembly in 1814 passed an act combining the Commissioners of the Town and Commons of Brunswick and the Commissioners of Glynn Academy, the following were named:  Wm. Page, Henri duBignon, Geo. Dupree, Leighton Wilson, and Wm. Houston.
                In 1819, the Commissioners erected a comfortable building for school purposes on the southeastern corner of Reynolds and L streets.
                The next survey and sale of Town Commons property occurred in 1835, when the General Assembly passed an act stating that the Town Commons contained 900 acres, which was more than was needed, and authorized the sale of 300 acres, the money realized by this sale to go to the Academy.  The 300-acre tract of Commons sold at this time was that part of Brunswick now known as New Town, lying north of F street and extending east to Wolf street.  The tract was divided into five-acre ranges, all of which were sold except the one on which was located the Academy, called Academy Range, which was reserved.
                The old Academy, built in 1819 at a cost of $10,000, was abandoned and with a part of the proceeds of the sale of New Town, which had brought in about $16,000, a building was erected on Hillsborough Square.  This building was completed in 1840, and for more than half a century was the only public school building in the city.  In 1915 it was removed to Sterling, where it is now used as a negro school.
                Of the Commons as originally surveyed, 600 acres now

remained.  This tract was divided into lots and the lots were leased for a period of ninety-nine years at $1.00 a year.  The income derived from the leases, as well as all taxes on improvements, went to the Board of Education for the support of Glynn Academy.
                By authority of an Act of the General Assembly of 1911, which Act was ratified by a vote of the people of Glynn County, all persons holding leases on Town Commons lots were given fee simple titles to same.  The present limits of the City of Brunswick include all of that land once known as Commons.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF BRUNSWICK AND GLYNN COUNTY

                The framers of the first Constitution of Georgia, adopted in 1777, planned a wonderful system of public schools for the State.  Under this plan each county was to have an Academy and at the head of all the Academies would be the State University under the control of the Senatus Academicus.
                The English idea of an income by rental was the method used to raise revenue by which these Academies would be supported.  Commons were laid off around each county site and leased for a period of ninety-nine years, all monies derived from leases and all taxes upon improvements going to the support of the Academy.
                Under this Constitutional provision, Glynn Academy was chartered in 1788 (three years after the State University was chartered) and boasts that from that day to this schools have been provided for its boys and girls that were as free as the air we breathe.
                Few communities in Georgia can make this boast, for only three of these early County Academies are in existence today—Chatham, Richmond, and Glynn.
                Under another Constitution adopted later, Georgia did not recognize the education of its children as a duty of the State, taking the view that parents should pay for the education of their children; the parent being unable to do this, then it was the duty of the State.  Poor Schools were provided by law and to them none except those who acknowledged themselves paupers were allowed to send their children.

                However, the already organized and functioning Glynn County schools continued to operate and were not disturbed by the poor school laws.
                In time the City of Brunswick outgrew its original limits and much of the City was located on Town Commons lots.
                In 1911, the legislature granted permission for the Board of Education to relinquish all claim to Town Commons property so that fee simple titles might be given the holders of these lots.  In lieu of the monies that would be lost to the Board of Education by this change, the Board was given the right to levy a tax on all property in the City of Brunswick.  This tax, together with other tax levies made in the city and county, and the funds derived form the state appropriation, provides ample school facilities.

                With the original plan of the City of Brunswick drawn up in Savannah by Savannah people, it is but natural that Brunswick should have many features copied form the splendid plan of the “Mother City”.  One of these is the adequate park system which was provided.  The following parks were designated and named on the plan which George McIntosh followed when he laid out the city in 1771:
                King’s Square, at the intersection of Newcastle and Prince Streets;
                Queen’s Square, at the intersection of Newcastle and Mansfield Streets;
                Hanover Park, between Richmond and Grant Streets at George Street;
                Hillsborough Square, between Carpenter and Egmont Streets at Mansfield Street;
                Wright Square, between Carpenter and Egmont Streets at George Street;
                Halifax Square, between Carpenter and Egmont Streets at Prince Street.
                Smaller park places were provided at regular intervals and named for the islands near Brunswick.  They are located as follows:
                Bisected by Newcastle Street:
                                Machen Place, between F and Gloucester Streets;

                                Jekyll Place between Gloucester and Monk Streets;
                                Crispin Place, between Albemarle and Dartmouth Streets;
                                St. Simons Place, between Dartmouth Street and First Avenue.
                Bisected by Norwich Street:
                                Hillary Place, between F and Gloucester Streets;
                                Blythe Place, between Gloucester and Monk Streets;
                                Satilla Place, between Albemarle and Dartmouth Streets;
                                Frederica Place, between Dartmouth Street and First Avenue.
                The following parks in New Town were dedicated as such in 1837 by the proprietors of the Brunswick Company:
                Magnolia Park, bounded by G, Ellis, H, and Reynolds Streets;
                Orange Park, bounded by M, Ellis, L, and Reynolds Streets;
                Palmetto Park, bounded by R, Ellis, Q, and Reynolds Streets;
                Windsor Park, between Palmetto and Sycamore Streets at Oak Avenue, was dedicated to the City of Brunswick when the subdivision of that name was created in 1890.
                Kaiser Park, at the corner of First Avenue and Norwich Streets, was dedicated to the City of Brunswick by Mrs. Michaelas Kaiser as a memorial for the use of the patients and staff of the City Hospital.
                In 1929, the Commissioners of the City of Brunswick purchased land for park purposes in Urbana.

GLYNN COUNTY DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

                At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War Glynn County was sparsely settled and the few citizens who were here did not feel that they were sufficiently protected.
                Fort Frederica had been practically abandoned.  Oglethorpe returned to England in 1743 and the regiment of British soldiers that had been stationed there was disbanded in May, 1749.  In Gov. Wright’s report to the Earl of Shelbourne in 1760, he stated that there were ten Royal American troops stationed at Frederica.

                In 1776, the Council of Safety, sitting at Savannah, ordered the stores at Fort Frederica to be secured for the cause of the Colony of Georgia.  The cannon were also removed and were used to fortify Fort Morris near Sunbury.  The guns were transported by Thomas Maxwell who was paid “for Boat hire to fetch the guns from Frederica to Sunbury £52-10”.
                Therefore, seeking safety, most of the inhabitants of this section went to other places.  Those who favored the cause of England fled to Florida, which was the stronghold of the British, while the Whigs moved to parts of Georgia that were more thickly settled.
                So far as the records show, there was little fighting of any consequence in Glynn County.
                In 1778, Col. Samuel Elbert marched from Savannah to Fort Howe, formerly Fort Barrington, on the Altamaha River in Liberty, now McIntosh, County where the American forces were concentrating so as to meet the British forces under Gen. Prevost, who was said to be marching from Florida for the conquest of Georgia.
                Elbert, having reached Fort Howe April 14th, learned that three British vessels were lying at Frederica.  Supplying them with fifty rounds of ammunition and provisions for six days, he detailed three hundred men to march to Darien and go from there in boats to St. Simons Island in an attempt to capture the British vessels.
                Led by Col. Elbert, this force landed at Pike’s Bluff on the western shore of St. Simons Island about a mile and a half north of Frederica, from which place a force marched to Frederica.  The next morning the remainder of the American forces on board the vessels sailed down Frederica River for the attack.
                Col. Elbert’s report of the encounter as contained in a letter to Gen. Howe gives a vivid picture of the attack:

“Frederica, April 19, 1778.
“Dear General,--
                “I have the happiness to inform you that about 10 o’clock this forenoon, the brigantine Hinchinbrooke, the sloop Rebecca, and a prize brig, all struck the British tyrant’s colors and surrendered to the American arms.
                “Having received intelligence that the above vessels were at this place, I put about three hundred men, by detachment

from the troops under my command at Fort Howe, on board the three galleys—the Washington, Capt. Hardy; the Lee, Capt. Braddock; and the Bulloch, Capt. Hatcher—and a detachment of artillery with tow field pieces, under Capt. Young, I put on board a boat.  With this little army we embarked at Darien, and last evening effected a landing at a bluff about mile below the town, leaving Col. White on board the Lee, and Capt. Melvin on board the Washington, and Lieut. Petty on board the Bulloch, each with a sufficient party of troops.  Immediately on landing I dispatched Lieutenant Col. Ray and Major Roberts, with about 100 men, who marched directly up to the town and made prisoners three marines and two sailors belonging to the Hinchinbrooke.
                “It being late, the galleys did not engage until this morning.  You must imagine what my feelings were to see our three little men-of-war going to the attack of these three vessels, who have spread terror on our coast, and who were drawn up in order of battle; but the weight of our metal soon damped the courage of these heroes, who soon took to their boats; and as many as could, abandoned the vessel with everything on board, of which we immediately took possession.  What is extraordinary, we have not one man hurt.  Capt. Ellis, of the Hinchinbrooke, is drowned, and Capt. Mowbry, of the Rebecca, made his escape.  As soon as I see Col. White, who has not yet come to us with his prizes, I shall consult with him, the three other officers, and the commanding officers of the galleys, on the expediency of attacking the Galatea now lying off Jekyll”.
                The Galatea, lying at the north end of Jekyll Island, however, sailed away before Elbert could condition the Hinchinbrooke and the Rebecca for the attack.
                The Hinchinbrooke was a rich prize.  On board were found 300 suits of clothing (uniforms) that had been intended for the men under Col. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.  These had been shipped on the Hatter and were captured near Charleston by a British privateer.
                Col. Elbert now returned to Fort Howe, where the American forces were gathering.  Three battalions from South Carolina were formed into a brigade and placed under the command of Col. C.C. Pinckney, with John Hamilton as brigade major.  The artillery from Carolina and Georgia was placed under Major Roman.  Col. Elbert acted

as brigadier-general with Major John Jones as aide-de-camp.  Gen. Howe reached Fort Howe on May 20th.
                Col. Pinckney’s letter to Gen. Moultrie pictures the situation for us:

                “Camp at Fort Howe on Altamaha, May 24, 1778.
“Dear General, –
                “Here we are, still detained by the confounded delay of the South Carolina galley and provision schooner who are not yet come round to this river, and the reasonable and candid gentry of this State are throwing a thousand reflections on the General and the army for not marching to attack the enemy and storm lines without provisions and without ammunition.  The whole army, except a very small garrison to take care of our sick and secure our retreat, will, however, march from hence to Reid’s Bluff, three miles lower down and on the other side of the river, tomorrow afternoon, or next day at farthest; and as by that time our ammunition and provisions will have come round to this rive, we shall proceed with all possible expedition for St. Marys where we shall have some amusement by the attack of Fort Tonyn.  Notwithstanding any reflections which may be cast on the propriety of the present expedition at this season, it is now incontrovertible that the movements in Carolina, the capture of the Hinchinbrooke and the other vessels, and the proposed expedition have proved the salvation of the State of Georgia.  However, I cannot help lamenting to you (and I owe it to candor and our friendship) that you have been much to parsimonious in your fitting us out for this expedition.  What can be more cruel than crowding eight, ten and twelve men into one tent, or oblige those who cannot get in to sleep in the heavy dews?  What is more inconvenient than to have only one camp kettle to ten, twelve or fifteen men? and in this hot climate to have one small canteen to six or eight men?  We think no expense too great to procure men, but we do not think, after we get them, that we ought to go to the expense of preserving their health.
                “Having thus freely given you my sentiments concerning the articles we are in want of, I won I could wish, and the General requested me to desire you to send round in a boat, or small schooner, 500 canteens, 100 camp kettles, and 35 or 40 tents.  I am sure they cannot be better employed,

even if the State should lose them all.  But I apprehend that cannot be the case, as they ought to be a Continental charge.
                “There has been a number of desertions from White’s battalion of British deserters.  I enclose you a plan of this curious fort and encampment.  It is badly planned and wretchedly constructed.
                “By intelligence from St. Augustine the enemy’s force is as follows; 300 regulars at Fort Tonyn on St. Marys 60 at St. Johns; 320 at St. Augustine; 80 to the southward of St. Augustine, with some Carolina Tories.  Nothing could be more fortunate than a division of their force.
                “I am this moment informed that the Governor of this State [Houston] has ordered from us to the militia two hundred barrels of rice.  He likewise ordered the galleys 30 miles further up the river than this place, when, on account of the shallowness of the water, they cannot come within 10 miles as high up as we are now.  Excellent generalship!  If you send a boat, the General would mean that the boat should come to Sunbury where they will receive orders.  We are very badly supplied with medicines.  These articles not being sent will not prevent our going on, but it will occasion the sickness of many, and render us less useful than we would otherwise be.”
                May 27th, the army moved from Fort Howe across the Altamaha River and encamped at Reid’s Bluff, on the south bank of this river in Glynn County.  A letter from Gen. Howe to Gen. Moultrie at this time tells of the attempt that would be made to rid Georgia of the British:

