When the Declaration of Independence was signed, of the three members from Georgia whose names were affixed to that memorable document, two—Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett,—were from St. John’s parish: and we may add, from the town of Sunbury:—for, although Gwinnett then resided on St. Catharine island, his home was within sight of that flourishing seaport, all his public and much of his private business was there transacted, he was constantly seen in its streets, was known and honored of its citizens, and in very truth constituted one of them. Two Signers of the Declaration of Independence from one little town in St. John’s parish! and that town clean gone from the face of that beautiful, lonely, and bermuda-covered bluff! It is in perpetuating acts and names like these that memory stays the engulfing waves of oblivion, and administers signal rebuke to “time which antiquates antiquities and hath an art to make dust of all things.”[191] Did the limits of this sketch permit, it would be interesting to detail the efforts made by the parish of St. John to persuade positive resistance to English rule and inaugurate steps contemplating an absolute separation from the mother country when the greater part of Georgia was not persuaded of the expediency of such action and was actually opposed to the proceedings of the Continental Congress. So determined and independent was the rebel spirit in Sunbury, throughout the Midway settlement, and at Darien, that it actually brought about, for the time being, a voluntary political separation from the other parishes of the Colony. So annoyed were the citizens of St. John’s parish by the temporizing policy which characterized the Savannah Convention, that on the 9th of February, 1775, they applied to the Committee of Correspondence in Charleston “requesting permission to form an alliance with them and to conduct trade and commerce according to the act of non-importation to which they had already acceded.” It was strongly urged that having detached themselves from the other parishes in Georgia which hesitated to participate in the movement, they ought to be considered and received as a “separate body comprehended within the spirit and equitable meaning of the Continental Association.”[192] While admiring the patriotism of the parish, and entreating its citizens to “persevere in their laudable exertions,” the Carolinians conceived it improper, and “a violation of the Continental Association to remove the prohibition in favor of any _part_ of a province.”