Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe Part 20

All Carolina is divided into three parts: 1. North Carolina, which is divided from South Carolina by Clarendon river, and of late by a line marked out by order of the Council: 2. South Carolina, which, on the south is divided from 3. Georgia by the river Savannah. Carolina is divided into several counties; but in Georgia there is but one yet erected, namely, the county of Savannah. It is bounded, on the one side, by the river Savannah, on the other by the sea, on the third by the river Ogechee, on the fourth by the river Ebenezer, and a line drawn from the river Ebenezer to the Ogechee. In this county are the rivers Vernon, Little Ogechee, and Westbrook. There is the town of Savannah, where there is a seat of judicature, consisting of three bailiffs and a recorder. It is situated upon the banks of the river of the same name. It consists of about two hundred houses, and lies upon a plain of about a mile wide; the bank steep to the river forty-five feet perpendicularly high. The streets are laid out regular. There are near Savannah, in the same county, the villages of Hampstead, Highgate, Skidoway, and Thunderbolt; the latter of which is a translation of a name; their fables say that a thunderbolt fell, and a spring thereupon arose in that place, which still smells of the bolt.

This spring is impregnated with a mixture of sulphur and iron, and from the smell, probably, the story arose. In the same county is Joseph's town and the town Ebenezer; both upon the river Savannah; and the villages of Abercorn and Westbrook. There are saw mills erecting on the river Ebenezer; and the fort Argyle, lies upon the pa.s.s of this county over the Ogechee. In the southern divisions of the province lies the town of Frederica, with its district, where there is a court with three bailiffs and a recorder. It lies on one side of the branches of the Alatamaha. There is, also, the town of Darien, upon the same river, and several forts upon the proper pa.s.ses, some of four bastions, some are only redoubts. Besides which there are villages in different parts of Georgia. At Savannah there is a public store house, built of large square timbers. There is also a handsome court house, guard house, and work house. The church is not yet begun; but materials are collecting, and it is designed to be a handsome edifice.

The private houses are generally sawed timber, framed, and covered with shingles. Many of them are painted, and most have chimneys of brick. At Frederica some of the houses are built of brick; the others in the Province are mostly wood. They are not got into luxury yet in their furniture; having only what is plain and needful. The winter being mild, there are yet but few houses with gla.s.s windows.

The Indians are a manly, well-shaped race. The men tall, the women little. They, as the ancient Grecians did, anoint with oil, and expose themselves to the sun, which occasions their skins to be brown of color. The men paint themselves of various colors, red, blue, yellow, and black. The men wear generally a girdle, with a piece of cloth drawn through their legs and turned over the girdle both before and behind, so as to hide their nakedness. The women wear a kind of petticoat to the knees. Both men and women in the winter wear mantles, something less than two yards square, which they wrap round their bodies, as the Romans did their toga, generally keeping their arms bare; they are sometimes of woolen, bought of the English; sometimes of furs, which they dress themselves. They wear a kind of pumps, which they call moccasons, made of deer-skin, which they dress for that purpose. They are a generous, good-natured people; very humane to strangers; patient of want and pain; slow to anger, and not easily provoked, but, when they are thoroughly incensed, they are implacable; very quick of apprehension and gay of temper. Their public conferences show them to be men of genius, and they have a natural eloquence, they never having had the use of letters. They love eating, and the English have taught many of them to drink strong liquors, which, when they do, they are miserable sights. They have no manufactures but what each family makes for its own use; they seem to despise working for hire, and spend their time chiefly in hunting and war; but plant corn enough for the support of their families and the strangers that come to visit them. Their food, instead of bread, is flour of Indian corn boiled, and seasoned like hasty-pudding, and this called hommony. They also boil venison, and make broth; they also roast, or rather broil their meat. The flesh they feed on is buffalo, deer, wild turkeys and other game; so that hunting is necessary to provide flesh; and planting for corn. The land[1] belongs to the women, and the corn that grows upon it; but meat must be got by the men, because it is they only that hunt: this makes marriage necessary, that the women may furnish corn, and the men meat. They have also fruit-trees in their gardens, namely, peaches, nectarines, and locust, melons, and water-melons, potatoes, pumpkins, onions, &c. in plenty; and many kinds of wild fruits, and nuts, as persimons, grapes, chinquepins, and hickory nuts, of which they make oil. The bees make their combs in the hollow trees, and the Indians find plenty of honey there, which they use instead of sugar.

They make, what supplies the place of salt, of wood ashes; use for seasoning, long-pepper, which grows in their gardens; and bay-leaves supply their want of spice. Their exercises are a kind of ball-playing, hunting, and running; and they are very fond of dancing.