“Camp at Reid’s Bluff, June 12, 1778.
“Dear General,—
                “I have just a moment to inform you I am setting off instantly upon my march to St. Marys, where the enemy seem to expect us, and where I had long since been had not ten thousand disappointments arisen, a few of them from accident, but more from the operations of this State, happened to prevent and detain me.  I have been waiting several weeks for the Militia, which were to have proceeded rapidly, but are not yet arrived, except 400 that are encamped about 4 miles in my rear waiting to be joined by the Governor, who is behind, as we are informed, with a large

body:  but from him I have not directly heard for a long time, thought I have written to him often upon very important subjects.  He has, I believe, exerted himself to spirit up the people, and I fancy has been greatly perplexed.  I wished to see him before I moved, but I fear I shall not, unless he comes within half an hour.
                “The brigade under Elbert I advanced to St. Illa to take possession of the river, and, by works thrown up upon both sides, to facilitate the advance or cover the retreat of the army, either of which may be requisite as soon as I join him which will be (if nothing happens more than I expect) the day after tomorrow.  I shall proceed to St. Marys where we shall meet Commodore Bowen with the fleet at an appointed place, and if the enemy favor us so much as to make face, we shall endeavor to treat them with the attention they deserve and we so ardently wish to bestow.”
                The army marched from Reid’s Bluff toward the Satilla River on the Old Post Road, known to many as the Barrington Road.  This is one of the oldest roads in this section.  When Wayne County was cut off from Glynn, it became the line between the two counties and is still the boundary line a good part of the way.
                The march to the St. Marys River was uneventful.  They were surprised to find Fort Tonyn demolished and the troops retreated to St. Augustine.  However, a part of the American force attacked the British that had taken a stand at Alligator Creek but without success.  There were three killed and nine wounded among the American forces one of the latter being Col. Elijah Clark, who was wounded in the thigh.  The army returned to Sunbury by water.
                In the fall of this same year, as he was returning from Fort Morris at Sunbury, after Col. John McIntosh had dared him to “Come and take it”, Col. Fuser landed his British Regulars at Frederica and reported that there were not a dozen men on St. Simons Island capable of bearing arms, and that these claimed to be British sympathizers.
                However, many who came to make their home in Glynn County following the Revolution had seen service in other sections of the country.  The service record of a few of these Revolutionary soldiers has been compiled and will be given here.  It is hoped that this small beginning will bring

to light records of many others whose history is hidden away in old letters, family Bibles, and Court House records.

                Pierce Butler of Hampton, or Butler’s Point, was Major of the 29th Regiment of the British Army and in this capacity came to America.  He was present at the Boston Riot on March 5, 1770.  Previous to this he had been with his regiment in South Carolina.
                Prior to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, he married Mary Middleton, a South Carolina heiress.  Major Butler resigned his commission in the British Army, espoused the cause of the Colonies, and served in the American Army.

                Cyrus Dart, the oldest son of Joseph and Abigail (Brainard) Dart of Haddom, Connecticut, was born June 11, 1764.
                Joseph Dart “was commissary officer during the Revolution, a captain and a squire, a member of Capt. Comfort Sage’s Militia Regiment”.
                Like his father, Cyrus Dart joined the Revolutionary Army and was said to have been a page to Gen. Washington when he occupied New York City.  Being under age, his father took him out of service; however, he seemed to have been determined to fight and ran away from home to join the army as a private in Capt. Stillwell’s Company, 1st Connecticut Regiment.  A Muster Roll of this company shows that Cyrus Dart enlisted April 1, 1782 and was discharged April 17, 1783.  It is thought that he also served upon a privateer.
                After the Revolution, he returned to school to complete his medical education.  Later, he had a dispute with his father about money matters and left home to come south and settle in Glynn County.
                The first record we have of him in Glynn County is his purchase of two lots “in the Old Town of Frederica”, from Thomas Spalding on August 6, 1792.
                On May 7, 1796, Cyrus Dart married Ann Harris, the

daughter of Lewellin and Ann Harris of St. Simons Island.
                He was appointed a surgeon in the Army of the United States on June 1, 1796 and was stationed for duty at Coleraine on the border of the Spanish Province of Florida.
                Coleraine was an Indian town on the north bank of the St. Marys River in a beautiful location about six miles from Folkston.  It was a place of some note and an important Indian treaty was signed here in 1796.  The Lyman Hall Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, of Waycross, has erected a monument at this place, which bears the following inscription:
                “This boulder marks the site of the old town of Colerain where the treaty of peace and friendship was made on the 29th June, 1796, between the President of the United States and the Kings, Chiefs, and warriors of the Creek Nation of Indians, ratified Mar. 18, 1797.  The Commissioners on the part of the United States were Benjamin Hawkins, George Glymer, and Andrew Pickens”.
                By this treaty the line between the white people and the Indians was established to run “from the Currahee mountain to the head or source of the main south branch of the Oconee River, called by the white people, Appalatchee, and by the Indians, Tulapoeka, and down the middle of the same”.  Liberty was also given by the Indians to the President of the United States to “establish a trading or military post on the south side of the Altamaha, about one mile from Beard’s Bluff, or anywhere from thence down the river, on the lands of the Indians”; and the Indians agreed to “annex to said post a tract of land of five miles square; and in return for this and other tokens of friendship on the part of the Indians, the Untied States stipulated to give them goods to the value of six thousand dollars, and to furnish them with tow blacksmiths with tool.”
                Representatives of the State of Georgia present at the signing of the treaty were James Jackson, James Simms, and James Hendricks.  James Seagrove, of St. Marys, Agent for the Creek Indians, was present, and it is possible that Dr. Dart, also, may have been present at the signing of this treaty, for he was stationed at Coleraine at that time, but there is nor record of his presence on this occasion.
                Several of the children of Cyrus and Ann (Harris) Dart were born at Coleraine while their father was stationed there.  It is believed that the three oldest boys—

Erastus, Horace and Urbanus—were born at this place, and it is definitely known that Urbanus was born there.
                Cyrus Dart resigned from the Army Jan. 20, 1802, was appointed quarantine officer for this port, and resided on St. Simons Island.  In 1817 a vessel anchored off St. Simons awaiting the quarantine inspection.  Dr. Dart, accompanied by his young son, Urbanus, prepared to go aboard in a small boat rowed by a negro man.  The boat was capsized in the breakers and Cyrus Dart and the negro oarsman were drowned.  Urbanus Dart was able to save himself by swimming ashore.  The body of Cyrus Dart was never recovered.
                Ann (Harris) Dart had the following children:  Erastus, Horace, Urbanus, Ann Maria, Eliza Ann, Alfred, Theodore, and Edgar C.P. Dart.
                Horace, Alfred and Theodore died young.
                Erastus Dart, the oldest son, went to sea.  While on a voyage to England he had his portrait painted.  On the return trip eh died and was buried at sea.  The portrait was given to his youngest brother, Edgar C.P. Dart, whose grandson, J.E. Lambright, now has it.
                Urbanus Dart was born at Coleraine on Nov. 29, 1800, and died in Brunswick on Feb. 26, 1883.  In 1836, he married Eliza Moore of Glynn County and to them were born six sons and two daughters, all of whom made their home in Brunswick.  The sons were Horace, Frank, Urbanus, Jacob, William Robert, and John.  Sarah, the eldest daughter, married Benjamin Stallings; while the younger daughter, Eliza Rebecca, married Wilfred F. Symons.  This younger daughter of Urbanus Dart, Eliza Rebecca (Dart) Symons, is the only living grandchild of Cyrus Dart.
                All the Darts living in this section today are descended from Urbanus and Eliza (Moore) Dart.
                Ann Maria Dart married Dr. Dupree and had four children.
                Eliza Ann Dart married Cyrus Paine, by whom she had two children.  After his death, she married Schubert Burns, by whom she had four children.
                Edgar C.P. Dart married Ellen Moore of Glynn County,

A sister of Eliza Moore who married Urbanus Dart, and their daughter, Julia, married Joe Lambright.

SIGNATURE OF RAY DEMERE

                Raymond Demere, II, the son of Capt. Raymond Demere of Harrington Hall, St. Simons Island, was born in 1752 and was, therefore, a young man at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.  Even before Georgia cast her lot with that of the other Colonies, we find Raymond Demere on the side of the patriots.
                During the second week in January, 1775, a district congress was held in St. Andrew’s Parish (now McIntosh County) at which a series of resolutions was passed and articles of agreement or association were signed by thirty-one men, one of whom was Raymond Demere.  By these articles of agreement they expressed themselves as “opposing the execution of the several arbitrary and oppressive acts of the British Parliament, until a reconciliation between Great Britain and America, on constitutional principles, which we most ardently desire, can be obtained.”
                Raymond Demere was a member of the Provincial Congress which met in Tondee’s Long Room in Savannah on July 4, 1775.
                In February, 1776, eleven vessels loaded with rice lay under the bluff in Savannah harbor awaiting the departure of the British war ships that lay off Tybee so that they might go to sea.  However, the British vessels, Scarborough, Hinchinbroke, St. John, and two large transports with soldiers, came up the river to capture the vessels and their precious cargo of rice.
                [NOTE—The Hinchinbroke which was a merchantman sheathed with wood, had been taken into the naval service and mounted with twenty-eight guns.  Lord Nelson and Lord Collingwood were both made post-captains in this vessel.  In 1778 the Hinchinbroke was captured at Frederica by the American forces under Col. Samuel Elbert.]

Pg. 178

                The Council of Safety immediately took measures to protect the supply of rice and prevent its capture by the British.  In carrying out these orders, one of the officers, Capt. Rice, and his detachment of men were captured and held prisoners on board one of the British vessels.
                In an attempt to avoid trouble and to obtain the release of Rice and his men without bloodshed, Daniel Roberts, and Raymond Demere were permitted to go on board the British vessel and demand the surrender of the Americans.  Unarmed and on an errand of peace, they were immediately arrested and made prisoners.
                In retaliation, the Council of Safety put under arrest all the members of the Royal Council who were then in Savannah.  Various negotiations followed and on March 27th an exchange was effected by which Rice, Roberts, and Demere were released and the officers of the Crown were paroled.
                Shortly after this experience, Raymond Demere proceeded to Charleston where he boarded a vessel bound for the north.  The passage was stormy and perilous.  Arriving at Philadelphia he joined the staff of Lord Stirling, serving as aide-de-camp; later he became aide-de-camp to Gen. Washington.  He was made a Major and served in the campaigns of New Jersey.
                The following extracts from Major Demere’s Journal (1777) are interesting:
                “At last, after so many hair-breadth escapes and moving accidents by flood and field, I arrived at Philadelphia.  In the evening was entertained by a fine band of military music.  Before leaving Georgia I thought it was there alone that disunion prevailed, but was sorry to observe the same and even here—where the united voice of the people is assembled—disaffection is widely spread….Dined with the member of Congress at their club.  In the afternoon walked with some of them to see the Light Horse exercise.  They promise in a little time to be very well trained.

