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GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 327
carried off by the royalists. Schools and churches were closed. There
were no courts.and judges. Commercial operations had been suspended.
It was a time of great heaviness, and to add to the prevailing distress
there was an uprising of the Creek Indians.
But the dominant spirit of the Anglo-Saxon asserted itself amid
these trying conditions. The most helpless of all the colonies, Georgia
was not discouraged, but turned her face hopefully and resolutely toward
the sunrise of a new day. Nor was it long before streams of immigrants
began to pour into the state from the northward, spreading out over the
fertile Georgia uplands. Gen. George Mathews in 1783 settled a colony
of Virginians in what was known as the Goose Pond tract on the Broad
River. With him came the Gilmers, the Lumpkins, the McGhees, the
Freemans, the Meriwethers and the Barnetts. John Talbot, a Virginian,
also acquired at an early date extensive grants of land. Other bands of
immigrants from the same state found homes on the Little River, some
few miles further to the south and west. North Carolinians also began
to come in large numbers, swelling the little communities in which Tar
Heel settlers had already commenced to swarm on the eve of the Revolu
tion. All of these settlements made between 1777 and 1783 were made
in a region to which, under Georgia's first State Constitution, was given
the name of Wilkes. From the forest stretches of this region, Colonel
Elijah Clarke gathered his loyal band of partisans and marched to the
overthrow of Toryism, in the famous battle of Kettle Creek. Gathering
up the defenseless women and children of the Broad River district,
Colonel Clarke had first taken these to a place of refuge beyond the
mountains in Tennessee; and then returning to Georgia he had waged
a relentless warfare against the enemies of Georgia, to whom all this
part of Georgia was known as the "Hornet's Nest." Governor Wright
had obtained these lands by cession from the Indians, in satisfaction of
certain debts due to traders, the first cession having been made in 1763,
the second in 1773; but as a penalty for having sided with the British,
the Indians, as we shall see later, were forced to yield two large addi
tional tracts to the whites.
In 1783, Dr. Lyman Hall became governor. His administration was
signalized by an act of confiscation, under which Georgia took possession
of all lands, tenements, chattels, and other property interests belonging
to those persons who had given help to England during the Revolution.
When Georgia was in the hands of the British, in 1782, Governor
"Wright, acting for the king, had confiscated the property of all who
were then in resistance to the crown. Turn about, therefore, was only
fair play. Governor Wright's property brought $160,000. Many who
had served the state were handsomely recompensed. Gen. Nathanael
Greene, for his part in redeeming Georgia from British domination, was
given a magnificent estate on the Savannah River, containing some 2,100
acres, formerly the home of Lieutenant-Governor John Graham; while
a similar estate was bestowed upon Gen. Anthony Wayne, who had par
ticipated in the closing drama of hostilities on Georgia soil. Both of
these illustrious soldiers became citizens of Georgia. General Greene was
also given a handsome estate on Cumberland Island. North Carolina
and South Carolina both gave estates to General Greene, but he preferred
to reside at Mulberry Grove, his Georgia estate, near Savannah. Maj.