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GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 65
There was also a committee appointed to hear such applications as
came in person to the office of the corporation at Westminster. Many
were, of course, rejected. No criminal was even considered. No man
upon whom rested a shadow of suspicion or a stigma of any kind was
accepted. Nor was any applicant received who in coming to Georgia
would leave behind him a family dependent upon his labor for support.
There were no wife deserters among these beneficiaries of the trust; no
fugitives from justice; no men of vicious character; no debtor whose obli
gations had not been canceled. As a rule preference was given to those
whose applications were endorsed by ministers, church-wardens and over
seers. After an emigrant was chosen he was drilled each day by the ser
geant of the Royal Guards, a much needed discipline since it was not
only as a planter but also as a soldier that he was expected to serve the
trust. Says a well known Georgia historian in refuting a popular mis
conception concerning these early colonists: * "It has been idly charged
that in the beginning Georgia colonists were impecunious, depraved, law
less and abandoned, that the settlement at Savannah was a sort of Botany
Bay and that Yamacraw Bluff was peopled by renegades from justice.
The suggestion is utterly without foundation. The truth is, no appli
cant was admitted to the privilege of enrollment as an emigrant until
he had been subjected to a preliminary examination and had furnished
satisfactory evidence that he was fairly entitled to the benefits of the
charity. Other American colonies were founded and augmented by in
dividuals coming at will, without question, for personal gain, and bring
ing no certificate of present or past good conduct. Georgia, on the con
trary, exhibits the spectacle, at once unique and admirable, of permit
ting no one to enter her borders who was not by competent authority,
adjudged worthy the rights of citizenship."
On October 3, 1732, the enrollment lists disclosed 114 persons who
were ready to embark as emigrants for the new world. This number
included men, women and children. But no one was admitted to passage
until he or she had first been apprised in detail of the terms and condi
tions involved in this change of residence nor until he or she had testified
acceptance thereof in a formal document containing articles of agree
ment, signed, sealed and filed in the office of the trust. To meet a few
objections which were well founded, as, for example, in families where
there were daughters only, it was provided that any person claiming the
privilege might name a successor to the lands held by him and that in
case the original grantee died without issue such successor should take
possession, the property thereafter to descend to his or her male heirs.
It was also ordained that a widow should receive a third of her deceased
husband's property as fixed by the laws of England.
On the eve of sailing, a certain amount of land within the limits of
the future colony—5,000 acres—was, for purposes of distribution, deeded
in trust to three of the colonists to wit: Thomas Christie, William Cai-
vert, and Joseph Hughes. These were to reconvey the land in fifty-acre
lots to each male adult, at his request, upon arrival in the province.
There attached to each transfer the conditions of settlement thereon; and
*"History of Georgia," Charles C. Jones, Jr., Vol. I, p. 113, footnote.
Vol. T—5