The McIntosh Brothers – Leaders of Coastal Georgia’s Patriot Rangers

by Denise Weimer

Two of the sons of John Mohr McIntosh and Marjory McIntosh, who lived on the Altamaha River near Darien, Georgia, played pivotal military roles in South/Coastal Georgia at the outbreak of the American Revolution. William was John’s oldest son. Lachlan was second oldest, born in 1727. When he was eleven, an alligator killed his three-year-old brother Lewis while they were swimming in the river, leaving seven children—William, Lachlan, John, Phineas, Mary Ann, and George.

Lachlan McIntosh

Lachlan grew to be nearly six feet tall and was a fast runner. William sneaked out of Darien and went to war with his father against the Spanish in the 1740s. Lachlan joined them but at fifteen was too young to see action.

Lachlan was trained at a friend of the family’s counting-house. He married Sarah Threadcraft of South Carolina on January 1, 1756. They moved to Darien and had eight children. In 1758, Lachlan received 1,000 acres on an island across from Darien on the north branch of Altamaha where tidal flow made rice lucrative. Later that year, he and William got a thousand acres on Broughton and Doboy Islands. William, who wed Mary Jane Mackay and had four sons, also acquired land on St. Simon’s Island. Eventually, Lachlan owned had 14,000 acres and sixty slaves. He was tax collector and justice of peace and used surveying skills on roads and to lay out new plan of Darien.

As the American Revolution broke out, the McIntoshes, like most Scots, were proud Patriots. As depicted in the last novel of my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier Series, A Calculated Betrothal, Lachlan and William led troops defending the frontier of South Georgia.

March 1776 - Congress approved a Continental battalion with Lachlan McIntosh commanding.

May 1776 – Fifty-year-old William McIntosh raided into East Florida with sixty horsemen, capturing prisoners, slaves, and cattle, and burning plantations.

June 1776 – William built forts on the Altamaha and St. Mary’s Rivers.

July 1776 - William’s force engaged soldiers from St. Augustine and Indian allies on the St. Mary’s.

August 1776 – Lachlan’s men raided every settlement north of the St. John’s River.

Sept. 16, 1776 – Lachlan became brigadier general and devised a system of frontier forts along the southern border of Georgia but never had enough men to adequately staff them. William became lieutenant colonel of the Georgia mounted troops with three hundred horsemen patrolling the frontier, garrisoned at Fort Barrington.

October 1776 – British plans to invade Georgia by land and sea caused Lachlan to spread his troops along the coast and order William to cross the Altamaha. Late in the month, William’s men attacked a troop on the Satilla River. When a party of Loyalists attacked Fort Barrington, eighteen men there held off the attack until William’s rangers forced the attackers to withdraw.

December 1776 – Lachlan led reinforcements to Fort Barrington, now renamed Fort Howe. Supporters of political leader Button Gwinnett tried to discredit Lachlan by claiming William’s soldiers failed to protect South Georgians. William’s men pursued Indians who had killed a trooper.

January 1777 – William took a troop to build Fort McIntosh on the Satilla River. Leaving South Carolinian Captain Richard Winn in charge, he headed back to civilization for leave, physically ill and frustrated by the false claims against him.

February 1777 – Fort McIntosh fell to the East Florida Rangers.

March 1777 – Button Gwinnett asked Lachlan for troops for an invasion of Florida. They argued over who was to lead it. Political and military tensions between them plus false accusations Gwinnett made against George McIntosh eventually led to the famous duel between Button and Lachlan. Button Gwinnett died from his wounds, and William and Lachlan left the state to defend their brother George in his trial and to offer their military services in Virginia.

A Calculated Betrothal: The death of her titled husband abandons Tabitha Gage on an isolated South Georgia plantation on the eve of revolution, left with only a log cabin on unsettled timber land.