Their music is a kind of drum, as also hollow cocoa-nut sh.e.l.ls. They have a square in the middle of their towns, in which the warriors sit, converse, and smoke together; but in rainy weather they meet in the King's house. They are a very healthy people, and have hardly any diseases, except those occasioned by the drinking of rum, and the small pox. Those who do not drink rum are exceedingly long-lived. Old BRIM emperor of the Creeks, who died but a few years ago, lived to one hundred and thirty years; and he was neither blind nor bed-rid, till some months before his death. They have sometimes pleurisies and fevers, but no chronical distempers. They know of several herbs that have great virtues in physic, particularly for the cure of venomous bites and wounds.

[Footnote 1: That is _the homestead_.]

The native animals are, first the urus or zoras described by Caesar, which the English very ignorantly and erroneously call the buffalo.

They have deer, of several kinds, and plenty of roe-bucks and rabbits.

There are bears and wolves, which are small and timorous; and a brown wild-cat, without spots, which is very improperly called a tiger; otter, beavers, foxes, and a species of badger which is called racc.o.o.n. There is great abundance of wild fowls, namely, wild-turkey, partridges, doves of various kinds, wild-geese, ducks, teals, cranes, herons of many kinds not known in Europe. There are great varieties of eagles and hawks, and great numbers of small birds, particularly the rice-bird, which is very like the ortolan. There are rattlesnakes, but not near so frequent as is generally reported. There are several species of snakes, some of which are not venomous. There are crocodiles, porpoises, sturgeon, mullet, cat-fish, ba.s.s, drum, devil-fish; and many species of fresh-water fish that we have not in Europe; and oysters upon the sea-islands in great abundance.

What is most troublesome, there, are flies and gnats, which are very numerous near the rivers; but, as the country is cleared, they disperse and go away.

The vegetables are innumerable; for all that grow in Europe, grow there; and many that cannot stand in our winters thrive there.

APPENDIX. This portion of the work contains additional notes, original doc.u.ments, and notices of some of the distinguished friends of Oglethorpe.

APPENDIX

No. I

FAMILY OF OGLETHORPE.

The following genealogical memoranda are taken princ.i.p.ally, from a note in Nichols's _Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century_, Vol.

II. p. 17, on his having given the t.i.tle of a book ascribed to the subject of the foregoing memoir

"This truly respectable gentleman was the descendant of a family very anciently situated at Oglethorpe, in the parish of Bramham, in the West Riding of the County of York; one of whom was actually Reeve of the County (an office nearly the same with that of the present high-sheriff) at the time of the Norman Conquest. The ancient seat of Oglethorpe continued in the family till the Civil Wars, when it was lost for their loyalty; and several of the same name died at once in the bed of honor in the defence of monarchy, in a battle near Oxford.

"William Oglethorpe, (son of William) was born in 1588. He married Susanna, daughter of Sir William Sutton, Knight and sister to Lord Lexington. He died in November, 1634 leaving two children, Sulton, born 1612, and Dorothy (who afterwards married the Marquis of Byron, a French n.o.bleman,) born 1620.

"Sutton Oglethorpe, being fined 20,000 by the Parliament, his estates at Oglethorpe, and elsewhere, were sequestered, and afterwards given to General Fairfax, who sold them to Robert Benson of Bramham, father of Lord Bingley of that name. Sutton Oglethorpe had two sons, Sutton, and Sir Theophilus. Sutton was Stud-master to King Charles II.; and had three sons, namely, Sutton, Page to King Charles II.; John, Cornet of the Guards; and Joseph, who died in India.

"Sir Theophilus was born in 1652; and was bred to arms. He fought, under the Duke of Monmouth, in the affair at Bothwell bridge, where a tumultary insurrection of the Scots was suppressed, June 22, 1679.

He commanded a party of horse at Sedgmoor fight, where the Duke was defeated, July 6, 1685; and was Lieutenant Colonel to the Duke of York's troop of his Majesty's horse-guards, and Commissioner for executing the office of Master of the Horse to King Charles II.

He was afterwards first Equerry and Major General of the army of King James II.; and suffered banishment with his Royal Master." After his return to his native country he purchased a seat in the County of Surrey, called "the Westbrook place," near adjoining the town of G.o.dalming; a beautiful situation, in a fine country. It stands on the slope of a hill, at the foot of which are meadows watered by the river Wey. It commands the view of several hills, running in different directions; their sides laid out in corn fields, interspersed with hanging woods. Behind it is a small park, well wooded; and one side is a capacious garden fronting the south-east.

Sir Theophilus was for several years a member of Parliament for Haslemere, a small borough in the south-west angle of the county of Surrey. This place was, afterwards, in the reigns of Anne, George I., and George II., successively represented by his three sons, Lewis, Theophilus, and James. He died April 10,1702, as appears by a pedigree in the collection of the late J.C. Brooke, Esq., though the following inscription in the parish church of St. James, Westminster, where he was buried, has a year earlier.--"Hie jacet THEOPHILUS OGLETHORPE, Eques auratus, ab atavo Vice-comite Eborum, Normanno victore, ducens originem. Cujus armis ad pontem Bothwelliensem, succubuit Scotus: necnon Sedgmoriensi palude fusi Rebellos. Qui, per varies casus et rerum discrimina, magnanimum erga Principem et Patriam fidem, sed non temere, sustinuit. Obiit Londini anno 1701, aetat. 50."

