Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

432 GEOEGIA AND GEOEGIANS
people living in Georgia, 31,000 of these resided in Wilkes. As a rule,
the Virginians were better educated than the North Carolinians; they
also possessed more of the comforts and luxuries of life; and they found
congenial if not lucrative employment in raising tobacco, a plant which
they had learned to cultivate in the Old Dominion. Prof. Lawton B.
Evans has given us a glimpse into the life of these tobacco planters.
Says he: "In the northern part of the State, a great deal of tobacco was
raised. The tobacco, when cured, was pressed into huge and securely
bound hogsheads. Around the tops of these hogsheads were pinned
wooden felloes, which made a wheel at each end, and in the center of
each head a large pin was inserted to serve as an axle. A hickory pole
was split at one end to form shafts, which were fastened to the axle.
Mules or oxen were hitched to the pole, and as they moved they drew the
hogshead along. Many of these teams would go together for company,
and the drivers were called tobacco rollers. A road known as the tobacco
road begins in the upper portion of. the State and winds in and out
until it reaches the Savannah river below the shoals in Richmond
county. A peculiarity of this road is that nowhere is it crossed by
water, this having been necessary to save the tobacco from injury by
wetting. "When the river was reached, the hogsheads were placed on
flatboats and floated to Savannah.'' *
Life in the Georgia uplands was diversified at this time by all the
sports incident to pioneer days, chiefly, of course, hunting and fishing.
But carousals, frolics and dances made existence a dream in hours of
relaxation. Fights between rowdies during court week were of constant
occurrence, at which time, also, whiskey flowed freely with the cus
tomary effects. Shooting for prizes and horse-racing were both favorite
pastimes. "Whenever a contest of the former sort was held a beef was
usually quartered to furnish the trophies. There were few books in the
homes of these people, most of whom lacked even the rudiments of an
education.
Between the upcountry and the coast settlements there was little com
munication except of a strictly business character; and in relation to
each other they stood in almost polar contrast. But there were multi
tudes of small farmers, in the lowlands of the state, scattered among the
pine barrens to the south and west of Savannah, just as there were thou
sands of well-to-do planters in the distant hill country, where the Georgia
cracker built his cabin fires and tilled his scant acres of ground, t
* '' History of Georgia,'' p. 192.
t ORIGIN OF THE EXPRESSION—'' GEORGIA CRACKER. ''—Whence originated the ex
pression "Georgia Cracker"? The antiquarian who will answer this conundrum with
proof to satisfy the questioner will incur the gratitude of posterity for all time to
come. In the "New International Encyclopedia" it is said that the term was
derived from the custom of the poor whites in the mountainous districts of the
South whose practice it was to crack the corn which they ate. Col. Richard Malcolm
Johnston carries the genesis back to the time of the American Revolution when,
among the followers of Gen. Francis Marion, in the guerilla warfare which he
conducted in the Carolina swamps, there were a number of Georgia rangers who
were unusually expert in handling the rifle, the crack of which was heard with great
alarm by the British soldiers, who referred to the riflemen as "Georgia Crackers."
Bill Arp theorizes that, when the thrifty Scotchmen, who lived about Darien, came
in contact with the worthless elements of the upper country, they called them