Sergeant Edmond Lassiter comes to the aid of the dark-haired beauty fending off cattle rustlers. The Patriot scout and Loyalist widow are surprised by their shared values. When Edmond learns the same man who ruined his family is after what little Tabitha has left, he convinces her they should work together to make her land profitable—all while fighting off the British from East Florida and her greedy neighbor, who sabotages their every effort to succeed.

https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0D577ZJ1B/

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A mother of two wonderful young adult daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Fort Barrington/Fort Howe – South Georgia’s Rev War Stronghold

by Denise Weimer

Site of Fort Barrington

The last of my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier novels is set at Fort Barrington, a southerly stronghold during the American Revolution against incursions from British-allied East Florida Rangers and Seminole Indians. The stockade sat on the north side of the Altamaha River thirteen miles from Darien, Georgia. Originally, Fort Barrington was a British fort established in 1751 but left incomplete when funding ran out. The seventy-five-foot-square stockade comprised two bastions at the eastern and southern corners—the latter being at the river’s edge—a two-story wooden blockhouse, a well, a storeroom, a magazine, and barracks. Ramparts in the form of low embankments extended between bastions, with large wooden spikes driven into the ground around the perimeter. When Georgia’s Royal Rangers were disbanded in 1767, twenty-five mounted men had been posted at Barrington.

Colonial map showing Barrington

The Augustine Trail, later known as the Old Post Road, ran from Savannah, Georgia, to St. Augustine, Florida, crossing the Altamaha in view of Fort Barrington where the river was about a hundred yards wide. Famed naturalist William Bartram described Barrington in ruins in April of 1773 and the ferry boat rowed by a Creek Indian man who had married a white woman. Directly across from the fort was the site of Creek native Mary Musgrove Matthew’s Mount Venture, an early trading post established with her white husband in the 1740s.

By July 1776, eighteen Patriots were defending Fort Barrington when Indians and British from East Florida raided in the area. In September, the Georgia Battalion became the Georgia brigade, with Lachlan McIntosh brigadier general and his brother William lieutenant colonel. Three hundred horsemen were temporarily stationed at Fort Barrington, lacking barracks, clothes, blankets, medicine, and tools. Another attack came in October with the British allied forces repelled by William McIntosh’s rangers. In December, Fort Barrington was renamed Fort Howe in honor of Major General Robert Howe, who conceived of a plan to establish a string of forts in southern and coastal Georgia with the headquarters at Fort Howe.

By February, Fort Howe supported a garrison of forty men. The fall of the newly built Fort McIntosh farther south on the Satilla River on February 18, 1777, led the Americans to rally at Fort Howe. In a battle where twelve Patriots were lost, they prevented the British from crossing the Altamaha River to threaten more settled areas of Georgia. Soon after, the Patriots launched an ill-fated invasion of Florida, returning in defeat in June of 1777. Desertions mounted in fall of that year.

On March 13, 1778, Lt. Col. Thomas Brown led a hundred East Florida Rangers and ten Indians across the Altamaha to capture Fort Howe with the loss of only one man, yet killing two of the Patriots, wounding four, and capturing twenty-three. The fort was burned before the British-allied troops withdrew due to internal disagreements. Prompted by the fall of Fort Howe, Georgia’s assembly authorized another Florida expedition which was also doomed by heat, heavy rain, dwindling supplies, sickness, and desertions.

A Calculated Betrothal: The death of her titled husband abandons Tabitha Gage on an isolated South Georgia plantation on the eve of revolution, left with only a log cabin on unsettled timber land.

