Transcribed by K. Torp, ©2007
This county was named for the Earl of Chatham, and was the earliest settled
of any portion of Georgia. It has the Savannah river on the east and the Ogeechee on the south and west and includes
the islands adjacent. On these two rivers are some fine rice lands, but away from the rivers the land is mainly
marsh or sterile pine woods. The agricultural resources of the county apart from its rice lands are not considerable.
The river bottoms upon which rice was grown were magnificent estates before the war; and even since it ended, although
the slaves have been freed, there have been some very extensive plantations, and though some of them have been
worked for over a century they are still planted profitably. Many of these rice plantations have, however, been
abandoned, and where there were in the beginning of the century well-kept fields there are now only marshes. Some
of these old rice plantations are now market gardens, where great quantities of early vegetables are grown for
the northern markets; but many of these fine old places are simply abandoned. Raising vegetables for the northern
markets is carried on in the county very extensively. Some of the swamps around the city have been drained by canals
and ditches and there is much land now arable which was waste, and many of the freedmen have gone into these low
places and bought small tracts and now make a scanty living by planting small crops. There are some famous plantations
near the city. Mul berry Grove, where General Greene died, is a market garden. Bonaventure, where the Tattnall
family had their home, is now a famous cemetery. The Hermitage, the seat of the McCallisters, with its magnificent
avenue of live-oaks; and Beaulieu, the seat of Governor Stephens; Whitefield
s Bethesda Orphanage; Jasper Springs, where Jasper captured the British guards and released the pris oners, are
places of interest in the county. The history of Chatham is so interwoven with the early history of Georgia, and
especially that of Savannah, which is given at length elsewhere, that it is not necessary to say much of the county
in this place. There is a comparatively small white population outside of the city and the various suburban villages.
Thunder bolt, Tybee, Isle of Hope and White Bluff are on the sea shore, and Pooler and Monteith and a few other
small villages on the lines of railway. There are few schools and churches save for the negroes in the country
districts around Savannah, but the villages are well supplied. In 1790 there were only twenty-five hundred white
people in the county, Savannah included, but there were eight thousand two hundred slaves on the plantations and
the sea islands. The sea islands were famous for the homes of planters who resided in the city during the winter
and on their estates during the summer. They were not adapted to the production of rice and were devoted at their
first settlement to indigo culture and stock-raising. They were congenial homes for the Africans who were imported
in large numbers and who, when they were placed on the islands, rapidly increased. Before the Revolution there
was much wealth and much luxurious living on these islands. The planters, after they gave up indigo culture, began
to raise sea-island cotton, and as this staple was very high in price, they had large returns from their crops
and increased in wealth very rapidly. The sea island planter in Chatham and along the Georgia coast presented much
the same features as is pictured elsewhere in people of the wealthy class of planters. Their situation was an exposed
one, and they suffered during the Revolution and the war of 1812. They rallied from these losses at those times,
but from the disasters of the war between the States there was no recovery, and the islands are now largely peopled
by negro tenants who make their living by fishing and oystering.
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