Georgia:  Wilkes County:  A Smith Family Odyssey, Chapter 2

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CHAPTER TWO

EARLY YEARS IN GEORGIA

I

	 Many people are under the impression that the first white 
inhabitants of Georgia were debtors and others convicted of crimes in 
eighteenth century England. Any such impression would be totally 
inaccurate. In fact the early settlement of Georgia was a philanthropic 
experiment that resulted in a careful selection of worthy settlers, few 
of whom were debtors or persons convicted of crime. And even if the 
popular impression that Georgia was originally settled by debtors and 
other undesirables had substance, it would have no application to those 
who later settled what became Wilkes County, where the first Smiths 
found their home. The Wilkes County area was an uninhabited wilderness 
until nearly fifty years after the colony was founded, and its early 
settlers were almost entirely emigrants from Virginia and the Carolinas 
seeking new lands, not new arrivals from England. 
	The acknowledged founder of colonial Georgia was James Edward 
Oglethorpe, a member of the English parliament who came from a 
respected and well-to-do family. In 1729 he became chairman of a 
parliamentary committee that investigated the condition of English 
jails and found them to be deplorable. At that time many prisoners were 
incarcerated solely because they could not pay their debts, and the 
work of Oglethorpe's committee resulted in many being freed. The 
question then became what to do with those who had been released, and 
one proposed solution was to transport them to a new colony in America. 
Because the area south of Carolina was Indian country, it was thought 
that the new colony would provide a buffer against raids on the 
Carolina frontier. And because the Spanish, who controlled Florida, 
claimed rights in the area, the new colony would plant settlers in the 
path of the Spanish claims.
	Oglethorpe and twenty prominent associates, known as the 
Trustees, were therefore granted a royal charter to establish the 
Colony of Georgia. The entire enterprise was regarded as a 
philanthropic effort to relieve unemployment in England and provide 
unfortunates with "a comfortable subsistence" in America. Requests for 
funds to finance the new colony resulted in a flood of contributions, 
and the enterprise proved so popular that the Trustees established a 
screening committee to interview prospective settlers. As a result of 
the screening process, a highly selective group of settlers was chosen, 
not including any released debtors. In short, while the initial impetus 
for the establishment of the new colony was to provide new 
opportunities for debtors and other unfortunates, the early settlers of 
Georgia actually represented a much more carefully chosen group than 
those who settled any of the other colonies.
	In February, 1733, Oglethorpe and the original group of colonists 
arrived on the ship Ann at the site on the Savannah River, just inland 
from the Atlantic Ocean, where the town of Savannah was to be located. 
The settlers spent the summer busily engaged in clearing and fortifying 
the town site, building houses and laying out a public garden in which 
mulberry trees, vines, olives and herbs were planted. Provisions were 
distributed to the colonists from a central commissary. Under 
Oglethorpe's direction, Savannah was laid out in rectangular blocks 
with public squares located at frequent intersections throughout the 
city-a design that still brings delight to visitors to that city.
	Oglethorpe and his associates had definite views as to how and by 
whom the new colony should be developed. Oglethorpe's vision was a 
Georgia based on a population of small farmers, each making a 
comfortable living and capable of forming an effective defense force, 
rather than a few large planters, supported by many slaves and living 
in luxury, as in South Carolina. 
	In order to bring about the kind of economy and lifestyle he 
envisioned, Oglethorpe initiated a series of laws that (1) forbade the 
introduction of blacks or Negro slavery into Georgia; (2) required a 
license in order to trade with the Indians, and (3) forbade the 
introduction or use of alcoholic beverages. Furthermore, in order to 
prevent the aggregation of land into large holdings, the Trustees 
prohibited the sale or lease of lands that had been granted (usually 50 
acres) and required that land be passed on to the next generation only 
through a male heir.  
	Within a few years serious opposition arose to these enactments, 
and one by one they were repealed. In 1752, the charter granted to the 
Trustees was surrendered to the king, and by that time slaves could be 
imported without limit, restrictions on the aggregation of land had 
been eliminated and the importation and use of alcohol had been 
legalized. Not surprisingly, these changes resulted in significant 
growth of the slave population, the establishment of large rice 
plantations in the coastal areas and a marked upturn in trade, 
population and affluence.