Sergeant Edmond Lassiter comes to the aid of the dark-haired beauty fending off cattle rustlers. The Patriot scout and Loyalist widow are surprised by their shared values. When Edmond learns the same man who ruined his family is after what little Tabitha has left, he convinces her they should work together to make her land profitable—all while fighting off the British from East Florida and her greedy neighbor, who sabotages their every effort to succeed.

https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0D577ZJ1B/

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A mother of two wonderful young adult daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Fort Barrington site photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fort_Barrington,_McIntosh_County,_GA,_US.jpg

The Rev War’s Trio of Villains in the South Georgia Swamps

by Denise Weimer

My November book release, the fifth novel in my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, A Calculated Betrothal, took me to an entirely different setting—the South Georgia swamps. I’ve never written a novel set among the snakes and gators, and during the Revolutionary War, South Georgia was a strange place, indeed…a sort of no-man’s land between the Georgia Colony and East Florida, which was controlled by Great Britain. Few settlers bode in those flat pinewoods and murky bogs. Instead, planters north of the Altamaha River, where my story takes place, allowed criollo cattle (cattle of European origin born in the New World, like the Pineywoods Spanish breed) to roam and forage, herded by using brands and a series of wilderness pens.

As you can imagine, the East Florida Rangers with their Seminole allies coveted a stronghold from which they could launch invasions into the more populated coastal, middle, and northern portions of the state, starting with the settlements at Darien (Scots-Irish) and Savannah. That made Fort McIntosh on the Satilla River and Fort Barrington/Fort Howe (Barrington when under British hands, Howe when under Patriot) of great value. Multiple attempts were made on these forts by both sides, and the East Florida Rangers frequently raided cattle as well as goods and slaves from plantations along the border.

Among the leaders of the East Florida Rangers were three men with fearsome reputations—Colonels Thomas “Burntfoot” Brown, William “Bloody Bill” Cunningham, and Daniel McGirth. All were involved in the attack on Fort McIntosh on February 17, 1777, as depicted in A Calculated Betrothal.

Thomas Brown – In August, 1775, Brown refused to sign the Patriot Association and was abused, tarred, and feathered by the Sons of Liberty. The fracture to his skull gave him chronic headaches, and the roasting of his feet over a fire gave him his nickname, “Burntfoot.” He rallied Loyalists in the South Carolina backcountry but fled arrest, convincing East Florida Governor Patrick Tonyn of his “Southern strategy” to use rangers and Indian allies to subjugate Georgia and Carolina.

William Cunningham – A native of Ninety Six, South Carolina, William had not yet earned his “Bloody Bill” moniker by 1777. In fact, he started out on the Patriot side, opposing his cousins, Robert and Patrick Cunningham. But a misunderstanding when he attempted to resign led to him being hunted until he fled to Florida.

McGirth's flight - Joel Chandler Harris book

Daniel McGirth – Another South Carolinian who came to Florida with a burning zeal for revenge, like Cunningham, McGirth started out as a Patriot. As the story goes, an officer ordered him to give up his (very fast!) horse, Grey Goose. When he refused, he was court martialed, whipped, and imprisoned. He escaped on Grey Goose. The Patriots told the story differently, and theirs included words such as horse thieving and desertion.

All three of the men went on wreak havoc in the backcountry from Georgia to South Carolina, earning reputations as villainous and barbarous as any movie portrayal could be. While they bring some serious pressure to bear on my hero and heroine, Tabitha and Edmond also face much more personal enemies in the guises of Loyalist father and son landowners...

 

The death of her titled husband abandons Tabitha Gage on an isolated South Georgia plantation on the eve of revolution, left with only a log cabin on unsettled timber land.

Sergeant Edmond Lassiter comes to the aid of the dark-haired beauty fending off cattle rustlers. The Patriot scout and Loyalist widow are surprised by their shared values. When Edmond learns the same man who ruined his family is after what little Tabitha has left, he convinces her they should work together to make her land profitable—all while fighting off the British from East Florida and her greedy neighbor, who sabotages their every effort to succeed.