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                “[At] Princeton….is the college, which was much injured while in possession of the British.  It is now a hospital for our sick troops.  Dined with Mr. Witherspoon [the president of Princeton and a Signer of the Declaration of

Independence].  Went with Major Jamison and waited on Gen. Sullivan stationed here with 1200 men.

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                “May 31st.  Arrived at headquarters; waited on Gen. Washington; delivered my letters of introduction, and accepted Col. Biddle’s invitation to stay at his quarters….Our encampment is about sixty-five miles from Philadelphia….Dined with Gen. Washington.

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                “June 2nd.  Went through the different divisions.  1^st division, Brigadier Gen. Muchlenbury and Weeden, under the command of Major Gen. Greene; 2nd division, Brigadier Gen. Conway and Maxwell, commanded by Lord Stirling; 3rd division, Brigadier Gen. Woodford and Scot under Major Gen. Stevens; 4th division, Brigadier Gen. Wayne and Dechan, by Major Gen. Lincoln.  After writing to my friends in Georgia, dined and spent the evening with Gen. Greene.
                “June 5th.  Spent the day with Lord Stirling.  Was pressed by him to remain at his quarters and accepted the invitation.  Gen. Washington having reason to think the enemy intended a sudden movement from [New] Brunswick to New York, ordered Col. Martin, with a detachment of 500 men, to watch his movements and check him.  Lord Stirling acquiescing, I joined the detachment and was appointed second in command.  We left the parade at 12 o’clock at night.  The road to Quibble town was rough and uneven and in many places so narrow we were obliged to march in files.  Here we heard the enemy had been there only the day before and we expected to meet with him every moment.  Sent a party of Light Horse to scour the country and continued our route, marching in platoons with advanced rear and flank guards.  But the Brigade Major had been so negligent in supplying provisions, the weather rainy and the troops hungry and fatigued, we were obliged to make three divisions and quarter them in different farms.  When they were refreshed we commenced our march.  Col. Martin went forward to gain intelligence and we appointed to meet on a hill near Woodbridge.  When there, I formed the battalion and, to rest the men, ordered them to ground arms.  It began to rain violently; I formed into platoons and marched to gain shelter from the weather.  I was soon

joined by Col. Martin who had discovered a strong encampment of the enemy near Woodbridge.  As the houses in the neighborhood were so small that the troops could be only in separate detachments, where they could be easily surprised, we were determined to approach the enemy and endeavor to cut of his picquets.  Accordingly, we quickened our pace, but within a mile of their camp, on examination, our arms were found damp with rain, the officers wet to the skin, the men overcome with fatigue and several really sick.  Col. Martin showed to me the imprudence of the attempt, as a failure would expose us to censure for our orders were to make no attack unless the enemy was in motion; a countermarch was ordered, but we had not proceeded four miles when it rained so hard and the men became so weary we were compelled to quarter them in small detachments in different houses, about a mile from Woodbridge, where the British were encamped, among people disaffected to our cause, and whom we knew would give intelligence to all of our movements.  However, we made the best of it, appeared cheerful and satisfied and gave out we were to remain all might, planted sentries, and appointed a place of rendezvous.  After the men had rested a little, issued private orders and we then marched eight miles to the Scotch plains, where we did not finish quartering the troops until two o’clock.  The excessive fatigue I endured for two nights an done day (for even when the men were reposing, our situation required such constant vigilance that I could not rest) had so overcome me that I was completely exhausted and sleep and refreshment were absolutely necessary.
                “June 9th….We received advice to return to our camp this evening.  About six miles from it we learned from a Sergeant there was a Hessian guard 200 yds. Off.  We halted, and I was allowed to make an attack (though contrary to orders) if the men would volunteer.  Only forty offered, then twenty more joined.  I made three divisions and attacked the redoubt at three points.  The Hessians deserted at first fire and eight prisoners were made.  We marched off in the face of a thousand of the enemy who began to beat to arms, returned to camp and made a report to Lord Stirling then at headquarters….Attended Lord Stirling to headquarters, where we dined.  Heard from fifty deserters who just came in….

                “June 16th….Twelve o’clock at night summoned to attend Lord Stirling to headquarters where we remained till morning….
                “June 20th.  We spent the day with Gen. Washington.
                “June 21st….We were just sitting down to dinner….when orders came from Gen. Washington that a consultation of General Officers was to be held.
                “June 24th.  Rose at daylight, formed the detachments, marched one mile, halted and waited for the Commander-in-Chief….Twelve o’clock Gen. Washington arrived.  Weather so sultry the troops permitted to retire—never felt warmer weather in Georgia.  Four o’clock Gen. Washington set off for Matuchin Church…I rode with Lord Stirling to the lines of the enemy…The British were commanded by Lord Cornwallis and Gen. Howe….
                “Met with Frank Huger at Trenton and introduced by him to Gen. Nash, stationed here with 1500 North Carolina troops.  Dined in company with Mr. Livingston, Major Huger and Col. Blount….In company with Mr. Roche from Carolina went to Philadelphia.  Met Dr. Houston just arrived from Boston.  Dined with Col. Laurens and several member of Congress….
                “George McIntosh and Capt. Scott are just arrived from Georgia.  Neither of them brought me letters which is a great disappointment.  Dined today with Lord Stirling.”
                After the Revolutionary War, Major Demere returned to his home on St. Simons where he lived the life of a plantation owner and reared his family.
                He served his country well, both in military and civil offices, having been the Glynn County member of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1789; he was elected to the Executive Council the same year but declined to serve.  He was Commissioner of Glynn County Academy in 1791, 1792, and again in 1812.  He was named Justice of the Peace in June, 1790, and Justice of the Inferior Court the following year.  On Dec. 10, 1790, he was named captain of the 3rd or Sea Island Company of the Glynn County Regiment of Militia.
                Major Demere died on Jan. 2, 1829 and was buried in the Demere Burying Ground at The Grove.  The Brunswick Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution has marked his grave with the regulation marker of this organization.

                His will, which was filed in Glynn County, directed that several of his slaves—a negro man, Joy, and a negro woman, Rose, with her two sons, John and Jim, should be freed because of “their meritorious behaviour and faithful conduct during the period of Invasion when nearly all the negroes on St. Simons deserted and joined the British”, for they “not only saved and protected a great part of my property during the time the British occupied St. Simons, but actually buried and saved a large sum of specie with which they might have absconded and obtained their freedom”.  The will further provided for the care and support of these faithful servants after they should have been given their freedom, even to allowing them the use of certain slaves belonging to the estate of Major Demere.  He directed that a lot of land on which they were to be allowed to live “for the term of their lives”, four cows and four calves and other provisions from the plantation should be given Joy and Rose.  Rose was given an annuity of $75.00 for her support and an additional $75.00 for the support of her son John until he should reach the age of twenty0one years.  The will also directed that John should be taught Reading and Arithmetic and some mechanical profession and on reaching the age of twenty-one years should receive the sum of one thousand dollars.
                In 1830 the Georgia Legislature passed the necessary legislation freeing these slaves.
                The facsimile of Raymond Demere’s signature which appears here is taken from a document of the “Court of Justices of the County of Glynn” of July 8, 1794 and was signed by Samuel Wright, J.P.; Jno. Will Limbert, J.P.; and Raymond Demere, J.P.

SIGNATURE OF GEORGE HANDLEY

                George Handley was born in England Feb. 9, 1752.  Coming to America, he became allied with the cause of the Colonies and was named 1st Lieutenant of the 1st Georgia

Regiment on Jan. 7, 1776, and Captain in October of the same year.  Later, he became Lieutenant-Colonel and served until July, 1782, when he was retired.
                Moving to Glynn County soon after the Revolution, Handley became prominent in local affairs.  He represented this county in the Convention of 1787 which met to ratify the Federal Constitution; he was also a member of the Georgia Constitutional Convention of 1789 being made president of that body.
                Nov. 9, 1787, he was appointed “Commissioner to the People of Franklin” but declined, “being at this time unprepared for a tour of this kind, having no horses or specie”.
                He was appointed Colonel of the Glynn County Regiment of Militia in 1787 and two years later became Collector of the Port of Brunswick.
                Handley represented Glynn County in both Houses of the General Assembly of Georgia; he was a member of the House of Representatives in 1788-89, was elected to the Executive Council, and became president of the Council.
                He was elected Governor of Georgia and served in this capacity from Jan. 26, 1788 to Jan. 7, 1789, being the only Glynn County citizen who has ever achieved that distinction.
                Handley returned to Augusta to live and was elected Sheriff of Richmond County in 1790 and Tax Collector in 1792.  He died there on Sept. 17, 1793.
                George Handley was a charter member of the Georgia Society of the Cincinnati.
                The facsimile of his signature which is given here was taken from the paper wherein he declined to serve as Commissioner to the People of Franklin.
                George Handley married Sarah Howe, niece of Gen. Samuel Elbert, and had one child, George Thomas Handley.  Following Handley’s death, the widow and son received title to one-half of Blythe Island “formerly the property of John and Hugh Poulson, persons named and comprehended in the Act of Attainder and Confiscation…and afterwards sold by the Commissioners of Confiscated Estates and purchased by Christopher Hillary on account of himself and the said George Handley.”

SIGNATURE OF BENJAMIN HART

                Benjamin Hart and his wife, Ann, who was the daughter of Thomas and Rebecca (Alexander) Morgan, at one time lived in Brunswick.
                Benjamin Hart came from North Carolina to Georgia, lived in Elbert County prior to the Revolutionary War, and at the outbreak of hostilities enlisted for services.
                While her husband was serving with the army, Ann Hart, better known to us as “Nancy” Hart, captured several Tories who came to her home and made demands for food and provisions that she was not inclined to supply.  Her fame spread far and wide and she became known all over the state as Georgia’s famous Revolutionary heroine.
                At the close of the war, Benjamin and Ann Hart came to Brunswick to make their home.  The earliest record we have of their residence here is the name of Benjamin Hart on the Tax Digest of 1794, at which time he returned fifteen slaves for taxes.
                In 1796, the Legislature authorized the sale of a part of the Town Commons and the fifty acre tract which Benjamin Hart acquired was surveyed at this time.  It was located in the southeastern part of the city, beginning at a stake in the edge of the marsh (on the Boulevard) and running S 63º E (line on drain) to the corner of Cochran and First Avenues; thence down First Avenue to a “chinkapin” within a few feet of the corner of Carpenter Street; thence S 19 1/2º E (being practically the line of Carpenter Street) along the side of a ditch to a cedar post in the edge of the marsh and, following the edge of the marsh, to the point of beginning.
                While living here, Benjamin Hart became an official in the community.  He was appointed Justice of the Peace in 1796 and a Justice of the Inferior Court on Feb. 11, 1797.
                He died here and, although the exact date of his death is unknown, it is believed that it occurred the latter part of 1801 or early in 1802 for his will was filed in this county and the appraisal of his estate was made Feb. 29, 1802.
                Soon after this date, Nancy Hart left Brunswick and removed

to Clark County, Alabama, where she made her home with her son John.  Thomas Hart moved from Brunswick at this time, or at least he intended to move, for he and his mother on Nov. 18, 1802, gave to Benjamin Hart, Jr., their power of attorney as Executors of the last will and testament of Benjamin Hart, deceased.
                This interesting document states that “Thomas Hart and Ann Hart, being left Executors by the last will and testament of Benjamin Hart, deceased, jointly with Benjamin Hart, Jr., and that the said Thomas Hart and Ann Hart, his mother, Executors as aforesaid, being about to leave the County of Glynn and believing that the estate and effects of the said deceased shall be truly administered agreeable to the last will and testament of the said Benjamin Hart, deceased, do constitute and appoint Benjamin Hart, Jr., as aforesaid, sole attorney…reposing especial trust and confidence in our said attorney to will and to do everything agreeable to the said last will and testament of the deceased”.  This paper was witnessed by Wm. Lee and George Purvis.
                If Thomas Hart did leave Glynn County at that time, he soon returned; for under date of Aug. 10, 1803, Ann Hart, of Clark County, Alabama, “late wife of Benjamin Hart, deceased, of the town of Brunswick, of the one part”, sold to “Thomas Hart, of the County of Glynn” for the sum of $200 “all her right of dower, that is her dower right, being one-third of an undivided moiety of a lot of ground on the southeastern Commons of Brunswick…..containing 50 A. and being the same lot of ground that Benjamin Hart, deceased, purchased of the Commissioners of the town of Brunswick and the Commons thereof”.  This paper which was executed in Clark County, Alabama, was witnessed by John Hart, and would indicate that he still lived there with his mother.
                On February 3, 1804, Thomas Hart “of Glynn County” sold this “moiety” to Benjamin Hart and, on April 6th of the same year, Benjamin Hart sold this 50 A. tract to James McLeod, which deed was witnessed by Thomas Hart.
                Even after selling this tract of land, some of the Harts remained in Brunswick; for “Benjamin Hart, planter, and his wife, Mary”, sold lot No. 44 in the City of Brunswick to John and Jacob Campbell on Dec. 13, 1807.  Also, Court