II


The royal charter identified the boundaries of the Georgia 
Colony, which was carved out of South Carolina, as "that part of South 
Carolina lying between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers, and westward 
from the sources to the South  Seas".. 
	While this was itself vague and imprecise, it took no account 
whatever of the rights of the Indian nations that actually occupied the 
area, particularly the Creek and Cherokee Nations. Recognizing this 
reality, one of Oglethorpe's first acts was to negotiate a treaty with 
the Indians living in the area. Through the auspices of local Chieftain 
called Tomochichi, with whom Oglethorpe established a fast friendship, 
he was able to arrange a meeting of all the tribes of the neighborhood. 
	This meeting resulted in the signing of a treaty on May 21, 1733, 
by which the Creeks, Uchees and Cherokees affirmed the title of the 
Colony of Georgia to the land lying between the Savannah and Altamaha 
Rivers but extending westward only as far inland as the tides flowed up 
the rivers. In effect, therefore, the Treaty of 1733 authorized 
settlements only along a narrow band of tidewater land extending north 
and south of Savannah for about seventy- five miles.
	Within a few years various groups of settlers-Moravians, Scots 
and Salzbergers-arrived to establish settlements along the tidewater 
above and below Savannah. But in addition, in 1735 another town was 
laid out far up the Savannah River and named Augusta in honor of a 
royal princess. Augusta was far beyond the flow of the tides, and 
therefore outside the permissible area of English settlement under the 
Treaty of 1733. However, it occupied a strategic position at the Fall 
Line of the Savannah River across the river from Fort Moore, South 
Carolina. Fort Moore was the base from which South Carolinian traders 
conducted business with Indians of the "upcountry". If Georgians were 
to compete with Carolinians for this trade, establishing a foothold at 
Augusta, in Oglethorpe's words, was the "key of the Indian countrey".  
	While Augusta was far removed from the tidewater, the Indians did 
not challenge the extension of English settlements to that area. In 
fact, it appears that the Indians actually encouraged and approved of 
the settlement. In earlier years the Indians had no choice but to trade 
with South Carolinians and were often taken advantage of. With Augusta 
as a base, Georgia's Indian traders could compete with those from South 
Carolina and could readily transport items of trade to and from the 
Port of Savannah utilizing the Savannah River as a highway through the 
wilderness.
	While Augusta thrived as an outpost in the wilderness, it 
remained technically outside the treaty boundaries until after the end 
of the French and Indian War in 1763. In the treaty ending that war 
France ceded to England all of its territory east of the Mississippi 
and withdrew support from its Indian allies. With the loss of French 
support the threat of Indian raids was much reduced, and the English 
position greatly strengthened.	
	The colonial governor of Georgia, James Wright, promptly took 
advantage of the situation by negotiating an extension of the 
boundaries for English settlements up to and beyond Augusta. By the 
Treaty of Augusta of 1763, negotiated by four colonial governors with 
members of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee and Catawba tribes, 
it was agreed that the boundaries of colonial Georgia would be extended 
west and northwest of Augusta-westward to the Ogeechee River and 
northwest as far as Little River. 
	The next-and from the standpoint of this narrative the most 
important-extension of colonial Georgia's boundaries with the Indians 
occurred ten years later as a result of the Treaty of 1773. A major 
factor leading to the colonial government's desire to enlarge the land 
area of the colony was the arrival of large numbers of emigrants from 
other colonies and from abroad. The new emigrants put pressure on the 
colonial government both by their demands for new land and by creating 
conflicts with the Indians.
	Fortunately for the colonists, a number of Cherokee concluded at 
the same time that their interests would be served by trading large 
tracts of their hunting lands in exchange for forgiveness of debts they 
owed to white traders. The problem of Indian indebtedness had been a 
recurring one. In an effort to limit the amount of such debt, traders 
had to be licensed by the Governor, were forbidden to sell rum and 
liquor and were directed to limit the amount of credit extended to the 
Indians. These limitations were largely ignored, however, and by the 
early 1770's Indian debts owed to white traders were estimated at 
£60,000, or the equivalent of about $300,000.
	In consequence, four of the principal Cherokee chiefs petitioned 
Governor Wright to present to the King their request to cede a large 
tract of land north of Little River to the Crown in return for 
forgiveness of the entire indebtedness. The plan Governor Wright 
presented to the King contemplated the division of the ceded land into 
small plots which would be sold to new settlers to generate the funds 
needed to pay the debts owed to the Indian traders.
	Governor Wright's plan was approved in London, and at a 
conference held in Augusta on June 1, 1773, the Cherokee, somewhat 
reluctantly joined by the Creeks (who also had claims to the land 
involved), agreed to a cession of some 674,000 acres. The northern 
portion, usually referred to as the "Upper Ceded Lands", which extended 
west from the Savannah River and north from Little River (the boundary 
under the Treaty of 1763) was later organized as Wilkes County by the 
Georgia state government during the Revolutionary War. It is to this 
region that James and Nathan Smith, made their way upon leaving North 
Carolina.

