The dead towns of Georgia

Name: The dead towns of Georgia
Author: Jones, Charles C., Jr. (Charles Colcock)

Jones, Charles C., Jr. (Charles Colcock)

Extinct cities -- Georgia; Georgia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775

THE
                                DEAD TOWNS
                                    OF
                                 GEORGIA;

                                    BY
                           CHARLES C. JONES, JR.

                  _FOR HERE HAVE WE NO CONTINUING CITY._
                               Heb: xiii. 14

                                 SAVANNAH:
                    MORNING NEWS STEAM PRINTING HOUSE.
                                   1878.




                                    TO
                   GEORGE WYMBERLEY-JONES DERENNE, ESQ.,
                               OF SAVANNAH,
     WHOSE INTELLIGENT RESEARCH, CULTIVATED TASTE, AND AMPLE FORTUNE
      HAVE BEEN SO GENEROUSLY ENLISTED IN RESCUING FROM OBLIVION THE
                        EARLY MEMORIES OF GEORGIA,
         THESE SKETCHES ARE RESPECTFULLY AND CORDIALLY INSCRIBED.




PREFATORY NOTE.


If it be praiseworthy in their descendants to erect monuments in honor of
the illustrious dead, and to perpetuate in history the lives and acts of
those who gave shape to the past and encouragement to the future, surely
it will not be deemed inappropriate to gather up the fragmentary memories
of towns once vital and influential within our borders, but now covered
with the mantle of decay, without succession, and wholly silent amid the
voices of the present.

Against the miasmatic influences of the swamps, Spanish perils, the
hostility of the Aborigines, and the poverty and sometimes narrow
mindedness of the Trust, did the Colonists grievously struggle in
asserting their dominion over the untamed lands from the Savannah to the
Alatamaha. Nothing indicates so surely the vicissitudes and the mistakes
encountered during that primal period of development, as the DEAD TOWNS
OF GEORGIA. From each comes in turn the whisper of hope, the sound of the
battle with nature for life and comfort, the sad strain of disappointment,
and then the silence of nothingness.

Of the chosen seats and characteristics of the primitive peoples who
inhabited this territory prior to the advent of the European we have
elsewhere spoken.[1]

Of the indications of a foreign occupancy antedating the colonization
under Oglethorpe, such, for example, as those observed by DeBrahm[2]
on Demetrius’ island, and a few others which might be mentioned,—we
refrain from writing, because the theories explanatory of their origin,
possession, and abandonment, are so nebulous as to seem incapable of
satisfactory solution.

In narrating the traditions and grouping the almost obsolete memories
of these deserted villages we have endeavored to revive them, as far as
practicable, in the language of those to whom we are indebted for their
transmission.

                                                      CHARLES C. JONES, JR.

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA, February 1st, 1878.




CONTENTS.


                                                    PAGE.

      I. OLD AND NEW EBENEZER,                        11

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The dead towns of Georgia

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