Sir Theophilus married Eleanora Wall, of a respectable family in Ireland, by whom he had four sons and five daughters; namely, Lewis, Theophilus, Sutton, and James; Eleanora, Henrietta, Mary, and Frances-Charlotte.

I. LEWIS, born February, 1680-1; admitted into Corpus Christi College, in the University of Oxford, March 16,1698-9. He was Equerry to Queen Anne, and afterwards Aid-de-camp to the Duke of Marlborough; and, in 1702, member of Parliament for Haslemere. Having been mortally wounded in the battle of Sch.e.l.lenburgh, on the 24th October, 1704, he died on the 30th.

The following inscription to his memory is placed below that of Sir Theophilus.

"Hujus claudit latus LUDOVICUS OGLETHORPE, tam paternae virtutis, quam fortunae, haeres; qui, proelio Sch.e.l.lenbergensi victoria Hockstatensis preludio tempestivum suis inclinantibus ferens auxilium vulnere honestissima accepit, et praeclarae spe Indolis frustrata.--Ob. XXII aetatis, Anno Dom. 1704.

"Charissimo utriusque marmor hoc, amantissima conjux et mater possuit, Domina Eleonora Oglethorpe."

II. THEOPHILUS, born 1682. He was Aid-de-camp to the Duke of Ormond; and member of Parliament for Haslemere in 1708 and 1710. The time of his death is not recorded. He must have died young.

III. ELEONORA, born 1684; married the Marquis de Mezieres on the 5th of March, 1707-8, and deceased June 28, 1775, aged 91. The son of this lady was heir to the estate of General Oglethorpe. He is mentioned, in the correspondence of Mr. Jefferson, as highly meritorious and popular in France, (1785.)

IV. ANN [mentioned in Shaftoe's narrative.]

V. SUTTON, born 1686; and died in November, 1693.

VI. HENRIETTA, [of whom we have no account.]

VII. JAMES, [see the next article.]

VIII. FRANCES-CHARLOTTE ... Married the Marquis de Bellegarde, a Savoyard.[1] To a son of this union is a letter of General Washington, dated January 15, 1790, in the 9th volume of Sparks's _Writings of Washington_, p. 70.

[Footnote 1: _Gentleman's Magazine_, Vol. LVII. p. 1123.]

IX. MARY, who died single.

The ARMS of the family are thus described: "Argent, a chevron, between three boar's heads, erased, sable armed, or, lingued proper."

CREST. "A boar's head, as before, holding an oaken branch, vert, fructed or."

II

DISCUSSION RESPECTING THE BIRTH-DAY OF OGLETHORPE.

There are great difficulties in ascertaining the age of Oglethorpe.

The newspapers, soon after his decease, in 1785. and the _Gentleman's_ and _London Magazine_, contain several articles about it.

While these inquiries, investigations, and statements were going the round of all the periodicals of the day, it is unaccountably strange that the family did not produce the desired rectification, and yet more surprising that in the inscription on the monument erected to his memory by his widow, and which was drawn up by her request, she should not have furnished the writer with the date of his birth, and the years of age to which he had arrived.

The _London Gazette_, first announcing his death, stated it _one hundred and four years_. The _Westminster Magazine_ for July 1785, (a periodical published in the very neighborhood of the old family mansion,) in the monthly notice of deaths, has "June 30th, General Oglethorpe, aged 102. He was the oldest general in England." And I have a fine engraved portrait of him taken in February preceding his decease, or which is inscribed "he died 30th of June, 1785, aged 102."

A writer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for September, 1785 p. 701, who was one of the first emigrants to Georgia, and personally and intimately acquainted with the General, declares that "he lived to be _near a hundred years old_, but was not _one hundred and two_, as has been a.s.serted."

In the Biographical Memoir of him in the 8th volume of the _European Magazine_; in NICHOLS's _Anecdotes of Literature_ and in McCALL's _History of Georgia_, his birth is said to have been in 1698; and yet it is a.s.serted by the best authorities, that he bore the military rank of Ensign in 1710, when, according to their date of his nativity, he could have been but _twelve years of age_; and this before his entering College at Oxford.

Again, some make him Captain Lieutenant in the first troop of the Queen's Guards in 1714; the same year that others put him to College.

According to such statements, he must on both these military advancements, have been of an age quite too juvenile for military service, and more so for military rank. And yet, to account for his obtaining such early, and, indeed, immature promotion, the writers suggest that "he withdrew precipitately from the sphere of his education." But I see no reason for supposing that he left the University before he had completed the usual term of residence for obtaining a degree; though he did not obtain that of _Master of Arts_ till the 31st of July, 1731.[1]

[Footnote 1: See _Catalogue of Oxford Graduates_.]