III

	At the time of the Treaty of 1773 the Upper Ceded Lands were an 
uninhabited wilderness. While Indian traders frequented the area on 
their trips back and forth from Augusta and Fort Moore into the 
"upcountry", and some white hunters and trappers had set up camps in 
what had been Indian territory, few if any settlers had established 
farmsteads in the area prior to 1773. 
	By all accounts the Upper Ceded Lands-the future Wilkes County- 
comprised a magnificent virgin forest. Dr. George Gilman Smith, writing 
in the flamboyant style of the 1890's, described the area thus:

"Along the clear streams, for as yet they were as 
crystal, there stretched great bodies of cane in 
which the bear found his home, and on the rich wild 
grasses the myriad of deer fed. The hills were 
covered with a magnificent forest. The undergrowth 
had been kept down by the Indians, who burned the 
woods annually that the grasses might flourish. The 
forests were like a king's park. Herds of deer, 
droves of turkeys, and great flocks of rich-hued 
birds were found in every part of the land. The 
cattle needed no pasturage that the woods did not 
furnish. There were thousands of streamlets and 
springs, and when the land was opened there was a 
rich reward to the tiller's toil. It was no wonder 
then that, as soon as the land was offered to the 
settlers, they came in such numbers." 

The renowned naturalist, William Bartram, who explored the Ceded Lands 
in 1773, soon after the treaty was signed, was equally exuberant:
 
"This new ceded country promises plenty & felicity. 
The lands on the River are generally rich & those of 
its almost innumerable branches agreeable and healthy 
situations, especially for small farms, every where 
little mounts & hills to build on & beneath them rich 
level land fit for corn & any grain with delightful 
glittering streams of running water through cain 
[sic] bottoms, proper for meadows, with abundance of 
water brooks for mills. The hills suit extremely well 
for vineyard & olives as nature points out by 
abundant produce of fruitful grape vine, native 
mulberry trees of an excellent quality of silk. Any 
of this land would produce indigo & no country is 
more proper for the culture of almost all kinds of 
fruits."   

