History

Not So Quiet in Wrightsborough
For a group of settlers whose lives and religious beliefs were based on pacifism, the Wrightsborough Quakers were at the center of a great deal of violence, fighting and bloodshed.

by David Foster

The year was 1767 and for a group of North Carolina migrants who spoke in already archaic King James English (here a thee, there a thee, every where a thou, thou), it was all a matter of finding a new and good place to live. A place where non-violent people, pious to a flaw, could put down roots, raise up crops, trepidatiously worship the Good Lord and raise their children to do likewise. A place into which "worldly" people would seldom wander, where scandal would be seldom found, where hard work and fair business would be the order of the day and where freedom of religion would find a true home far from the suffocating influences of a "less right" people, mainly Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians and Methodists, not to mention Puritans.

They called themselves "Friends," better known in the greater world as Quakers because of the way they "quaked" with trepidation when in the presence of the Lord. Their religious organization was officially known as Friends Church, and in 1767 this century-old pacifist movement had become one of the largest religious groups in America, especially in the Middle Atlantic colonies. William Penn, perhaps the most famous American Quaker, founded Pennsylvania in 1681 as part of a real estate scheme, but when that didn't pan out, he created a haven for Friends fleeing England seeking the same hand up in the New World the Puritans had gotten some 60 years earlier.

Quakers had already established "meetings" (local organizations of Friends built on weekly, monthly or annual meetings of congregations) in North Carolina. In 1765, trouble over some hanky-panky at the Cane Creek meeting caused some families to pull up roots and seek a new start in a new land.

Under the leadership of Joseph Maddock and Jonothon Sell, the Cane Creek breakaways applied to Georgia's Colonial Governor James Wright for land grants in the then northwestern frontier of the colony. Governor Wright, always seeking new settlers to place between Augusta and Savannah and the Indians who lived on the far side of the Little and Ogeechee Rivers, gained the Quakers a grant of 40,000 acres to be known as Wrightsborough Township, its seat to be located only about 30 miles from Augusta.

Governor Wright also agreed to build a direct road between the new community and Savannah. By 1772, Friends were moving in right and left. A new meetinghouse and town�also named Wrightsborough after the generous colonial Georgia governor�had been laid out, near the banks of the Little River, and would serve as terminus of the new Quaker Road from Peterborough (on Highway 301 near present day Sylvania) and thence on to Savannah. Soon other roads connected Appling (often called "Applington" on old maps) and Augusta with Wrightsborough, which was the most important settlement in northwest Georgia until the establishment of the Broad River settlements in today's Wilkes County area.

Governor Wright was pleased to befriend the Friends for a number of reasons: First, they were small farmers and opposed slavery. Georgia had, since its creation, struggled with the slave question, but with the failing of General Edward Oglethorpe's Utopian experiment, slavery was growing in popularity. The Quakers, however, would have nothing to do with it. Second, while they were a bit odd in their religious habits, the Friends were hard working and peaceable, exactly the kind of people who wouldn't cause trouble. They would pay their taxes, educate their young, set a good, sober example for the Indians with whom they came in contact and remain loyal to the crown (an issue of growing importance). Best of all, if the Friends were successful in their settling, they would attract even more of the same into the colony. From Governor Wright's point of view, one couldn't ask for better settlers.

However, a fly soon flew into this otherwise idyllic social stew. Up in Boston some white guys dressed as Indians dumped some green tea into Boston Harbor as a protest against so-called taxation without representation. Lead by Brother Maddock, the Wrightsborough Friends passed a resolution condemning the Boston Tea Party and supporting the King. This resolution set the tone for some very hard times to come.