House records show that Benjamin Hart, the younger, was here as late as 1810.  Thus, we see that for almost a quarter of a century some member of the Hart family lived in Brunswick.
                Although Nancy Hart and her sons sold their property and left Brunswick, there was one tie that bound them to this place; the body of Benjamin Hart lies here.  His grave is unmarked but it is believed that he was buried in Wright Square, which was the public burying ground at that time.  Tradition says he lies on the northwest corner of this Square, directly in front of the J.M. Burnett home.
                Nancy Hart, with her son, John, and his family, moved from Clark County, Alabama, where they lived on the Tombigbee River, to Kentucky.
                John Hart died in 1821 and Nancy lived on with her daughter-in-law.  Rhoda, the daughter of John and Patience (Lane) Hart, married William Helm Floyd of Union County, Kentucky, who was killed in 1825 by being thrown from his horse while drilling the Minute Men near Morganfield, Kentucky.
                The widow, Rhoda (Hart) Floyd, with her only child, William Benjamin, an infant, went back to live with her widowed mother, Patience (Lane) Hart, and her grandmother, Nancy (Morgan) Hart; all these are buried in the Hart graveyard about ten miles from Henderson, Kentucky.
                On October 12, 1929, the General Samuel Hopkins Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, of Henderson, unveiled the marker which they had erected at the grave of Nancy Hart.
                Until recently Benjamin and Nancy Hart had no descendants living in Georgia.  However, their great, great granddaughter in the person of Dr. Juanita Helm Floyd has recently come to Georgia and has charge of the Department of Spanish and is Professor of French at the Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville.  [MDC marked this whole paragraph out.]
                The facsimile of Benjamin Hart’s signature which appears here was taken from a Glynn County court document signed by him when he took the oath of office as Justice of the Inferior Court on March 1st, 1797.

CHRIS HILLARY SIGNATURE 

                Christopher Hillary, a soldier in the Revolutionary War, was born in 1755.  He enlisted for service from Georgia and it is believe that he lived in Glynn County prior to the war.
                Commissioned a lieutenant, he served under Col. Elijah Clark, was captured by the British on May 15, 1781, and was exchanged at Ashley Ferry, S.C., on Feb. 26, 1782.
                Soon after the war, he became prominent in the affairs of Glynn County, being appointed surveyor of Glynn and Camden Counties on Feb. 10, 1784.  He was the member from Glynn County in the Georgia House of Representatives in 1787, 1788, and 1789; was commissioned Lieutenant-Colonel in 1787 and Colonel in 1790 of the Glynn County Regiment of Militia; was the member from Glynn County in the Executive Council which met in Augusta in 1788 and also represented this county in the Constitutional Conventions of 1788 and 1789.  As a member of the Convention of 1787, which met to ratify the Federal Constitution he had the distinction on Monday, Dec. 31, 1787, of making the motion “that the proposed Federal Constitution be now adopted.”  He was appointed Justice of the Peace for Glynn County on Feb. 14, 1787.
                Possibly due to the influence of John Habersham, Collector of the Port of Savannah, who wrote President Washington recommending Hillary as Collector for the Ports of Brunswick and Frederica, he received this appointment.
                Hillary died in Savannah on Feb. 18, 1796, and an item in the Georgia Gazette a week later, giving notice of his death, stated that he left a widow and a daughter about seven or eight years old.
                Christopher Hillary’s daughter, Maria, married Major William Jackson McIntosh, the son of Col. John and Sara (Swinton) McIntosh, while the widow, Agnes Hillary, married Col. John McIntosh—or, mother and daughter married father and son.  Many of Christopher Hillary’s descendants are living in Glynn County today.

Pg. 188

                Hillary was a man of some means.  The Tax Digest of 1790 shows that he returned 949 acres of land for taxes, and, reckoned according to the amount of tax paid, he was one of the wealthiest men in the county.
                Hillary Island, lying north of Blythe Island, is named in his honor and was once his property.  The parks lying on either side of Norwich Street, between Gloucester and F Streets, were also named in honor of Christopher Hillary.
                He was a charter member of the Georgia Society of the Cincinnati.
                The facsimile of his signature which appears here was taken from a court document of Glynn County signed March 5, 1787.

SIGNATURE OF JOHN McINTOSH

                John McIntosh, born 1748, was the son of William and Mary (McKay) McIntosh and the grandson of John Mohr McIntosh, the commander of the Scotch Highlanders at New Inverness, now Darien.
                He served throughout the Revolutionary War, being commissioned Captain of the First Georgia Regiment on January 7, 1776 and Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant of the Third Georgia Regiment on April 3, 1788.  He was wounded and taken prisoner at the Battle of Briar Creek on March 3, 1799.
                Lt.-Col. McIntosh was in command of Fort Morris at Sunbury when Lt. Col. Fuser with the British forces demanded its surrender.  Col. McIntosh replied to Col. Fuser, “COME AND TAKE IT”, which the British officer decided not to do.
                In recognition of this valor on this occasion, the Legislature of Georgia presented Col. McIntosh with a sword having the words of his famous reply engraved on the blade.
                In 1781, John McIntosh married Sarah Swinton of South Carolina.  Soon after the close of the Revolutionary

War they moved to Florida and established their home on the St. Johns River.
               On a visit to St. Augustine he was thrown in prison, accused of designs against the Spanish government, and sent to Morro Castle at Havana.  President Washington and others used their influence to effect his release and, after a year’s imprisonment, he was freed.
                Shortly after this he lived for a time on St. Simons Island where his wife, who had long been blind, died May 9, 1799.  Some of the older inhabitants have told of seeing the grave of Sarah (Swinton) McIntosh in a secluded spot on the Village tract, but it is no doubt overgrown with trees and shrubs, for the location is unknown today.
                After the death of his first wife, Col. McIntosh married Agnes Hillary, the widow of Christopher Hillary of Glynn County, while the Colonel’s son, William Jackson McIntosh, married Christopher Hillary’s daughter, Maria.
                John McIntosh served as General in the War of 1812 and commanded three regiments of infantry and a battalion of artillery for the protection of Savannah and the coast of Georgia.
                When the British forces threatened the Gulf coast, Gen. McIntosh and his Georgia troops marched through the wilderness a thousand miles to defend Mobile.
                In June, 1815, upon his return to Savannah, Hon. Thomas U.P. Charlton, Mayor of Savannah, wrote him a congratulatory letter and the City Council of Savannah also adopted resolutions of thanks for his services.  When he died in 1826, the local newspaper said, “Noble soul!  How the spirit of Washington will greet thee”.
                John McIntosh was a charter member of the Georgia Society of the Cincinnati.  The facsimile of his signature which appears here is a copy of his receipt for lands granted for Revolutionary service.

SIGNATURE OF WM. MACKINTOSH

                William Mackintosh, the son of Gen. Lachlan McIntosh

and the grandson of John Mohr McIntosh of New Inverness, or Darien, was a Major in the Revolutionary Army.
                Several years after the close of the war, William Mackintosh and his family lived at St. Clair on St. Simons Island.  His two children died here and amidst the thick growth of oak and pine are two little brick vaults with white marble headstones, upon which are inscribed the epitaphs:

Here lies
the remains of
Sarah Mackintofh
the only daughter and
laft child of
Major William Mackintofh
Born 8th March 1792
and died 5th August 1795

 -----------
Here
lies the body
of
John Lachlan Mackintofh
Son of
Major William Mackintofh
of the late American
Revolution Army
Born 3rd Janry 1790
Died 22d Septr 1794

                William Mackintosh was Commissioner of Glynn Academy in 1797 and also served as Commissioner for the town of Frederica.  He was Judge of the Inferior Court of Glynn County.
                An old deed on file in the Glynn County Court House, executed by Gen. Lachlan McIntosh in 1800, gives “to Martha McIntosh, widow of the General’s son, Major William McIntosh, the tract where she now resides, originally granted Donald Forbes, for her life time”.  The tract referred to was St. Clair.
                The facsimile of William Mackintosh’s signature which appears here is taken from a map of Frederica which he approved as Commissioner of that town.  The map is also reproduced in this volume.
                Major William Mackintosh was a charter member of the Georgia Society of the Cincinnati.
                There are no living descendants of this branch of the McIntosh Family.

SIGNATURE OF GEO. PURVIS

                George Purvis, a member of a family from Yorkshire, England, who lived in Delaware at the outbreak of hostilities between England and her Colonies, enlisted in the Delaware Regiment and was commissioned Second Lieutenant to Capt. Patten’s Company, Col. Hall’s Delaware Regiment, Continental Establishment, April 5, 1777; was made First Lieutenant Oct. 15, of the same year, and Regimental Adjutant on August 15, 1778.
                The Delaware Regiment saw service under Gates, Greene, Lee, Williams, and DeKalb.  Ramsey’s History of the United States says of it:
                “This Delaware Regiment was reckoned the most efficient in the Continental Army.  It went into active service soon after the commencement of the contest with Great Britain and served through the whole of it.  Courting danger wherever it was to be encountered, frequently forming a part of a victorious army, but oftener the companions of their countrymen in the gloom of disaster, the Delawares fought at Brooklyn, at Trenton and at Princeton, at Brandywine and at Germantown, at Guilford and at Eutaw, until at length, reduced to a handful of brave men, the concluded their services with the war in the glorious termination of the Southern campaign…”
                The History of the Delaware State Society of the Cincinnati tells of the service of this Regiment, as follows:
                “Hall’s Regiment was the only strictly ‘Continental’ one furnished by Delaware that saw active service.  It was organized under a law of the Continental Congress, and this is the regiment always referred to when mention is made during the war of the ‘Delaware Regiment’”.

