Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

178 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
was'the next appointee. His marriage to an Indian woman, the widow
of an English trader, by the name of Musgrove, aroused in him merce
nary instincts, impairing his usefulness to the province and necessitat
ing his recall. As we have already seen, he persuaded his wife to de
clare herself empress of the Creeks and to make exorbitant demands.
Rev. Bartholomew Zouberbubler was the last minister to serve in Geor
gia, under appointment of the trustees and it was under him that a
church edifice, begun in 1740, was brought to completion on the site
where the colonists first worshipped.
On June 23, 1752, the last meeting of the trustees for establishing
the Colony of Georgia was held in London, at .which time the seal of
the corporation was affixed to a deed of surrender. Not a bill remained
unpaid. Not a claim was left unsettled. Not a grievance remained to
be considered. All was in readiness for the last solemn act, after which
the seal was defaced and the trustees ceased to exist as a body corporate.
Having sent a memorial to the lords of the council, proposing to sur
render the province to the Crown, King George II, who still occupied
the English throne, had consented to accept as a crown jewel the colony
which bore his name,- and when the formal act of relinquishment took
place Georgia ceased to be a proprietary holding and became in the ful
lest, sense of the word .a royal province of England.
HISTORIC OLD MIDWAY: A SHRINE OF PATRIOTISM.—On the old military road,
between Savannah and Darien, in an angle which it here makes with the road to
Sunbuvy, stands an ancient land-mark, "built of wood, two stories in height. To the
outward eye it presents few attractions. The simple taste of the Puritans who built
it is proclaimed by an absence of anything which even remotely suggests artistic
design. Its austere appearance is sternly in keeping with the rigid Calvinistie prin
ciples of the devout believers who here worshipped and who took no little pride in
the fa.ct that they sprang from ancestors who belonged to the Ironsides of Cromwell.
Except on commemorative occasions, the building is no longer used; and those of
its members who are not sleeping underneath the live-oaks, in the little grave-yard
across the road, are scattered far and wide. Before the war, there was not to be
found in Georgia a community of thriftier planters than, the one which stretched for
miles in every direction around this sacred center; but today it stands amid the
abandoned acres, like a grim sentinel keeping watch over a silent past, while upon it
from one Lord's Day to another there broods the hush of an unbroken Sabbath.
Once each year, the descendants of the early settlers gather in the little house of
worship on the green plaza in front of it to revive the recollections of former days,
some of them coining from the most distant parts of the continent. It may be ques
tioned whether the North Star casts a more potent spell upon, the needle of the
mariner's compass than does this hallowed spot upon, the descendants of the early
Puritans of Georgia. Nor is it a matter of marvel. The loadstone which draws
them is in some respects the most famous of America's patriotic shrines: historic
old Midway Church.
From this parental stock !^7e sprung hundreds of the most distinguished men in
the public life of the nation. It has produced two Signers of the Declaration of
Independence (Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett), two Generals of the Bevolution
(James Screven and .Daniel Stewart), besides numerous officers of lower rank, two
Commodores, one President of the United States (Theodore Eoosevelt, descendant
of Daniel Stewart), the wife of another President (Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, grand
daughter of Bev. I. S. K. Axson), three United States Senators, four members of
Congress, four Governors of Georgia, and at least six judges of the Superior Court.
In advance of the rest of the Province the first bold stand for independence was
here taken and the Colonial, flag on Port Morris was the last to be lowered when
Georgia was overrun by the British. Not less than six counties of the state bear