Even as late as 1773, revolution was hardly a concept. Even if some Northern colonists thought it might be, few believed the youngest colony would join in such rebellious shenanigans. Of all the colonies, Georgia had the closest social ties with�and arguably the greatest amount of economic succor coming from�their kindly King. This was especially true of the Friends at Wrightsborough. Marauding Indians and bands of outlaws were taking a large toll on the township, not only in terms of livestock and equipment, but in lives, those taken from the body and those where the bodies, still breathing, were taken from the township. The Indians would take children from Quaker farms; outlaws robbed people in their homes, sometimes slaying them in their beds. Since the Friends would not fight for themselves, it was important that somebody else fight for them. Governor Wright not only built a fort near Wrightsborough town, but also provided troops on occasion.

Other Quakers would come to call these years part of the "quiet times" between their 17th-century persecution for their religious beliefs and the bursting of that social fester called slavery, which would bring the Friends to the forefront of the nation's greatest debate. Even so, from the moment Wrightsborough was settled and the meetinghouse built, the quiet times for the Georgia friends were measured in days or weeks, seldom, if ever, years. However, in 1733, Governor Wright signed two new Indian cessions, one removing the Cherokees from those lands northeast to the Tugaloo River (a headwater of the Savannah) and northwest to take in most of what is today Wilkes County. That meant the Indian threat was pretty much removed. For the Friends it seemed happy days were there again. They celebrated a bit too soon.

In 1776, hostilities finally erupted between the colonies and England. Georgia found itself in a civil war that would make the War Between the States look like two children playing patty-cake. Rape, murder, torture and burnings out became woefully common across the frontier and especially in Wrightsborough Township. For the Friends, it soon became obvious that the Indians, troublesome as they had been, might have made better neighbors.

Almost to the man, the new Broad River settlers in today's Wilkes County were a rough and ready crowd, almost to the man loyal to the patriot cause. Most of the remainder of Georgia was a mixture of Tory (sympathetic to the King) and Patriot (sympathetic to the rebels). Wrightsborough was mostly pacifist Tory far from the protection of the government troops in Savannah and, at times, Augusta.

The result? There was no winning for the Quakers at Wrightsborough. Their official position was to support the Crown but not to take up arms against anyone, which in turn made them unfair game for every hoodlum, roustabout, hostile Indian and militia that passed through the township. During those periods when the Patriots were in charge, the Friends suffered great abuse and paid huge taxes; when the English were in charge, which was seldom, the Friends paid the extra taxes on what little they still had because they would not participate in the Tory militia.

Other social influences were taking their toll on the township as well. Some not-so-devout Friends, called "peripheral" Friends, did take up arms with one side or the other while young people began to marry non-Friends. Meeting leaders, such as Joseph Maddock found they could not safely live in the Township during the Revolution and fled to either Augusta or Savannah for sanctuary from patriotic zeal.

When the war ended in 1781, Wrightsborough, the town, remained a solid Quaker stronghold, but the larger township had lost most of its Quaker character and most everyone was destitute from the ravages of the war. Many families had moved away while others were finding new religions and becoming part of the changing character of the Georgia frontier.

The deciding blow to Wrightsborough came, however, when Eli Whitney patented his cotton gin in 1793, spurring the growth of a new South that would become the Old South by 1865, one enslaved to cotton and black slavery. With a growth that would rival that of the Internet in the 1990s, cotton went from a secondary crop to the primary cash crop and created, in turn, a slave-driven economy. You were either for slavery or you weren't welcome. By 1802, those few devout Friends who had tried to remain in Wrightsborough and true to their faith were pretty much gone, their old meeting house, also a gift from Governor Wright, burned down and replaced by the Methodist Church that remains standing next to the old Quaker cemetery today.

So, you might ask, where is the link to Augusta? While Wrightsboro Road no longer goes directly to Wrightsborough (it mainly goes to Augusta Mall), at one time it would have given the traveler a straight shot at this, the only Quaker village to ever be settled in Georgia. However, the old village site is a pleasant place to visit on a sunny afternoon. You might even take a picnic and dine among the ghosts in the old cemetery, feel for yourself a bit of what it was like to live in a place where, literally, you just might find a monster behind any given tree. Several of the people lying in those unmarked graves surely did.