COLUMBIA.

In 1790 the upper and western parts of Richmond county were made into Columbia, and at a much later period Columbia itself was divided and McDuffie was formed.

The eastern parts of the county along the Savannah river and the northern and western along Little river, and on the Kiokee and near Wrightsboro, were very fertile and were thickly settled before the Revolutionary war. The people distributed themselves into two main groups, one near Wrightsboro and the other on the Kiokee, near where Appling now is. The settlers near Wrightsboro were many of them Quakers from North Carolina, but there were a considerable number of Virginians and Marylanders who settled in that neighborhood as early as 1770.

The list of settlers in St. Paul's parish, which is found in the Appendix, is very largely composed of those who settled in this county. There was a large body of settlers in these neighborhoods before the Revolutionary war. The lower part of the county and the southwestern part was a great pine forest, and for many years after the Revolution was not settled at all except by a few stock-raisers.


The crowds of settlers who had located in this county before the Revolution had been kindly received and encouraged by Governor Wright, and he was so great a favorite with them that they named their principal village Wrightsboro in his honor, and they had little sympathy with the agitators, whether in Boston or Savannah. Many had never seen a leaf of tea in all their lives, and cared little about taxation without representation, as they paid no taxes, and when the Liberty Boys began their revolution, at Governor Wright's request they almost to a man signed their protest against their course.

It is certain that most of these people at the beginning of the war were poor men, who had not as yet done more than build their cabins and open a few fields. They had but few slaves and were as a rule uneducated, but it was also true that there was among them some of more than ordinary culture and people of some property.

The Fews, the Candlers and the Lamars were among these first comers. The Fews came from Wales to Pennsylvania, thence into Maryland and into North Carolina, from which State they removed to Georgia. Of this distinguished family we have spoken elsewhere.

The upper part of the county was wonderfully fertile, and along Little river and the various creeks which permeated that portion of the county the newcomers made many settlements before the Revolution, and when the British took possession of Augusta this section was at once occupied by their troops, and as a large number of the people were patriots they were driven into exile. After the War ended they returned to their abandoned cabins and soon began to re-establish themselves. The population was very large and the settlers were very thrifty. The best class of Virginians and North Carolinians now came into the growing county. Columbia Court-house became a leading town in the up-country and held its place for years. The land was given by headrights and two hundred-acre farms were opened all over the upper and eastern parts of the county. The towns of Wrightsboro and Brownsboro were the leading villages in the county.

It was not long after the Revolution before the tide of prosperity began to rise very high. Men with a number of slaves came from Virginia and settled plantations. Stock had unlimited pasturage, and the soil was remarkably fertile. Augusta was a near-by market and tobacco, the staple, found ready sale. By the beginning of the century there was much wealth in the county and an unusual amount of intelligence. It was thickly settled, and when the cotton-gin was invented and the cotton industry began to be an item, Columbia became famous for its rapid advance in prosperity until there were few sections of the State in which there was more wealth and intelligence. The settlers were nearly all from Virginia and were not adventurers, but men of family and means. The Cobbs, Meriwethers, Hamiltons, Dawsons, Applings, Lamars, Fews, Candlers, Napiers, Crawfords, Carrs, Howards, and many others of that class settled in the county, and there was no part of the State in the early part of the century in which there was a more elegant society.

The coming of Daniel Marshall, the first Baptist preacher in upper Georgia, and the formation of the Kiokee church in 1771, we have already noted.

Before the beginning of the century Moses Waddell, a young Presbyterian minister from North Carolina, came into the county and opened a school at Mt. Carmel, where W. H. Crawford and Jno. C. Calhoun were his pupils. There were many separate landholders at that time and a large number of pupils could be secured.

The Methodists came into Columbia as early as they came into Georgia, and found some old Virginia friends awaiting their coming, and had prosperous churches in all sections of the county.

There was an academy at Appling in the early part of the century, and a female school of high grade was established there in the thirties and flourished for a few years, and the usual old-field schools were found in every section of the county.

We have already had a sketch of the distinguished family of Fews, who resided in this county. The grand father of the famous Howell and Thomas R. R. Cobb died in this county, and his brother, Thomas Cobbs, was said to have been one hundred and ten years old when he died in this county, where he had lived for sixty years.

During the first years of the century Columbia Court house, as Appling was then called, was a center of wealth, intelligence, and influence. Abraham Baldwin, a young New Englander, who had graduated at Yale College, served as chaplain in the Revolution, studied law, came to Georgia, was admitted to the Georgia bar in Savannah, and came at once to Augusta and then to Columbia Court-house, where he made his home until his death. Few men ever did more for an adopted State, and few men were ever honored more highly than this gifted and excellent man.

The famous Crawford family came to this county from Virginia before the Revolution, and some of its members were soon called to prominent places, and for over a hundred years this family have done the State good service. No county has furnished more families of distinguished Georgians than this old county.

The story told of all these older counties must be told of Columbia. The plantations and negroes drove out the Whites; but the red lands and the rich river plantations passed into the hands of comparatively few people, and as the tide of settlement rolled westward Columbia declined in population as far as white people were concerned, but the poorer sections of the county along the Georgia railroad were gradually occupied, first by mill-men who made lumber, and then as places of healthy residences for Augusta people, and Harlem, twenty miles from Augusta, became a thriving village, and still is.

With liberal fertilizing the pinelands have been made productive. The division of the county and the making of McDuffie has reduced it greatly in size and importance, but it is now improving in every way.

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