Releases tomorrow! https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0D577ZJ1B/

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A mother of two wonderful young adult daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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The Stamp Act Protests in Savannah - Part II

by Denise Weimer

In last month’s post, we looked at the seething political cauldron in the colonies in the mid-1760s—and specifically, how the repressive tax acts affected Savannah, Georgia. The city waited to see if Governor Wright would appoint a stamp master and enforce the Stamp Act. He had prevented delegates from being sent to the Stamp Act Congress held in New York in October, 1765. However, the Commons House had sent a recorder who brought documents to present on October 24. The very next day, a small explosion became the first in a chain of events that fall and winter that led to a major confrontation.

October 25 – A group of Savannah citizens disapprove of the flag and gun ceremony at Fort Halifax on the fifth anniversary of the king’s ascension to the throne, also a militia muster day. That evening, the effigy of a stamp officer is carried through the streets, hanged, and burned.

October 31 – Documents from the Stamp Act Congress are published in the Georgia Gazette, along with a sensational article revealing that four local citizens received letters signed by “the Townsman,” accusing them of being the stamp master or having stamped papers in their possession. The men are instructed to publicly advertise their innocence or risk grievous results. Three comply, one returns to England, and James Habersham offers a reward of fifty pounds to anyone who turns in the sender of the letters.

Joel Chandler Harris, "The Liberty Boys"

November 4 – Sons of Liberty meet at Machenry’s Tavern to plot opposition to the Stamp Act. Having learned George Angus, not from Georgia, would be the stamp master, they agree to confront him upon his arrival and demand his resignation.

November 5 – A group of sailors enact the stamp master being placed on a scaffold and carried about town, amusing crowds.

November 12 – Governor Wright orders rangers from frontier forts to Savannah.

December 5 – Speedwell arrives with stamps in the Savannah River. Stamps are transferred secretly to Fort Halifax, east of town, and locked in the King’s Store.

January 2 – About two hundred citizens threaten to assault Fort Halifax. Meanwhile, a smaller group with drums and flags parades to Wright’s residence. There he chides them for their ill manners with musket in hand. He gathers a crowd of rangers, sailors, and merchants to confront the crowd at Fort Halifax. The rangers move the stamps to the guardhouse. Forty men remain on duty overnight and for the next two weeks.

January 3 – Rangers meet the boat of Stamp Agent George Angus on the river and escort him to Wright’s house to take his oath of office. He is then spirited away to hide in the countryside for two weeks. Wright clears sixty ships waiting to enter Savannah’s port but chooses not to issue any further stamped papers until the king answers the petition sent by the Stamp Act Congress.

January 30 – Wright learns “incendiaries” from Charleston have inflamed Savannah citizens to destroy the papers, so he moves them to Fort George on Cockspur Island.

February 2 – Stamped papers are returned to the Speedwell. Seven hundred backwoodsmen arrive in town, threatening to raze the city and shoot the governor if the stamps are not destroyed. Wright musters supporters to face the mob.

February 4 – Almost 250 Stamp Act opponents march to Savannah commons with plans to demand the governor hand over the stamps. Wrights calls seventy rangers and twenty crew of the Speedwell plus his loyal friends to face down the mob for three hours. After trading insults, the crowd disperses.

March 4 – Pressured by English merchants who feel the pinch of colonial non-importation agreements, English Parliament repeals the Stamp Act but quickly follows with the Declaratory Act, which states parliament has the right to legislate for the colonies in all matters. A hint that the reprieve will not last…

A Conflicted Betrothal, Book Four of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, https://www.amazon.com/Conflicted-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0CRF911PD/: When Savannah erupts into protests following the passage of the Stamp Act, Georgia Royal Ranger Ansel Anderson is summoned from his frontier post to provide intelligence to his father’s friend, a Loyalist judge. To obtain the land grant he needs, he’s also to court the man’s daughter, an ardent Patriot. Patience Scott has no intention of letting herself fall for a sworn King’s Man…until anonymous letters threatening those loyal to the governor corner her into agreeing to a betrothal. But will their attraction survive their conflicting loyalties?