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                “….the Regiment joined Washington in the Jerseys in the Spring of 1777, and participated in the Battles of Monmouth, Brandywine, and Germantown.  Its members

also shared the privations and bore the sufferings of the dreary winter at Valley Forge, as became true American soldiers.
                “It was in the southern campaigns, however, where the regiment won its immortality.  On April 13, 1780, the Delaware and Maryland troops, then encamped around Morristown in New Jersey, were ordered South.  On April 16, they took up their line of march, two regiments from Maryland and one from Delaware, each about five hundred strong, or some fifteen hundred men in all.  The brave Baron DeKalb was assigned as their commander.
                “Col. Hall did not march with his regiment, nor did he ever join it again, having been disabled by his wounds received at Germantown from taking the field.  Lieut.-Col. Pope was on furlough at the time of march (having also been wounded at Mamaroneck), and did not go South.  Major Joseph Vaughn was therefore in command.  The regiments marched from Morristown to the head of Elk, as it was then called (now Elkton), in Cecil County, Maryland.  This march was through Philadelphia and Wilmington,—a distance of one hundred and eight miles.  They were veterans of three years’ service, as thoroughly trained and disciplined, as brave and good soldiers as were to be found in the Continental Army, and if Greene had then been in command of the Southern Department instead of Gates, their worse than decimation at Camden would have been avoided and the lives of many of these brave and patriotic men saved.
                ‘From the head of Elk all the troops were taken by water to Petersburg in Virginia, except the park of artillery, which proceeded by land, under escort of a detachment from all the line.  The journal of Sergeant-Major William Seymour gives a complete and exceedingly interesting account of the entire campaign.  The description of the marches, the condition of the troops, their want of provisions and their losses in battle are all fully and vividly related.  Leaving Petersburg, the column proceeded southward by way of Hillsborough, in North Carolina (four hundred and seventy miles from the Elk), to Buffalo Ford, on Deep River, where General Gates took command of the entire Southern Army.
                “They were now approaching Camden, the scene of their first great battle in the South, where though the issue

was so disastrous to the American forces, the Delawares and Maryland lines won imperishable renown….The Battle of Camden was fought August 16, 1780, and resulted in the overwhelming defeat of the American troops, though the Delaware and Maryland soldiers covered themselves with glory in saving the remainder of the routed army from annihilation.  The former (Delaware) Regiment at the commencement of the battle was five hundred strong; at its close—and the fight lasted scarcely an hour—less than two hundred officers and men remained.
                Lieut. Purvis, together with many others of the Delaware Regiment including Lieut.-Col. Vaughn and Major Patten, was made prisoner at this time, and was exchanged by the British at Ashley Ferry, S.C., on Feb. 26, 1782.
                He was later commissioned captain and served to the close of the war, when he returned to Delaware and was one of the organizers of the Delaware State Society of the Cincinnati, which organization was founded July 4, 1783.  He remained in Delaware for several years, although the last record of him in that state is his signature as witness to the will of Joseph Jackson of Kent County, Delaware, on April 12, 1789.
                The facsimile of his signature given here was taken from a military document signed March 20, 1782, while he was Captain in the Delaware Regiment, which signature was obtained through the kindness of Judge Henry C. Conrad, state Archivist of Delaware.  A comparison of the signature with those on documents executed in Glynn County now on file in the State Department of Archives in Atlanta shows the signatures to be those of the same man.
                The earliest record of George Purvis in Glynn County is his name on the Tax Digest of 1794.  The following year he became Surveyor of Glynn County.  In 1796, while serving as County Surveyor, he made a map of Brunswick a copy of which is now on file in the office of the Secretary of State in Atlanta.
                George Purvis held many positions of honor and trust, being the Glynn County member of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1798 and Justice of the Inferior Court of Glynn County, 1796-99.
                He was president of the Board of Education of Glynn County in 1796 and, in recognition of his services to education in this community, the Glynn County Board of Education

of 1903 named a grammar school which they had just erected in his honor—Purvis School.
                He was Commissioner of the Town and Commons of Brunswick to 1805, when he is supposed ot have died, as his successor was appointed Nov. 21, 1805. Another proof of his death about this time is the record of the administration of his estate by his widow, Eliza Purvis.  It is to be regretted that the location of his grave is unknown.
                Delaware and Glynn County are far removed one from the other, and seemed even farther apart in those days, so that one might wonder what brought Purvis from Delaware to Glynn County to make his home.  However, if one might be allowed to weave a pretty tale about this circumstance, it would be easy to believe that he came here so as to be near his old friend, Christopher Hillary, with whom he had been in prison.  These two Revolutionary soldiers were held in a British prison camp together and were exchanged at the same time.  Indeed, the printed file of prisoners exchanged by the British at Ashley Ferry in 1782 lists these two names side by side.
                No matter how he came; here he stayed, as have six generations of his descendants, though none today bear the name Purvis.
                George Purvis and his wife, Eliza, had four children—Polly, Sarah A., Martha Eliza, and William G. Purvis.
                Polly Purvis married Benjamin Franklin and became the ancestor to many who live here at this time.
                Sarah A. Purvis married John Flinn, whose daughter Georgia, married Philip Ulsch.  “Aunt Georgia” Ulsch, as she was known to hundreds, was the last surviving grandchild of George Purvis.
                Martha Eliza Purvis married James Hatcher and for many years lived in Wayne County.
                William G. Purvis married Martha Goodwin Bills, daughter of Jonathan and Lucy Bills who in 1819 came to Glynn County from Middletown, Connecticut.
                Jonathan Bills built the first Court House for Glynn County, having brought his workmen with him from Connecticut in a sailing vessel.
                On this trip Jonathan Bills’ wife kept a diary of the trip, which is something on the order of a calendar in that she has kept the days of the month and week in regular order and made entries, giving information concerning

the weather, or anything that was of interest.  This remarkable book is carefully treasured by her grandson, Malachi Green.
                William G. Purvis had two daughters who married and reared families.  The oldest daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, married Baillie Forrester, the son of Alexander and Mazie (Baillie) Forrester, and, through his maternal line, a descendant of John Mohr McIntosh of Darien.
                The youngest daughter of William G. Purvis, Mary Jane, married Malachi Green.  “Grandma” Green, the youngest child of George Purvis’s youngest child, died a year or so ago.  At the time of her death she was the oldest citizen of Glynn County.

                In the early days following the Revolutionary War, the mainland of Glynn County was sparsely settled by hardy pioneers who underwent untold hardships on this frontier.
                The Indians frequently attacked the settlers, many of whom abandoned their homes.  On one attack the Indians murdered two men, John Price and a man named Shaves, and carried off a small girl named Polly Harper.
                One of these early settlers, John Tompkins, a Virginian by birth, established his home on a plantation on Turtle River, where he erected for his protection, a large fort, two hundred feet square.
                In the spring of 1789, John Tompkins’ plantation “was attacked by a party of Indians of the Creek Nation” who burned the dwelling house, the stable and crib, the overseer’s house, the kitchen, the school house, five negro houses, a small dwelling, and the fort and carried off two horses.
                Britain Bunkley, who lived on St. Simons at that time, was one of a party of men who went to the rescue of the besieged party.  He said, “The fort was then evacuated by Capt. Tompkins and others and soon after the fort with all the buildings were destroyed by fire”.
                John and Donald Tompkins, sons of John and Elizabeth (McKay) Tompkins, the owners of the plantation destroyed by the Indians, made a claim against the United States government for the property so destroyed, which claim was

allowed and settlement made forty-seven years after the destruction of the property.
                In making this claim, the heirs of John Tompkins supported their own statements by affidavits of Britain Bunkley, James Helveston, and Martin Palmer, all of whom testified that the property of John Tompkins on his plantation on Turtle River in Glynn County had been destroyed by the Creek Indians.
                John Tompkins, the owner of the plantation, was Justice of the Peace in Glynn County, 1786-88; the local member of the House of Representatives in 1788; and a member of the Executive Council.  He was also a captain in the Glynn County Militia and a commissioner for Glynn County Academy until Dec. 6, 1791, his successor being appointed on that date.  This would seem to indicate his death or removal from the county just prior to that time.
                The two sons, Donald and John, moved to Camden County, where their descendants are living today.

                Several miles further up the Altamaha River above Carteret’s Point was the site of the Indian village Talaxe.  Here the Spaniards erected one of their early missions (1586) called Santo Domingo de Talaxe.
                In later years, along the banks of the Altamaha were located the plantations of wealthy men, who cultivated the fields that were rich with the silt brought down from the red old hills of Georgia by the Altamaha River.  Rice was the principal crop and brought in much wealth to these planters.
                The method of planting rice in vogue at that time is practically unknown in this section today where very little rice is grown.  A full description of the method pursued was written by the Rev. J.W. Leigh in Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, and is given here:
                “….Operations may be said to commence towards the end of fall, after the first frost, i.e. about November.  The fields are first burnt off, that is to say, the dry grass, rice stubble, and reeds are in this manner cleared off, the ploughs are then put in, and the ditches and rains are cleaned out and the banks made up….

                “I ought to perhaps, to explain more fully the configuration of a rice plantation.  Round the whole of it, as I have said, a high bank is thrown up, to protect it from high tides and freshets or floods; the land within this embankment is divided off into fields by check banks and face ditches, and each field, which is about twenty acres in size, is subdivided by smaller ditches, called quarter drains.  Through the length and breadth of the plantation generally run two or three canals, which serve to drain the Island, and also to convey the flats, or large flat-bottomed boats for harvesting the rice.  Well, the land having been burnt off, ploughed, and ditched, the harrows are put on in early spring, and the seed is planted in time, if possible, for the first high tides in March.  As soon as the seed is sown, the water is let on to the fields and kept on eight or ten days to sprout the rice; this is called the first flow.
                “About three weeks afterwards the second flow is put on, and kept on from ten to thirty days, and upon the length of this second flow there is a great diversity of opinion amongst the planters, some being for keeping it on as long as thirty days, in order to kill the grass and weeds, and others not keeping it on half that time, for fear of weakening the rice.  The third, or harvest flow, is put on about the end of June, and kept on until the middle of August, when the crop is ready for harvesting; and this is work which can be done only by negroes, as, owing to the swampy state of the fields and the great heat of the sun, the malarious atmosphere makes it dangerous for any white man to stay a single night on the plantation.
                “The crop being harvested, nothing remains but to thresh it and send it to market.  The threshing is done by a steam thresher….It is generally, however, sent to the factor in rough, i.e. with the husk on, and is pounded in large mills at Savannah or Charleston, and is then ready for sale.
                “The great enemies of the rice-planter are volunteer and freshets; the first of these is the scattered seed of the rice, which becomes a very disagreeable weed, and is very difficult to eradicate; the second the floods, which come down from the hilly country in spring and autumn, and put the plantations under water, and the planters to much inconvenience….”

                Of these rice plantations located on the south bank of the Altamaha River, Elizafield, Evelyn, and Grantley were the property of Hugh Fraser Grant, who later sold Evelyn to Pinckney Huger  The other two plantations remained in the Grant family for many years.
                Broadfield was owned by the Brailsfords and came into the Troup family by the marriage of Camilla Brailsford to Dr. James McGilvary Troup—a brother of George M. Troup, Governor of Georgia.  By this marriage there were six children—two sons and four daughters.
                The two sons, Brailsford and Robert, inherited the lower part of the family plantation which they called New Hope.  The upper portion went to the maiden daughters and retained the name of Broadfield.  One of the daughters, Ophelia Troup, married George C. Dent and the middle part of the plantation, which was her share of her father’s estate, was called Hofwyl in honor of the old school in Switzerland where Mr. Dent was educated.
                Broadfield and Hofwyl are still in possession of the heirs of the original owners, being the home of the Dents.
                The planters who lived on the rice fields along the banks of the “Fair Altama” invariably spent the summers on highland several miles removed, because it was believed that malaria fever was contracted from the “miasma” that rose from the mud in the fields when the sun went down.
                In her Journal, Fanny Kemble wrote from Butler’s Island:  “The pestilential season is at hand and we must leave this place and go to St. Simons.”
                April 1st was “moving day” and from that date until frost no white person would spend a night on the rice fields.  It is said that, when a planter or his overseer had occasion to be on the rice plantation during the day and happened to be late leaving in the afternoon, he would ride his horse at “break neck” speed to get away from the fields before dark.
                Modern science has discovered that there was some basis of fact in this belief of the danger that came with the twilight, for the malaria fever mosquito does not bite in the day-time, hiding away in some dark place and coming out with the setting of the sun to seek his victim.
                James T. Dent of Hofwyl was the first person in this section to demonstrate successfully and conclusively the

