Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 435
forbade anything like the complete furnishing of any home, but, as is
seen, a few years after the Revolution there was a great abundance of
the necessaries of life.
These inventories give a better insight into the domestic affairs of
the first settlers than any general description.
Concerning the mode of life prevalent at this time among the Vir
ginians, Doctor Smith gives us this bit of information. Says he: "Imme
diately after the Revolution, there was a large influx of Virginians who
were in better circumstances and who brought with them from Virginia,
in their large wagons, a supply of better furniture. As illustrative of
this, we have the furniture of John Wing-field, or, as he is written, John
Winkfield, who died in 1798. He had, besides a sufficient supply of
plain household and kitchen effects, some articles mentioned in no
other inventory up to that time. They were bacon, sugar, turkeys, a
riding chair, some books, some lard, and some table-cloths. He had
twentj^-seven negroes, the largest number reported up to that time.
* * * These slaves and those of the low country planters were of a
very different class. Though Africans by lineage, they were Virginians
by birth. In looking over the tax-lists in Wilkes, there is not a slave
holder who has over thirty negroes up to the beginning of the century,
while on the coast there were not a few slave-holders who had largely
over one hundred." *
As to the difficulties sometimes encountered in administering justice
at this time, Governor Gilrner says: '' Prisoners, in the absence of a
jail, were bound with hickory withes and confined occasionally by put
ting their heads between the rails of a fence and sometimes by putting
them in pens." To this Doctor Smith adds: t "The Tories had little
chance for fair trials. In 1779 seven were condemned at one court.
According to the records, one man was indicted for treason, hog-stealing,
horse-stealing, and other misdemeanors. Even after the Avar, when a
man who was accused of stealing a horse from General Clarke was ac
quitted, the old soldier arrested him and marched him off to a conveni
ent tree and was about to hang him anyhow, when Nathaniel Peiidleton,
a distinguished lawyer, succeeded in begging the poor fellow off."
Pioneer life in Greene, a county on the upper border, detached from
Washington, in 1786, is pictured by Doctor Smith in the following para
graph. Says he: J " The first settlers lived on the creeks and near the
river, and for their own protection in close proximity to each other. A
blockhouse was generally built at a convenient distance, and the families
upon the approach of the Indians fled to it for protection. The men left
their families in the blockhouse and went, into the fields to cultivate the
corn patches from which they hoped to make their bread. Until the ces
sation of the Oconee war there was constant peril and the immigration
of people of means was small; but by 1790 there were five thousand four
hundred and five people in the several counties then known as Greene,
of whom one thousand three hundred and seventy-seven were negroes.
* "Story of Georgia and the Georgia People," George G. Smith, pp. 137-139.
t Ibid., p. 137.
{ Ibid., p. 159.