	On June 11, 1773, Governor Wright issued a proclamation stating 
that the Ceded Lands would be parceled out in headright grants; 100 
acres were allotted to the head of each family, 50 more for his wife 
and each child, 50 acres for each slave owned, 50 acres for each white 
male servant and 25 for each white female servant between 15 and 40.  
The land was described as good for wheat, indigo, tobacco, hemp, flax, 
etc. A land court was opened at the junction of the Broad and Savannah 
Rivers, where the new town of Petersburg was soon laid out. It was at 
this point that most new settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas 
entered the Ceded Lands, crossing the rivers on ferries soon 
established at that point.
	Not surprisingly, the opening of this pleasing new land to 
settlers brought an immediate response. In the first three months over 
65,000 acres were sold to new settlers, and more than 8,300 acres were 
taken up the next year. The land was valued according to its quality 
and location at prices ranging from one to five shillings per acre. 
Land situated along creeks or navigable rivers was considered prime 
property. In addition to the Savannah, Broad and Ogeechee Rivers, 
favored home sites were to be found on a number of small streams 
including Beaver Dam Creek, where James Smith and his son Nathan 
settled.
	The settlers who arrived to occupy the new lands came 
predominantly from North and South Carolina, with a few from Virginia 
and an occasional family from Pennsylvania, Ireland or the West Indies. 
They were small farmers-the descendants of the yeomanry of England, 
Scotland, Ireland and Wales-not wealthy planters. They were 
predominantly a non-slaveholding group; only thirteen of the original 
applicants owned more than one Negro. The labor required to carve a 
homestead out of the wilderness was provided by the settler himself, 
usually aided and assisted by a large number of children.
	Like the Smiths and Fosters, most settlers arrived in groups 
consisting of families, relatives and friends, settling in clusters of 
farms with adjoining boundaries. These groups did not emigrate in 
ignorance of their destinations; usually they sent parties of young men 
ahead to scout out the land and to choose the most likely locations. 
Often the scouts spent one or more growing seasons preparing the fields 
and planting a corn crop upon which the family could sustain itself 
upon their arrival. This, together with the hogs and cattle brought 
with them and the wild game that could be found in the forest was 
sufficient until the farmstead could be properly established and other 
grains, fruits and vegetables could be grown.
	Descriptions of the conditions under which the early settlers 
lived very much depended on the point of view of the writer. Some, such 
as Governor George Gilmer, who was born in 1790, tended to romanticize 
the hard, cruel nature of frontier life in Wilkes County. He wrote:

	"These North Carolina settlers lived upon game 
and the milk of the cattle which they carried with 
them in their emigrations. Hogs, sheep, and poultry 
were not to be had, except in the fewest numbers. A 
sufficient supply of these indispensables for a new 
country could only be obtained from South Carolina, 
whither the settlers went for that purpose when they 
had sufficient money to purchase. Many years passed 
before they owned hogs and sheep enough for bacon and 
clothing. Those were hard times, when the breakfast 
of the family depended upon catching an opossum over 
night or a rabbit in the morning. The range was so 
unrestricted that the cows often wandered away beyond 
returning or finding, so that the children had no 
milk to wash down their otherwise dry bread. The 
horses which did the ploughing had to be turned on 
the wild grass to get their food. They strayed away 
beyond finding if their legs were not fastened 
together, so that the art of hobbling was as 
important as the blacksmith's. Bells were put upon 
them, for the purpose of indicating their 
whereabouts; and then the Indians, if on the 
frontiers, carried them off. It was difficult to 
clear of its timber enough of land for corn or 
tobacco. The term patch was for a long time used for 
the land sown in wheat, because only a very small 
quantity was allotted for that grain. Even these 
patches were not seen for years after the settlement 
began, so that flour could not be had at times for 
love or money. It was a long time before the children 
had more than a biscuit a-piece on Sunday mornings. 
Traps, snares, pens and other contrivances, were 
resorted to for catching birds and turkeys. The end 
of a switch was twisted in the hair of a rabbit, to 
draw him from his refuge up in a hollow tree. Food 
was eaten then with the greatest relish, which the 
lady descendants of the settlers would be horrified 
to see on their tables now. An opossum, with its full 
dish of gravy, occupied the place of the sucking pig 
at present. There were no tanneries then to prepare 
leather for shoes, nor well-instructed shoemakers to 
manufacture them. Skins, taken from the cattle killed 
for beef, and those that died with the hollow horn, 
were hung in running streams until the hair could be 
slipped off, and then put into troughs with bark 
until they became what was fit for manufacture. Even 
this hard material could only be had in sufficient 
quantities to allow shoes to the children when the 
frost and snow made the cold too severe for their 
bare feet to bear. Most went without shoes the 
greater part of the year." 

