Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 431
trated in these coast settlements. Savannah was the principal seat of
culture. Some of the confiscated estates of the old royalists were
baronial in extent, embellished with handsome driveways, fountains and
statues and enriched with all the charms of English country -life,
including a stately manor house, in which elegant portraits adorned the
walls. On the rich sea-islands along the coast and on the rich alluvial
bottoms of the mainland there were vast plantations, on. which slaves
were employed in large numbers. These wealthy coast aristocrats owned
extensive libraries, wore costly fabrics, planted 011 modern scientific
principles, owned handsome family carriages in which they traveled in
a sort of regal splendor, imported luxuries and dainties from abroad, and
dispensed a hospitality whose counterpart was to be found only in the
palaces of London. These lords of the Georgia lowlands educated their
sons in Europe, stocked their wine-cellars with products of the rarest
vintage, and gave even their humblest slaves a taste of life to which the
greatest chief of the uplands was a total stranger. Malarial conditions
on the coast, however, especially in the neighborhood of Sunbury, became
such that in summer the planters were obliged to betake themselves to
higher points further inland, and out of these retreats in after years
grew large towns.
But Upper Georgia was populated almost exclusively by immigrants
who came from the western part of North Carolina and from the border
counties of Virginia. These immigrants were sturdy pioneers, men of
strong muscular frames and fearless spirits, well fitted for life on the
perilous frontier. Wilkes County was the center toward which all the
converging lines of immigration ran when this section of Georgia was
opened to settlement just after the Revolution. Indeed, as early as
1773, Stephen Heard had planted a colony of Virginians on the site of the
present Town of Washington, where he built a rude pioneer fort, after
wards called Fort Heard or Heard's Fort. Governor Wright had ac
quired an extensive tract of land in this neighborhood under a treaty
with the Indians, negotiated in the year above named. It was to Heard's
Fort that the seat of government was shifted when Augusta fell into the
hands of the British. John Talbot, a wealthy landowner from Virginia,
also acquired an extensive grant of land in "Wilkes County at an early
period, but it was not until after the Revolution that he migrated to
Georgia. Then a tremendous influx of population began. Gen. George
Mathews, afterwards twice governor of the state, purchased in 1784 what
was known as the "Goose Pond" tract, on Broad River, where he planted
a colony of Virginians, from which some of the most distinguished men
of the state afterwards sprung. Included among the Virginia families
in this district, some on the east side of the river in what is now Elbert,
others on the west side in what is now Oglethorpe, were the Meriweth-
ers, the Gilmers, the Taliaferros, the Barnetts, the Freemans, the Bibbs,
and others. It is more than likely, however, that the first comers into
Wilkes were North Carolinians and that a preponderating element of the
population were from the Tar Heel State. Elijah Clarke, himself a
North Carolinian, organized on the frontier belt of Wilkes a band of
partisan rangers, at the head of which he waged a relentless warfare
against the Tories. So rapid was the growth of population in Upper
Georgia after the Revolution that, in 1790, when there were only 85,000