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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The Stamp Act Protests in Savannah - Part I

1760s Christian Camphor House

by Denise Weimer

My post last month set the scene of Savannah in the 1760s, poised for revolution. The fuse for rebellion was lit in the decade before a shot was ever fired with a series of increasingly repressive acts levying taxes for Britain.

Designed to offset the cost of the French and Indian War, the April 1764 Sugar Act taxed molasses imported from any country outside the British Empire. Molasses was used in the distilling of rum, a huge industry in the colonies.

The September 1764 Currency Act aimed to pay for stationing ten thousand troops in America. Many of these helped protect the frontiers at the request of the governors. The act forbade the printing of paper money in the colonies and issued a “call in” date for old bills, many of which were not equalized throughout the colonies. With items from England costing more and little hard currency in circulation, inflation ensued.

The crowning grievance lay in the March 1765 Stamp Act, which was considered unfair because it was an internal tax not having to do with business outside the colonies. It required an imprint on official papers or a small blue paper affixed with tin foil to a document, including bills, calendars, warrants, deeds, court documents, commercial papers, degrees, newspapers, pamphlets, ads, almanacs, indentures, appointments, and even cards and dice. Anyone breaking the Stamp Act would be tried in admiralty court in Nova Scotia. Colonists objected to not having a local trial by their peers and because English parliament, not the local upper and lower houses, had set the tax.

Parliament swiftly followed in May 1765 with the Quartering Act requiring provincial assemblies to victual and billet British soldiers in barracks, inns, or uninhabited buildings. Most colonists felt capable of defending their own frontiers and resented the large standing army that remained after the French and Indian War, partly to satisfy the sons of noble families with commissions.

As early as February of 1765, Prime Minister Grenville met with Benjamin Franklin and other representatives of the colonies to discuss objections to the Stamp Act. Little headway was made. Isac Barré, an Irish politician who had served in the colonies during the French and Indian War, took up the cause of the patriots and coined the term “sons of liberty.”

Sons of Liberty flag

Soon, colonists were forming Sons and Daughters of Liberty groups. They developed their own flag to represent the nine colonies which attended a Stamp Act Congress held in New York during the month of October. The Georgia governor refused to call the assembly into session prior, preventing the state from sending delegates. However, the Commons House sent a supportive letter and a recorder to take notes.

Next month, we’ll look at the chaos that ensued in Savannah following the Stamp Act Congress.

A Conflicted Betrothal, Book Four of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, https://www.amazon.com/Conflicted-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0CRF911PD/: When Savannah erupts into protests following the passage of the Stamp Act, Georgia Royal Ranger Ansel Anderson is summoned from his frontier post to provide intelligence to his father’s friend, a Loyalist judge. To obtain the land grant he needs, he’s also to court the man’s daughter, an ardent Patriot. Patience Scott has no intention of letting herself fall for a sworn King’s Man…until anonymous letters threatening those loyal to the governor corner her into agreeing to a betrothal. Will their attraction survive their conflicting loyalties?

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Pre-Revolutionary Savannah and my birthday new release GIVEAWAY!

 

James Oglethorpe

by Denise Weimer

Savannah is Georgia’s oldest and arguably best-loved town—and the setting for the newly released fourth book in my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier Series, A Conflicted Betrothal. Savannah was founded in 1733 by James Oglethorpe and laid out in wards built around central squares. The Georgia trustees envisioned that in the thirteenth and last colony, English debtors working as yeoman farmers would support Savannah’s business class.

James Wright became the governor of Georgia in 1760, beginning the decade of my novel’s setting. While loyal to the king, Wright farmed his own lands acquired through grants, completed the palisades around Savannah, and strengthened the area forts. The upper and lower houses of the colonial assembly worked together to promote economic growth.

James Wright

In the 1760s, Savannah’s importance as a trade city grew. Coasting vessels stopped here on their route between the West Indies, Charleston, and New England, and of course, Georgia imported numerous goods from the mother country while exporting deer skins, rice, indigo, naval stores, and lumber products to England and the West Indies.