	Much has been written, pro and con, about the character and 
manner of the early settlers. Some writers have emphasized the rough, 
crude nature of the new arrivals; others have stressed their plain but 
hardworking and resourceful characteristics.  Dr. Smith put the matter 
thus:

...Among these up-countrymen there were not a few 
ignorant unaspiring people. They were not peasants; 
they lived in their own cabins, and worked their own 
fields. They had never known anything of luxury and 
had a sovereign contempt for it. Their origin was 
probably an humble one. Their ancestors of three 
generations before had been brought over to Virginia 
by an enterprising ship-owner and sold to a tobacco 
planter for five years [i.e. as indentured servants], 
and received a peck of corn a week and two suits of 
plain clothing during the year for wages, and after 
five years of servitude were freed. When they were no 
longer in bondage they went out to the newer parts of 
Virginia and into North Carolina, and now their 
descendants came to Georgia. Some of them were 
thriftless and ignorant and degraded. That there were 
such among the early Georgians it would be folly to 
deny. The ubiquitous cracker we will never lose sight 
of, but it would be untrue to history to put the mass 
of the upper Georgians among them ... These up-country 
people were not many of them men of means at the 
first. They had but little education and were plain 
people in manner and plain in dress and surroundings, 
but they had never been in bondage to any man. Many 
of them sprang from the best yeomanry of Scotland, 
Ireland, Wales, and England, and many of them were 
direct descendants of the landed gentry of England. 
These were the first comers into upper Georgia.... 
	 
	In 1774 the influx of new settlers was checked for several months 
by an uprising of the Creek Indians. While it caused great alarm for a 
short time, large-scale emigration resumed shortly thereafter. However, 
in 1776 the flow of new settlers slowed to a trickle as a result of the 
opening of the Revolutionary War. With the advent of hostilities, the 
British Land Commission ceased to function, and for the next several 
years no new reserves of land were set aside and few colonists sought 
homes in the new territory. While efforts were made to reopen a land 
office after the new Georgia state legislature was organized in 1777, 
few emigrants arrived while the War continued. The virtual civil war 
that took place in what had become Wilkes County was so violent and 
disruptive that establishing new homesteads became impossible.	
	It is with this background that the Smith family, and their role 
in the unfolding drama of colonial and Revolutionary Georgia, can be 
examined.
  Smith, The Story of Georgia and the Georgia People, p. 59.
  Bartram, Travels in Georgia and Florida 1773-74, p. 144.
  Bowen, The Story of Wilkes County, Georgia (p. 5). Another source, 
Smith, The Story of Georgia and the Georgia People (p. 62) states that 
each new emigrant was allotted 200 acres as his headright, with 50 
additional acres for each slave he brought with him.
  Gilmer, First Settlers of Georgia, pp. 177-178.
  An entire book, McWhiney, Cracker Culture, has been devoted to 
the proposition that the differences and conflict between the rural 
South and the agricultural and industrial North arose out of a conflict 
of cultures: the southern yeoman farmers (Crackers) were 
predominantly the descendants of the Celtic tribes that occupied 
Scotland, Ireland and Wales while those who settled in the North 
descended from lowland English of Anglo-Saxon origin. The conflict 
between North and South is thus said to be largely a reflection of the 
ancient cultural differences and animosities between Celts and Anglo-
Saxons.
  
Smith, The Story of Georgia and the Georgia People, pp. 62-63.
A Smith Family Odyssey