theory that malaria fever is contracted only through the bite of the anopholes mosquito.
                Mr. Dent, having read of the experiments carried on in Italy with mosquitoes as carriers of fevers, concluded that, if his home could be thoroughly screened against these insects, his family would not have to move to the summer home during the “pestilential season”.  He, accordingly, screened every opening in his house, including the chimneys.  In 1903, for the first time, the family spent the entire summer at Hofwyl in perfect safety and comfort, although his friends pleaded with him not to expose himself and them to so great a risk.
                James Hamilton and John Couper, who settled on St. Simons, also had a rice plantation on the mainland, which they owned jointly and which they called Hopeton in honor of their friend and banker, William Hopeton, Hopeton contained 4,500 acres and had 600 slaves.
                James Hamilton and his wife, Janet (Wilson) Hamilton, had only one child, a daughter, who married Richard Corbin, and by him had three children—Constance, who married M. de Montmarte and spent most of her life in Paris; Isabella and Robert.  [according to family history, this is in error, Janet Wilson was in fact James' sister Janet (Hamilton) Wilson.  James Hamilton married Nancy Isabella Steedman in Charleston, SC on 19 March 1796.  She was the daughter of James Steedman (1746-1798) and Elizabeth Kelsey (1755-1841).  Nancy was born 28 January 1780 in Charleston and had two children by James, a son who died very young and then a daughter Agnes Rebecca Hamiton born in 1801.  She would later marry Francis Porteus Corbin and have tow daughters and one son by him.  His will can attest to his many relations at the time of his death  However, James Hamilton's will does list a son George, so James may have married a second time, but as of now, no one knows who this second wife may have been.]
                On the death of James Hamilton and John Couper, James Hamilton Couper, the namesake of the former and the son of the latter, bought from the Corbin children their interest in the plantations on the Altamaha and on St. Simons.
                The ruins of the Mission of Santo Domingo de Talaxe are located on Elizafield plantation, which, together with Altama and Hopeton, is now the property of the du Ponts, who have made of these magnificent estates a refuge from the cares and worries of the world of business.  Here is carefully preserved the natural beauty of the woodland and the wild life found therein.
                In remodeling and restoring the beautiful mansion at Altama, built in 1857 by James Hamilton Couper, Mr. du Pont was very careful to destroy none of the architectural beauty of the old mansion, and his additions to the building have been in keeping with the dream of the builder, who was a most artistic man.
                James Hamilton Couper was a graduate of Yale.  Following his graduation, he went to Holland to study the

methods used in that country in farming submerged lands.  On his return he put in practice much which he had learned in the “Old Country”.
                James Hamilton Couper was a pioneer in the extraction of oil from the cotton seed, using much the same process his father had used with the olive.  His project was not successful at that time, no doubt because the knowledge of chemistry had not advanced sufficiently to purify the oil and adapt it to the different uses to which it is now put.  He traveled extensively through the Cotton States and succeeded in convincing people that there was something besides fertilizer and stock feed to be extracted from cotton seed.  In consequence after the stormy days of the War Between the States, oil mills sprang up on all sides.

PHOTO OF ALTAMA

                Mr. Couper was also a pioneer in the extraction and refining of sugar from the ribbon cane.  In 1827 and ’28 he planted 800 acres of sugar cane.  The steam engine and cane mills which he installed at Hopeton were made in Sheffield, England, and were the finest to be had at that time.  This machinery remained at Hopeton until 1907 when the plantation was sold to the Shaker Colony of Ohio.
                Hopeton included Carr’s Island and contained 11,000 acres, the land being valued in 1826 at $80,412, and its 300 slaves at $99,000.

                Practically every method of scientific agriculture which is being taught today was practiced at Hopeton a century ago.  Rotation of crops was followed and crop maps were made each year, showing the location of the fields and the crop planted in each.  Corn, sweet potatoes, and cow peas were shifted from year to year.
                Until 1825 the main crop was cotton; for the next three years rice was the main crop, and then sugar cane.
                In addition to his interests in Glynn County, Mr. Couper established in 1833 at Natchez, Miss., a mill to extract oil from the cotton seed.
                The records of Hopeton Plantation for these years, together with the crop maps, were recently loaned to the Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  The Crop Map of Hopeton as reproduced here is taken fro Life and Labor in the Old South by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, through the kind permission of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co.
                Many visitors at Hopeton in “Plantation Days” wrote of the splendid plantation.  In 1832 J.D. Legare of Charleston, editor of The Southern Agriculturist, gave the following account of his visit:
                “We remained several days at Hopeton, enjoying the hospitality of J. Hamilton Couper, during which time we were busily employed in viewing the plantations and taking notes of what we saw and heard.
                “We hesitate not to say Hopeton is decidedly the best plantation we have ever visited, and we doubt whether it can be equaled in the Southern States; and when we consider the extent of the crops, the variety of the same, and the number of operatives who have to be directed and managed, it will not be presumptive to say that it may fairly challenge comparison with any establishment of the United States, for the systematic arrangement of the whole, the regularity and precision with which each and all of the operations are carried out, and the perfect and daily accountability established in every department.
                “The proportion of the crop at the time of my visit were 500 acres in rice, 170 in cotton, and 330 in cane.”
                Sir Charles Lyell, who visited here in 1846, wrote:
                “During a fortnight at Hopeton we had an opportunity of seeing how Southern planters live and the conditions and

prospects of the negroes on  well-managed estate.  The relations of the slaves to their owners resembles nothing in the Northern States.  There is an hereditary regard approaching attachment on both sides, much like that existing between lords and their retainers in feudal times.  The slaves identify themselves with their masters, and the sense of their own importance rises with his success in life; but the responsibility of the owner is great, and to manage a great plantation with profit is no easy task; much judgment is required and a mixture of firmness, forbearance, and kindness….This is a most favorable specimen of a well-managed estate….”
                The Hon. Amelia M. Murray, Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria, toured the United States in 1855, visiting all the states on the Atlantic Seaboard and the Gulf Coast, following the Mississippi River to its source.  Her description of her visit to Glynn County, where she was the guest of James Hamilton Couper, is as follows:
                “….and, at last, last night we reached Darien.  Fortunately, a four-oared canoe-like boat, of Mr. Hamilton Couper’s, had come down from his plantation on the Altamaha, upon some business.  Dr. Turner insured our being taken up with him; we met Mr. Couper also by accident, and after a very pleasant row of about five miles, he brought us to his English-like house (as respects the interior) and interesting home, my first resident introduction to plantation life.  A happy attached negro population surrounds this abode; I never saw servants in any old English family more comfortable, or more devoted; it is quit a relief to see anything so patriarchal, after the apparently uncomfortable relations of master and servants in the Northern States.  I should much prefer being a ‘slave’ here to a grumbling saucy ‘help’ there; but everyone to their tastes.  We left the river about a quarter of a mile from the house, and came up a narrow canal, between rice plantations, almost to the door; we passed two or three large flat boats, laden with rice; and Mr. Couper took me to see the threshing-machine which was at work in the barn; the women putting in the rice just as we do our grain; they were more comfortably dressed than our peasantry, and looked happier; otherwise (except the complexions) the scene was much of the same kind as that at a threshing-barn in England.

It is in vain to intend keeping silence upon the one thought that must be uppermost in a mind accustomed from childhood to erroneous views upon the slavery question; and I may as well write on.  I now see the great error we have committed is in assuming that the African race is equal in capacity with the European; and that under similar circumstances it is capable of equal moral and intellectual culture….”
                “Hopeton, Feb. 12.  I went yesterday through a forest of Pinus palustris to a spot where it is Mr. Couper’s intention to build a house to be called Altama.  It will be beautifully situated on the edge of a pine barren, a sloping thicket of live oaks, magnolias, and fan palms, on one side, ending in rice plantations, with distant forest and river views extending towards Darien.  This place was once the site of an Indian village (Talaxe), and I picked up fragments of their pottery.  But there are now none of the Aborigines left in the Southern States.
                “I forgot to mention that there are from three to four hundred negroes on this estate.  Mr. and Mrs. Couper have no white servants; their family consists of six sons and two daughters.  I should not like to inhabit a lonely part of Ireland, or even Scotland, surrounded only by three hundred Celts.  I believe there is not a soldier or policeman nearer than Savannah, a distance of sixty miles.  Surely this speaks volumes for the contentment of the slave population.
                “When I think of the misery and barbarism of the peasantry of Kintal, and other parts of Scotland (putting aside that of Ireland), and look at the people here, it is hardly possible not to blush at the recollection of all the hard words I have heard applied to the slaveholder of the South.  Why, the very pigsties of the negroes are better than some Celtic hovels I have seen.
                “Mr. Couper is under some difficulty about a negro family he took in trust, to manumit from the produce of their own labor.  The poor people are averse to being freed, and especially to being sent to Africa.  It certainly seems a cruelty to force them to accept that which they consider no boon.  I believe this is a dilemma by no means rare…
                “I have been wandering about among the negro dwellings,

seeing the ugly babes and still uglier old people; only one individual in bed in the hospital and five or six in the male and female wards, cowering round the fires.  Mr. Couper tells me he once tried the capabilities of some of the most active among his people, by giving them the cultivation of fifty acres for themselves; the first season, under direction, the plantation cleared fifteen hundred dollars, which he took care to give them in silver, hoping that would excite their industry; the next year, left to their own management, the crop lessened one-half; and the third season they let the land run to waste, so that it was useless to permit them to retain it.  Yet, these very same people will labor readily and pleasantly under good superintendence.
                “Hopeton, Altamaha River, Georgia, Wednesday, February 14, 1855.

“My Dear Friends,—
                “….When I watch the kindness, the patience, the consideration shown by white gentlemen and gentlewomen toward these ‘darkies’ I could say to some anti-slavery people I have known, ‘Go thou, and do likewise’.  There is such a sense of security in this country that doors and windows are as often left unfastened at night as not; and a slaveholder told me that he had lived alone for eight years among his negroes, without once thinking it necessary to lock a door or bar a window.
                ‘Feb. 15.  I spent two hours in the pine barrens and swamps yesterday, gathering seeds and taking up plants which I am going to send to England….Mr. Couper will go with me to Brunswick, where the St. John steamer calls at three or four o’clock tomorrow morning on her way to Palatka.
                “St. Augustine, Feb. 19th….Brunswick is little more than the promise of a future town, but it is in a healthy situation, where there might be a fine park, at present there is only an hotel.  Streets are marked out and there are many pretty detached villas.  Our way to it was over a deep sandy road, through the pine barren, and a continual undergrowth of that palm with a saw-like stem, and fan leaf (Chamaerops serrulata), from the leaves of which pretty baskets are manufactured, and I imagine hats might be made to equal those of Leghorn; it grows all about this extensive white sand district, as thick as fern with us, and I

think it would be hardy in the southwestern parts of England.  As we approached Brunswick, fine specimens of the tree or cabbage palmetto were by the wayside; with difficulty we took up young ones for seedlings; some run so deep into the ground it is hard to move them.
                “A very primitive kind of post office may be observed in these forests; boxes without any lock nailed to a tree, into which, when a mail passes, letters are occasionally dropped.
                “The St. John steamer arrived soon after midnight but the tide did not rise sufficiently for her to leave till near three in the morning, because she would not have been able to cross the bar of the St. John River….”