Let’s take a bird’s-eye view of Savannah’s six squares at that time.

Working east to west along the river, we begin with Fort Halifax on the site of the original Trustees’ Garden and then Fort Oglethorpe, completed in 1760 of planks with a caponiere at each corner. In 1761, there were thirty royal rangers (such as the hero in my novel) and sixteen British regulars stationed here. Indian trade presents were secured in the King’s Storehouse. Farther along the riverfront were the offices and warehouses of fledging factors, such as Harris & Habersham, and the public dock and wharf.

On the east nearest the river, Reynolds Square was laid out in 1734 as Lower New Square, and this was where Methodist circuit-riding preacher John Wesley had his home. There was a 1759 powder magazine, a 1760 council house, and the 1759 filature house built by liberty-loving tavern owner Peter Tondee. Here silkworms were nurtured to produce fine silk thread.

Johnson Square was the largest, home of Derby Ward, Savannah’s first neighborhood, the public mill and oven, the House for Strangers, and Christ Church, completed in 1750.

Christ Church

Current-day Ellis Square would have been known as Decker Square or Market Square during the 1760s, since it was renamed between 1757 and 1770. The public market buzzed here under the steeple of 1759 Independent Presbyterian Church.

Situated to the east behind Reynolds Square, Oglethorpe Square was laid out in 1742 as Upper New Square. It was home to first governor of Georgia, John Reynolds, and Gerard de Brahm, a naturalist, engineer, and navigator who with Henry Yonge established the nearby town of Ebenezer for German immigrants, constructed area forts, and mapped South Carolina, Georgia, and the coastal area.

To the west, Percival Square was renamed Wright Square in 1763 to honor Georgia’s third royal governor. Tomochichi, the native leader and friend of James Oglethorpe who assisted in founding the colony, was buried here. Site of the 1759 prison and guardhouse, Wright Square is also known as the hanging square, since executions were carried out here.

Finally, St. James Square yet a bit farther west was a fashionable place to live in pre-Revolutionary Georgia. Governor Wright maintained his residence at the northwest edge.

Join me next month as I share about the Stamp Act protests that erupted in Savannah in 1765. 

And check out my new release, A Conflicted Betrothal, Book Four of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, https://www.amazon.com/Conflicted-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0CRF911PD/.

When Savannah erupts into protests following the passage of the Stamp Act, Georgia Royal Ranger Ansel Anderson is summoned from his frontier post to provide intelligence to his father’s friend, a Loyalist judge. To obtain the land grant he needs, he’s also to court the man’s daughter, an ardent Patriot. Patience Scott has no intention of letting herself fall for a sworn King’s Man…until anonymous letters threatening those loyal to the governor corner her into agreeing to a betrothal. But will their attraction to each other survive their conflicting loyalties? 

Today is my birthday! How about I offer you a present? If you'd like to be entered to win an e-book copy, comment below on what you find intriguing about early Savannah or A Conflicted Betrothal, or check out the other books in the series on Amazon and share which one stands out to you the most.

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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The Royal Georgia Rangers: The Tradition that Birthed a Book Series

by Denise Weimer

Who were the Georgia Rangers? From my research, I knew scouts often manned forts along the Colonial Georgia frontier even when militia was not called up during times of active conflict. But only when I began digging into this history for my Scouts of the Georgia Frontier Series did I learn of the Georgia Rangers.

Before the American Revolution, Georgia was one of the thirteen original British colonies under royal governance. It was also the farthest south and most exposed to enemies. In September of 1756, prompted by disturbances with the Creek Indians, a group of men from the backcountry petitioned Governor Reynolds to provide a defense for the frontier. He formed the first Georgia Rangers with six officers (a captain, two lieutenants, a cornet, and two quartermasters) and seventy men. He then requested the Rangers become part of the British military.

