Baldwin County GaArchives History .....History of Baldwin County - Fort Biography 1925
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 7, 2004, 11:30 am

p. 327-329

THE FORT FAMILY

    Arthur Fort came of English parentage. Three brothers, Moses, Arthur, and
Elias, first settled in North Carolina and afterwards scattered to different
parts of the country. Arthur Fort was born January 15, 1750. He was living in
Burke county when the Revolutionary War broke out. Before the war he had married
a widow, Mrs. Whitehead, formerly Miss Susannah Tomlinson. She came of a
Pennsylvania Quaker family, was a very small woman, with dark hair and eyes. Her
children ever retained a tender memory of her. She died December 13, 1820. She
had one son by her first marriage and eight sons and daughters by her second .
Her oldest child, Sarah, was born the 14th of August, 1779; Moses, March 17th,
1782; Arthur, April 3rd, 1785; Tomlinson, July 14th, 1787; Elizabeth, December
26th, 1789; Susannah, March llth, 1792; Zachariah Cox, February 12th, 1795; Owen
Charlton, December 1st, 1798.

    Arthur Fort was a man of a strong, original mind. His early opportunities
were poor but he was possessed of uncommon intellect. He was a patriot and
served Georgia with distinction during the Revolution. When Sir James Wright
evacuated Savannah, Georgia, he was put in charge of the Government house.

    Before Georgia was organized as a state, Arthur Fort was one of the men
appointed on the first executive Council. During the war he made a few stolen
visits home and was once betrayed by a Tory neighbor, which was the cause of a
very dramatic scene. This neighbor collected a band of Tories and came in to
take Arthur Fort a prisoner and kill him. His wife threw herself in front of her
husband and one of the soldiers said: "I'll not kill him, little woman, for your
sake." After the country became more quiet he settled on the shores of the
Ogeechee river, in Warren County, Georgia. Most of his children were born at
this home. They afterwards moved to Twiggs county, Georgia, where he died,
November 16, 1833.

    His children married as follows: Sarah, to Appleton Roseter; Moses, to
Eudocia Walton Moore; Arthur, to Mary Newsom; Tomlinson, to Martha Low Fannin;
Elizabeth, to Lovett B. Smith; Susannah, first to Robert Jemmison; and second,
to Samuel Hunter; Zachariah Cox, to Amanda Beckam; Owen Charlton, died
unmarried. He died at thirty-three years of age.

    Arthur Fort, Sr., lived to be very old. He left a stainless name. He was a
member of the Methodist Episcopal Church for fifty years. He rode on horseback
fifty miles, to hear the first Methodist preacher who visited this section; it
was old Bishop Asbury. He took great interest in the politics of the country,
and had papers read to him daily during his many years of blindness.

    Dr. Tomlinson Fort graduated at the Philadelphia Medical College in
Pennsylvania, and became one of the most distinguished physicians of the State,
also a leading figure in politics. The expense of maintaining a large family
compelled him to retire from politics and devote himself to his profession. He
served as Captain, in the War of 1812, and was severely wounded in a battle with
the Indians, in Florida. He organized his company in Milledgeville, "The Baldwin
Blues," Abraham Fannin was his first Lieutenant. The battle in which Dr. Fort
was wounded took place at night, Colonel Williams commanding. Col. Williams was
shot seven times, once while in Dr. Fort's arms. Dr. Fort walked twelve miles
that unfortunate night. He was shot in the knee while holding Col. Williams in
his arms. He was on crutches for eighteen months.

    He was a great student and an able writer. He wrote a valuable work on
medicine, published in 1840, called "Fort's Medical Practice." This added
greatly to his reputation and has been extensively used in the South and West.
The wound received in the Indian War was at last the cause of his death. He was
attacked by a strange disease, pronounced by physicians as "lead poison," caused
by the presence of the ball in his knee. He had the ball removed, but with no
beneficial result. The physician of Milledgeville, fearing for his life, refused
to perform the operation. But Dr. Fort insisted that it should come out, and
made his son, George, (then a young physician) undertake the operation. Dr. Eve,
a noted physician of Augusta, was sent for and assisted. Dr. Fort himself held
the knee and directed the knife. The operation, so far as removing the ball, was
successful, but did no good, and for ten years he suffered paroxyms of great
agony. He died in Milledgeville, Georgia, on the llth of May, 1859. He is buried
at Milledgeville, where he had lived about fifty years.



Additional Comments:
From: 

Part V

HISTORY of BALDWIN COUNTY GEORGIA

BY MRS. ANNA MARIA GREEN COOK

ILLUSTRATED

ANDERSON. S. C.
Keys-Hearn Printing Co.
-1925—


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