I had the opportunity of observing the new flowering shrub, resembling the Gordonia, in perfect bloom, as well as bearing rip fruit.  It is a flowering tree, of the first order for beauty and fragrance of blossoms:  the tree grows fifteen or twenty feet high, branching alternately; the leaves are oblong, broadest towards their extremities, and terminate with an acute point, which is generally a little reflexed; they are lightly serrated, attenuate downwards and sessile, or have very short petioles; they are placed in alternate order, and towards the extremities of the twigs are crowded together, but stand more sparsedly below; the flowers are very large, expand themselves perfectly, are of a snow white colour, and ornamented with a crown or tassel of gold coloured refulgent staminae in their centre;…these large, white flowers stand single and sessile in the bosom of the leaves, and being near together towards the extremities of the twigs, and usually many expanded at the same time, make a gay appearance:  the fruit is a large, round, dry, woody apple or pericarp….
                “This very curious tree was first taken notice of about ten or twelve years ago, at this place, when I attended my father (John Bartram) on a botanical excursion, but, it being then late in the autumn, we could form no opinion to what class or tribe it belonged.
                “We never saw it grow in any other place, nor have I ever since seen it growing wild, in all my travels, from Pennsylvania to Point Coupe, on the banks of the Mississippi, which must be allowed a very singular and unaccountable circumstance; at this place there are two or three acres of ground where it grows plentifully.”
                An attempt is being made to interest Georgians to plant this tree and in this way bring back to this section one of its interesting trees.  It would be very fitting for this to be our state flower.

                The early name of the Altamaha River was Altama, for it was thus that Oliver Goldsmith in The Deserted Village speaks of it:

                “Through torrid tracts, with fainting steps they go,
                Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.”

                This river bears an Indian name that has an interesting history.  The Indian village of Tama was located in the forks of the Ocmulgee and Oconee Rivers.  The Indians on the coast traveling to this village went by way of this river and so we get the name Al-tama or “the way to the Tama country”.
                This name is much prettier than the one now used and it would be quite fitting if the people of this section would revert to the earlier pronunciation, if not the spelling.

                Another of the early settlers of Glynn County was a trader by the name of Carteret, who had a small trading post at a site on the south bank of the Altamaha River.  This place is known as Carteret’s Point (pronounced Cartright by the natives), and in recent years Heyward’s Point, and embraces several thousand acres of land.  The old road leading to this point is still known as the Carteret Road.
                Carteret kept a small stock of such goods as were attractive to the Indians and traded with them for the skins, hides, etc., that they brought him.  He selected this particular site because of its close proximity to the Fort at Frederica which he thought would afford ample protection in case of trouble with the Indians.  However, he met the fate of so many of the pioneers, being massacred by the red men.
                Carteret Point is now the property of C.W. Lane.

                In 1826 the Brunswick Canal & Railroad Company was organized for the purpose of digging a canal to connect Brunswick with the Altamaha River.
                Many difficulties arose and a number of the incorporators sold their stock to W.B. Davis, who continued in his attempt to complete the project but failed to get very far.
                In 1834 a new charter was secured with the promises of state aid and with backing from capitalists of Boston, Mass.  Two years later Loammi Baldwin, an engineer from Boston, surveyed and located the route for a canal 12 miles

long, 54 ft. wide at the surface and 35 ft. at the bottom, and a 6 ft. depth of water, to tap the Altamaha and bring its trade to Brunswick.  A tow path 12 ft. wide was to be located on the eastern bank so that it might be extended on the bank of Academy Creek and into the town of Brunswick.  A lock was to be provided at each end and a sluice constructed at Gibson’s Creek.  This sluice was to be arranged so that the gates would be opened when the tide should rise above the surface of the canal.
                Hon. Thomas Butler King was treasurer of the company, Edward Eldredge of Boston was General Agent, and Lieut. J.L. Locke, Resident Engineer or Superintendent.
                Under date of Jan. 18, 1838, an advertisement appeared in The Brunswick Advertiser stating that 1,000 negroes were wanted to work on the canal, “of whom one-third may be women.  $15 per month will be paid for steady, prime men and $13 for able women….The negroes will be abundantly provided for, well lodged, and the sick will be placed in a commodious hospital where they will receive the daily attendance of a well educated physician.  For further particulars reference is respectfully made to J. Hamilton Couper, Esq., and Lieut. J.L. Locke, Resident Engineer, or to any of the planters of Glynn County who have had negroes on the canal the past year”.

(signed) F. & A. PRATT
P.M. NIGHTINGALE.

                A news item in the same paper on March 8th, 1838, stated that “upwards of 500 hands were already on the work and the contractors, Messrs. Pratt & Nightingale, have arranged for the employment of many more.”
                However, it seems the contractors had trouble securing a sufficient number of negroes on the terms offered, for on September 20th of the same year they advertised they would pay $18 per month for prime hands.  These negroes, they said, “would be provided with 3 1/2 lbs. of pork or bacon and 10 qts. Of gourd seed corn per week”.
                In January of the following year a news item states:  “The progress of the work….is very satisfactory.  They whole length of the line (12 mi.) is now open and ground is broken throughout the entire distance…During the past year about 500 negroes have been constantly employed but the work has been found too difficult for them who

were only accustomed to the light labors of the cotton field. All but 200 have, therefore, been dismissed and white labor substituted in their stead….”
                This white labor consisted of a group of Irishmen who proved to be excellent workmen and things moved along smoothly for a short time, when a battle took place between the Cork men and the Kerry men which required the attention of the local militia before it was finally settled.
                The canal was dug the entire distance but was never opened for traffic.  The project was revived in the ‘50s but was never pushed to successful operation.
                On April 19, 1838, while making excavations at a point about five miles from Brunswick, there were uncovered the bones of a Megatherium, one of the extinct sloths.  James Hamilton Couper sent one of the fossils found at this time to the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and one to the British Museum in London.  Besides this there is in the British Museum a very valuable collection of mussels from the Altamaha presented by Mr. Couper, who was intensely interested in natural history and possessed a large library of rare works on this subject.
                The remains of the Megatherium were discovered in association with the remains of Elephas primigenius, Mastodon, Bison latifrons, Equus Americanus and Chelonia Couperi.  The fossil bones were found at the bottom of an alluvial formation between four and six feet below the surface, imbedded in a situation of clay resting on yellow sand.

                I was born in Augusta, Ga., on June 12, 1845.  My parents, James T. and Mary E. (Russell) Blain, in 1847 moved to Penfield, the former seat of Mercer University, where my tow brothers were educated.  My elder brother, James S. Blain, began the study of medicine in 1856.  In April of the next year we came to Brunswick, where my father and younger brother were connected with Massey & Hillsman in the first drug store ever operated here.
                In 1859 my father was elected mayor of the city (the first bloodless election in several years) and was re-elected every year until ’61.
                The Brunswick Riflemen were organized Oct. 28, 1860.

On May 20, 1861 they were mustered into the service of the Southern Confederacy for a period of sixty days and were attached to the Second Georgia Regiment under Col. Paul J. Semmes.  They were ordered on detached service and stationed at Carteret Point.
                Upon the expiration of this term of service the company was re-organized, Captain B.F. Harris resigning, and First Lieutenant J.S. Blain being promoted to the captaincy.  Several members of the company, preferring cavalry to infantry service, dropped out, but their places were immediately filled from among the finest men in the city and vicinity.  The company was then attached to the afterward famous 26th Georgia Regiment and, being the oldest, or ranking company, was known as Company A.
                Again, to their disgust, they were detailed for coast duty and were first sent to Cumberland Island, where they were made a siege batter of artillery; and next, to Smith’s Island, just below Savannah.  There they remained until Gen. A.R. Lawton, then in command of their brigade, asked their Colonel, E.M. Atkinson, “Where is your first company?”
                Col. Atkinson told him and stated that it was his best company.  Thereupon, to their great joy, Gen. Lawton had them released and dear old Brunswick Riflemen were sent on their way to their proper station, reaching their command in time to take part in the Second Battle of Manassas, which was fought Aug. 30, 1862.  However, their first skirmish was had at Bristoe Station, the day before the Battle of Manassas.
                You, who only hear of these things, can form no conception of the fervent anxiety endured by the parents, wives, sisters, and friends left behind.
                Never can I forget the awful day when this dispatch reached us:  “Battle at Manassas.  Brunswick Riflemen cut to pieces.  All killed or wounded except N. Dixon and one other, name unknown”.
                By the next train (We were refugeeing at Waynesville, Wayne County), my dear old father left for Virginia, loaded down with hospital supplies, medicines, delicacies, bandages, linens, and everything we could collect, which my mother, with the assistance of Mrs. Spears, her daughters and myself, had spent the night packing.

                He went with the avowed purpose of bringing home every wounded Brunswick boy who could be moved and all the dead he could find.
                We who were left soon learned that the report had been exaggerated, but not until he reached Richmond, Virginia, did father hear the truth.  He kept on, however, to Winchester but failed to find the brigade.  (Stonewall kept them moving).  As the wounded had been sent by another route, father missed them also.
                Returning to Richmond, he visited the different hospitals.  In one of them he found an old friend, Dr. D.C. O’Keefe, in charge.  He then arranged for the care of any of the Brunswick Riflemen that might be taken to this hospital at any time and returned home, thankful that the end of his long trip was not what he had feared it might be.
                As a sequel to the foregoing, I will add that when father returned he reported the probable loss of his trunk with its wealth of hospital supplies.  The railroads at that time gave no checks, so passengers had to watch their own baggage.  At every stopping place father would see that his trunk was safe, but after seeing it at Weldon, North Carolina, it went astray before reaching Richmond, Virginia.  Telegrams were sent in every direction describing it, with orders to forward if found to the address tacked on it, which was my address at Augusta, Ga.
                Several weeks later the wandering trunk arrived all safe at that point and was sent on to me at Waynesville.  Everything was in good condition and I immediately divided the stores, adding a quantity of fine oranges from Butler’s Island.  One box was sent to Dr. O’Keefe of the 2nd Georgia Hospital, Richmond, Va.; the other to the Soldiers’ Wayside Home at Millen, Ga., the first Wayside Home established in Georgia for medical and nursing care of sick and wounded Confederate soldiers.
                A letter and also a printed acknowledgement were received from Dr. O’Keefe but the box that went to the Wayside Home was never heard from.  Dr. O’Keefe published a letter of thanks in the Savannah Morning News under the date of Nov. 22, 1862 and listed the articles contained in the trunk as follows:  65 oranges, 1 sack arrowroot, 1 pkg. slippery elm, 2 pkg. ground cinnamon, 1 pkg. mace, 1 pkg.