The new royal governor, Henry Ellis, had to reduce the number to twenty men so he could afford to pay them himself. Finally, in May of 1759, the First Troop of Rangers joined the British military. The Second Troop was mustered in January of 1760. Both troops were comprised of seventy men and five officers. They were to “shoot on horseback and ride full speed thro’ the woods” and provide a barrier against French, Spanish, Creeks, and Cherokees.

Type of blockhouse common in GA forts

When the Cherokees attacked along the frontier as mentioned in my last post about the Long Canes Massacre, the governor ordered the Rangers inland from the coast. An army of regulars, colonists, and Indian allies defeated the Cherokees and destroyed fifteen Cherokee Middle Towns in 1761.

By that year, the frontier forts of Georgia included Savannah (with Fort Halifax); Fort Augusta; Fort Argyle, nineteen miles from Savannah on the Great Ogeechee River; Fort Barrington on the Altamaha River; Fort William on Cumberland Island; and Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island. By the next year, Fort George at the mouth of the Savannah River was added.

After the Cherokee War, the troops in frontier forts dealt with runaway slaves, suspected spies, deserters, and whites on Indian land. They also joined the militia for ceremonial duties, escorted Indian parties and dignitaries, and imposed quarantines.

1763 marked the end of the French and Indian War and the removal of the Spanish and French from east of the Mississippi, and Georgia also received new lands from the Indians. In 1764, the colonies faced a series of increasingly repressive tax laws levied by Britain, culminating with the Stamp Act in March of 1765. This tax on almost all official and some nonofficial papers sparked a rebellion among the fledgling Sons of Liberty in Savannah. As the city waited to see whether Governor Wright would impose the Stamp Act and install a stamp master, a series of protests and threatening, anonymous letters printed in the newspaper ensued, as depicted in Book Four of my Georgia Scouts.

The governor did not know who to trust among the militia, so he called extra Rangers from the frontier forts to act as guards—and to face down their own countrymen threatening to riot. Captain James Powell of the Second Troop and John Milledge of the First Troop were loyal to him. Fort Argyle served as a base of Ranger operations. From there, Governor Wright disbanded the Georgia Rangers on orders from his English superiors in March of 1767.

In June of 1773, Governor Wright reformed a troop of Rangers under Captain Edward Barnard, with three lieutenants, a quartermaster, a surgeon, three sergeants, a drummer, and sixty-five privates “to keep good order, and for the protection of the Inhabitants of the new ceded Lands above Little River” above Augusta. The officers were also justices of the peace. Each private received two pounds a month and had to “victual” himself and provide a uniform of a blue coat faced with red, a red jacket, blue or buckskin breeches, cloth booths, a rifle, two dragoon pistols, a sword, a powder horn, a shot pouch, and a tomahawk. They constructed Fort James on the Broad and Savannah River.

The Rangers from Fort James took part in quelling a Creek Indian rebellion around Christmas of 1773. As late as March 1775, fifty Georgia Royal Rangers still manned Fort James. Many had married Creek women and had settled into local life, far from the call of the governor and ripe for the rebellion of the War for Independence.

Further reading: Militiamen, Rangers, and Redcoats: The Military in Georgia, 1754-1776 by James M. Johnson

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Now available, A Cherished Betrothal, Book Three of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier:

Patriot Ranger Alexander Morris vowed revenge on the warrior who killed his brother and father. Elspeth Lawrence, a survivor of the same massacre whose sister was taken captive, teaches Cherokee children at her father’s school. She’s never stopped longing for the boy who saved her, but when their paths are reunited on the eve of revolution in the South Carolina backcountry, more than her Loyalist suitor stands in the way. Alex can’t remember the massacre, or Elspeth, but his hatred for the Cherokees he’s been ordered to court as allies threatens to choke out the seeds of love and healing.

 
https://www.amazon.com/Cherished-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0CHMZKBCL/