It is with pleasurable sadness and filial reverence that we have brought together these fragmentary memories of a place once the abode of so much refinement, intelligence, hospitality and patriotism,—the home of Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett,—signers of the Declaration of Independence,—of John Elliott and Alfred Cuthbert,—United States Senators from Georgia,—and of John A. Cuthbert, member of Congress,—the birth-place of William Law,—the accomplished lawyer, upright judge, and courtly gentleman,—and of John E. Ward,—the eloquent advocate, speaker of the House of Representatives, president of the Georgia Senate, and United States Minister to China,—for some years the residence of Richard Howley and Nathan Brownson, Governors of Georgia,—claiming intimate association with the Reverend Moses Allen, Benjamin Baker, Colonels William and John Baker, General Daniel Stewart, Colonel John McIntosh, and Major John Jones, patriots all, who risked fortune and life in support of the primal struggle for independence,—the scene of the professional labors of Doctors Dunwoody, Alexander, and West,—and numbering among its citizens clergymen, teachers, physicians, lawyers, merchants, and planters, whose influence was appreciated in their day and generation, and whose names, if here repeated, would challenge respect and veneration. Nature survives, but nearly all the rest is shadow. In this humid soil so fecund with vegetation, neglected gravestones,—covered with brambles and overturned by envious forest trees,—“tell truth scarce forty years.” V. HARDWICK. [Illustration: _Boundaries of the Town of Hardwick_ Resurveyed, in 1853 by William Hughes. County Surveyor of Liberty County. Georgia. _J. Bien, Photo. Lith. N. Y._] During his tour of inspection in 1755, Governor Reynolds was so much pleased with the natural advantages of the Great Ogeechee river, that he selected a bluff upon its right bank, some fourteen miles from the sea, as a location for a new town, which, in honor of his relative the Lord High Chancellor of England, he named HARDWICK.