ground ginger, 1 pkg. nutmeg, 1 pkg. race ginger, 1 pkg. allspice, together with linen and bandages.
                When war clouds grew heavy, the ladies of Brunswick on May 27, 1861 organized a Sewing Association with my mother as president.  I with many other girls of my age joined and began working for the soldiers.  Forty-five ladies composed the membership of that association, and of that number I am the only surviving member.
                Many of the soldiers needed more clothes than they had, hence the necessity for the association.
                About the first work I did was to assist in making the first large Confederate flag, the Stars and Bars, ever used by the Brunswick Riflemen.  This was made in my mother’s home.
                Sickness, probably measles, occurring in the camp of the 2nd Georgia Regiment, it was necessary to establish hospitals in each of the following companies, viz:  Buena Vista Guards, Burke Sharpshooters, and Columbus Guards; a few scattering cases were cared fro by the ladies.
                One in particular, John E. Andrews, of the afterwards famous Banks County Guards, my mother heard of as desperately ill in the hospital tent at camp.  She and one or two others went down to see him and had him removed, although the surgeon declared he could not live.  For nearly two months my mother, together with Mrs. Alexander Scranton, Mrs. Mary Lavinia Spears, Mrs. Burr Winton, and Mrs. J.L. Harris watched over and nursed that poor fellow back to life.
                In the meantime the Regiment, with the exception of the Brunswick Rifleman, who were on detached service, was ordered to Virginia.  However, a physician, a member of his own company, Dr. Wm. McIntyre, and a brother of the sick man were detailed to remain with him until he could be removed to his home in Banks County, which was about August 15, 1861.
                As nearly as we can learn the first Confederate soldier to die in Georgia was buried at Oak Grove Cemetery, Brunswick.  He was G.D. Williamson of the Banks County Guards, who died in camp of measles, either the last week in April, or the first week in May, 1861.
                A General Hospital was later established on the corner of Newcastle and Gloucester Streets with Mrs. Spears installed

as matron.  At first the government was unable to supply the necessary bed furnishings so the ladies loaned sheets, blankets, etc.  On one occasion fourteen wool blankets, fourteen pairs of sheets, pillow cases and towels—all belonging to my mother—were stolen during the temporary absence of the matron.
                The young girls of my set were not allowed to visit the hospital but did their work at home, sewing, knitting, preparing nourishment, etc.
                As the location of Brunswick rendered it impossible to fortify it successfully, and resources were very limited, the government ordered an evacuation.  The settlers sought shelter wherever it could be found.
                We went first to Waynesville, Wayne County, in the spring of 1862.  Here Mrs. Spears was again made matron of the Regimental Hospital of the 4th Georgia Cavalry.
                Of course, there were some amusing things that helped us bear the many anxieties.  The various makeshifts we learned varied the monotony.  Whenever one thing would fail, we would substitute.  Parched okra seed, rye, sweet potatoes, etc. took the place of the fine old coffee wee once knew.  Blackberry leaves steeped looked like tea, even if the taste was not exactly the same.
                Our family was really not dependent on substitutes as father kept advised when a blockade runner was expected and was always on the spot to replenish his stock of drugs and so could secure many luxuries.  These, however, we used sparingly as we always divided with our hungry or sick boys in gray.
                One time a funny thing happened to me in this connection.  We were entirely out of flour for the very first time while two officers, Major DuBose and Lieut. Kern, were inspecting the troops in Waynesville.  They were often at our house and one evening came to tea.  I was distressed over the absence of flour, but my blessed old black mammy said, “Never mind, Honey; Mammy will make something so good they won’t miss the flour”.  And so she did.  It was corn gingerbread.  They were so delighted with it that they begged to have it every time they came afterwards.
                In October, 1863, the government ordered the railroad which was at that time only about forty miles in length, reaching from Waynesville to Tebeauville, torn up, as the

iron was needed elsewhere.  The line from Waynesville on to Brunswick had previously been torn up.
                My father said he could not stay there with no communication with the outside world and his boys in Virginia.  Mr. Burns, who was in charge of the work, told father to get on the train and find another place and he would put his men to work packing our goods and help us all he could.
                No shelter could be found so father bought a piece of ground at Tebeauville, Ware County, Ga., (now Waycross).  He came back for the family and, with the aid of Mr. Burns, our house and outbuildings, even the fence, were all taken down and a train placed at our disposal.  Everything, horse and all, was loaded on this train.
                Mrs. Spears, a widow whose only son was in Virginia, came to father and said she could not stay in this place with her girls; father told her to come along and we would share and share alike as long as it was necessary.
                I chanced to be in Augusta at this time, but father and mother and servants, Mrs. Spears and daughters and servants landed at Tebeauville with absolutely no shelter.  After an hour or two, Capt. John Lee, who had been in my brother’s Regiment, the 26th Georgia, but was invalided home, came and offered the only shelter he could—an open loft with one room cut off so that Mrs. Spears and her daughters could use it and father and mother the other.  But for that kindness they would all have had to sleep outdoors.
                Major Grant, the grandfather of Mrs. Frank D. Aiken, Mrs. C.D. Parker and Mrs. H.B. Maxey, offered part of his store house for our household and store goods and a few boards were laid across some rails to shelter our stove and my good old black mammy Lizzie did our cooking there.
                While our buildings were being erected, father went to Augusta to get more goods and to bring me home, or rather to camp.
                On our way my youngest brother joined us for a short furlough and while we waited between trains at Millen, Ga., father and he went over to the Soldiers’ Wayside Home where he found a very sad case of distress.
                A poor woman from the country below Savannah had been called to Millen to her sick son, a soldier, and he had just died.  She was a stranger and entirely without money

even to buy the plainest coffin.  Father paid for the coffin and for the expenses of shipping the body and bought the mother’s ticket, but did not know how to care for the poor soul.  He came and told me of her and I sent him back to bring her to me.
                I kept her with me all the way to Savannah and took her to the hotel, the Marshal House, (where she would never have ventured alone) and saw that she had everything comfortable.
                The next morning we resumed our journey and landed her with her sad burden at a station now forgotten, but somewhere between Savannah and Blackshear.
                Our home was always open to the dear boys in gray as they passed to and fro.  More than once did they clear our table of the dinner we were just ready to enjoy, but my blessed old black mammy would go cheerfully to work to scrap up another dinner.
                The railroad eating house was located at the station but as there was little provided, the poor hungry fellows would scatter around and ask for food.
                There was always someone watching for the sick and wounded men; and whenever one was reported, my mother at once saw to his comfort.
                When the wounded from the Battle of Olustee began to pass, as no notice had been given us, there was no food for the poor fellows.  My mother said this must not happen again so we girls—Miss Carrie Spears (Mrs. William Campbell), Miss Mary Spears (Mrs. John L. Morgan), Miss Janie Acosta (Mrs. McKinney), and I, were mounted and sent in four directions calling for supplied of cooked food to be sent to the committee of ladies for each day’s train.  Nobly did the people respond.  The Coupers, the Dents, the Troups, the Grants, the Baileys, the Williamses and many others six and seven miles away kept a good supply.  Closer by were the Reppards, Lees, Acostas, Holmes, Middletons, Spears, Grovensteins, Lambrights and some others whose names have escaped my memory, who contributed constantly to the cause.  Of course, we Blains did our share and many a goose was killed as we had a flock of about twenty-five or thirty.  We had genuine coffee, which was freely used for the boys, although we drank the substitute ourselves.
                The second train bearing the wounded found everything

ready and, as we went through the cars serving such as needed it, my mother noticed one man who was in such agony that he was severely wounded through the body; and although three days had passed, the wound had never been cared for.  She urged the officer in charge to let her take the poor fellow and care for him for he would surely die unless cared for at once.
                Permission was given and I was sent flying back home to get fresh sheets, etc. on the bed and very soon good old Dr. Folks had dressed the wound.  I then mounted my horse again and rode three miles to Mrs. Geo. C. Dent’s with a request from my mother for a nurse—and got her, too—good old Mammy Easter, who proved a jewel of tender faithfulness.
                By the next day’s mail I wrote Mr. Page’s wife as he was anxious to relieve her suspense.  My parents sent her word that she would be welcome if she could come.  She lived at Pochitla Creek—off the railroad somewhere below Macon.  Travel was slow and uncertain in those days, but in three days the good little woman arrived, bringing with her a baby less than a year old.
                Every train from Florida brought more men from Olustee and those who were able came up to the house to see our patient.  One of these said to him, “Page, what were you doing in the fight?  You were chaplain and exempt”.
                His blue eyes flashed as he replied, “Do you think I would see my men shot down like dogs and not take a hand?  No, sir!  I took a dead man’s gun; and if God spares my life, I will do it again”.
                I rejoice to say that he recovered and returned to his home to recruit his strength before joining his command.  He wrote us several letters but we finally lost trace of him.
                In such works as this and in spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing, anything and everything, our time was spent.  Of course, the young people got as much fun out of the various experiences as possible, for youth cannot always be serious.
                War time prices were wonderful.  Coates’ spool thread sold for $2.50 per spool; coffee $100.00 per lb; and everything else in proportion.

                In her splendid collection of books and papers relating to the period of the War Between the States, Miss Maria C. Blain has the little book in which were kept the records of the Sewing Association, organized in Brunswick during the War Between the States.  Miss Blain has generously allowed the following extracts from this record book to be printed here:
                The Sewing Association was organized May 27, 1861, in Brunswick, Ga., with the following membership:
                President—Mrs. James T. Blain.
                Vice-Presidents—Mrs. John S. Marlin; Mrs. Luther Greenleaf; Mrs. Ann (Moore) Clarke; Mrs. Dr. Dupree. 

MEMBERS
(Amount of work to be done by each)

From—G. Friedlander—1 piece of Jeans;
From—N. Dixon—1 piece Jeans;
From—Dr. Robt. Hazlehurst—18 yards Jeans.
From—Mrs. R. Hazlehurst, Sr.—1 piece Hickory Stripes;
From—Mrs. C.L. Schlatter—9 yds. Jeans; 6 yds. Red Flannel;
From—Mrs. Benjamin Cater—2 striped shirts;
From—Mr. Cohen—1 piece checks (for shirts);
From—Mrs. Greenleaf—4 lbs. feathers—to make pillows for the sick.

                Clothing delivered to G.R. Frazer, Acting Commissary, Brunswick Riflemen, on June 5, 1861, which were cut and made by the Sewing Association:

                17 pr. pants—material donated by G. Friedlander;
                11 pr. pants—material donated by N. Dixon.
                12 shirts—material donated by Mrs. J.T. Blain;
                12 pr. drawers—material donated by Mrs. J.T. Blain;
                1 suit for drummer—material purchased by several ladies of Sewing Association;
                2 shirts for drummer—from Mrs. Hazlehurst;
                15 shirts—material donated by Mrs. R. Hazlehurst, Sr.;
                6 bed ticks, 4 pillows, 6 pillow cases—purchased with money received for work done by several ladies of the Sewing Assn.

                The writer is indebted to Miss Blain for information concerning the membership of the local military company that served with distinction in the War Between the States.  Miss Maria had two brothers in this company and kept in touch with the activities of the company.
                The 2nd Georgia Regiment, of which The Brunswick Riflemen was a part, was in camp in the southern portion of the City of Brunswick in 1861, awaiting the call to go to Virginia for active service.  The camp was named Camp Semmes in honor of the Colonel of the Regiment, Paul J. Semmes, who was commissioned a Brigadier-General later and was killed at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.  [MDC marked out and wrote “Mortally wounded at Gettysburg, died July 10.]
                While encamped here, some of the soldiers issued a weekly newspaper, entitled, The Second Georgia Regimental Journal.  The paper was printed in the local printing plant, the printer being in uniform himself.  Miss Blain has carefully treasured a copy of this newspaper under date of July 21, 1861, which gives the name of every Confederate soldier encamped here at that time.
                There were seven companies—The Banks County Guards, The Wiregrass Minutemen (from Ware County), The Burke Sharpshooters, The Joe Browns (from Fannin County), The Cherokee Brown Riflemen, The Columbus Guards, The Wright Infantry (from Whitfield County), The Buena Vista Guards, and The Brunswick Riflemen.

                The roll of the Riflemen at that time was as follows:

               Organized Oct. 28, 1860; mustered into the service of the Southern Confederacy May 20, 1861, for sixty days and attached to the 2nd Georgia Regiment under Col. Paul J. Semmes.

Captain—Benjamin F. Harris
1st Lieut.—James S. Blain
2nd Lieut.—Thos. N. Gardner
3rd Lieut.—George R. Fraser
1st Sergt.—Nicholas Dixon
2nd Sergt.—Geo. W. Pettigrew
3rd Sergt.—Jos. Hernandez
4th Sergt.—Urbanus Dart, Jr.
5th Sergt.—A.S. Quarterman
1st Corp.—Burr Winton
2nd Corp.—Jas. B. Moore
3rd Corp.—Chas. L. Schlatter, Jr.
4th Corp.—John L. Harris
Musician—Cicero Arnold

                At the expiration of this sixty-day term of service, the company was reorganized as Company A, of the 26th

Georgia Volunteers, and served through the whole four years of the War Between the States, first under Gen. A.R. Lawton; then, Gen. John B. Gordon; and, last, Gen. Clement A. Evans, as Brigade Commanders.  They surrendered at Appomattox Court House with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
                Miss Blain has been able to give full information concerning many of the men.  The last surviving member of the Brunswick Riflemen who served in the War Between the States was John J. Smith.
                The list of the reorganized Company was as follows: