It is now the property of the Potomac Boat Company, and as before stated, transformed into a great recreation pleasure grounds, where the residents of the National Capitol are delighted to assemble on every fair day in the summer time with pleasant weather, beautiful river trip and outing.

In Georgia there are many of the descendants of those Marshalls, Brandts, Bealls and Latimers, all of whom are more or less familiar with Charles county, Maryland, traditions and memories, among them the Furlows, the Hollingsworths and others that I fail to remember at this writing. Before leaving the subject of Maryland's kindred, it is a matter of history that James Latimer and Mary Brandt, daughter of Capt. Randolph Brandt, were entrusted with the guardianship and care of two Fairfax orphans. Lawrence Washington married a Fairfax, and you can find the following in “Sidelights on Maryland History,” page 315. “In the absence of Parish registers or complete early Charles county records, the exact relation of the Latimers and other Charles county families is not exactly proven, but the fact that John Fairfax left his minor children, Ann and William, to live with James Latimer and the close ties shown in the records to have existed between the families, imply kinship. John Fairfax was the earliest of the Charles county Fairfax family, many years before Lord Fairfax became identified with Maryland.” James Latimer herein named, had a family home called “Maycock's Rest,” which descended to my great grandfather.

In this compilation of genealogical data of family history my main object has been to give information to surviving kinspeople and also in a general way to show to our readers how Georgia was settled in the early years of the 19th century.

This influx of cultivated people from states that had superior advantages in wealth and culture, gave Georgia an uplift that was felt in many different ways to the immense benefit of the English settlers who had come over with General Oglethorpe seeking a refuge from autocracy and royal mandates, the victims of oppressive laws and debtors who were thus released from prison bounds. The first ten governors of Georgia were English born. Archibald Bullock, Theodore Roosevelt's ancestor, came from S. Carolina, Gov. George Walton was born in Virginia, Stephen Heard came from Ireland, Lyman Hall, Connecticut; Samuel Elbert, South Carolina in 1740; Telfair, Scotland, 1735; George Matthews from Virginia, he who wrecked a magnificent military and legislative record with affiliation with the “Yazoo Swindle.” Jared Irwin, he who signed the rescinding act of the Yazoo law, seems to have been a native Georgian. Gen. James Jackson and the ancestors of Gov. Milledge came to Georgia from England. Peter Early came to Georgia in 1795 or 6 from Virginia, one of those who emigrated from with great numbers from Maryland and Virginia. Matthew Talbot, my mother's kinsman, and a lineal descendant of Capt. Matthew Talbot, distinguished in Revolutionary war, was born in Virginia and moved to Georgia in 1785. Governors Clark and Rabun came from upper North Carolina. Gov. Troup was a native Georgian, elected in 1823. Forsyth was a Virginian, also Wilson Lumpkin, born in 1783. Wm. Schley, elected in 1835, was a native of Maryland. Afterwards native-born governors were the rule and not the exception in the gubernatorial chair of Georgia. Rev. Hope Hull was born in Maryland, Rev. Henry Holcombe was born in Virginia, two very great leaders in Methodist and Baptist organizations in primitive Georgia days. Colonel Wm. Few was born in Baltimore county, Maryland, in 1748, a magnificent Indian fighter in Georgia. He was United States Senator from Georgia in 1793. Governor Matthew Talbot filled the office of Governor with credit to himself and to the family. My maternal grandmother was Lucy Talbot with a direct line to Capt. Matthew Talbot of Virginia and a kinswoman of Governor Talbot who settled in Wilkes county in 1785, afterwards removing to Oglethorpe county in Georgia. In White's miscellainies it is recorded “He died on 17th Sept., 1827, aged 60 years, leaving behind him the character of an honest and patriotic citizen.” In “Men of Mark,” compiled by ex-Gov. Northen, we hear more of Gov. Talbot. The State of Georgia fitly perpetuated his memory by naming one of her counties for him. I remember hearing Hon. Alexander Stephens speak of the lofty integrity of Matthew Talbot, as one of Georgia's most patriotic citizens.

My maternal grandfather was Thomas Swift, a member of one of Georgia's very excellent families that settled in Morgan county after the Revolution. My grandfather was the eldest of four brothers, and married Lucy Talbot near the year 1810. His father was a planter and slave owner, and tradition has it that the Swifts and Talbots emigrated from Virginia after the Revolutionary war and obtained lands on Sandy creek in Morgan county, which their descendants owned for at least a hundred years. The next brother was Dr. Elias Swift who married a sister of Major Taylor, of Athens, Ga., who was a practicing physician and died in Madison, Ga., when a young man. The succeeding brother, Dr. John Swift, married in early life a sister of Messrs. John and Stewart Floyd, of Newton county. She died, leaving two children, one of them the late Mr. E. S. Swift, of Columbus, who has surviving children. Dr. John Swift was married the second time to Miss Mary Ann Harris, a sister of Hon Y. L. G. Harris, one of Georgia's noted philanthropists. She became the mother of a large family of children, being left a widow when the most of them were small. Mrs. Mary Ann Swift lived to be nearly one hundred years old. Mr. William Augustine Swift married a Miss Keller, of Abbeville, South Carolina, and two of his sons, Thomas and John, are still living in Elbert county, while the aged widow is nearing the century mile stone and is still a very remarkable woman of the olden time. This longevity is worth mentioning as in striking contrast to the fragility of more modern women. There were two sisters of this early Swift family, Mrs. Mary Darden and Mrs. Bethenia Lewis, who also raised large families.

My Maryland grandmother died several years before I was born, so it was my Georgia grandmother, Mrs. Lucy Talbot Swift, around whom my early recollections cluster and are well remembered up to this good time. I was often at her home (which she inherited, and was her father's early residence) and I was a close observer of her housekeeping methods and of her abounding hospitality. The mother of eleven children, all reaching maturity, except two that lived to eleven and twelve years, her industry, her management and her executive ability in caring for and carrying on her household affairs are still wonderful memories, and have continually lingered with me as examples in the progress of my own extended life. It was a fine specimen of a Southern planter's family and home in ante-bellum times. Grandfather had a plantation, a grain mill and saw mill, which kept him busy with his own duties as a provider, but it was grandmother's skill as a home-maker, with an eye single to her domestic duties and diligent attention to home economies, that impressed me most in that early time of my life when I trotted around after her as she went from the dwelling to the garden, and to the milk dairy, to the poultry house, to the loom house, to the big meat house, where rations were issued once a day, and to the flour and meal house where there was always a superabundance of supplies for white and colored. She had fowls of all domestic kinds to look after and there were fattening pigs in the pen also. She had geese to raise feathers for the family beds, because there were no mattresses in that early time. When one of the children married there was a substantial outfit prepared to set them up for limited housekeeping. There were no such things as “comforts” eighty years ago, but quilt making was never interrupted, winter or summer, and in early Georgia homes woolen “coverlids” woven at home, and quilts innumerable, made by hand, were the bed coverings in all such well-to-do Georgia homes. I distinctly remember that my own mother made and quilted with her own nimble fingers, fifty good, serviceable and good looking quilts in the first ten years of her married life. In that early time, before there was a railroad in Georgia, our own home became a regular stopping place for travelers and there was urgent need for beds that could meet the demand when people traveled from Savannah and regions lower down south even to Nashville, Tenn., going north, and after stage coaches were set going the coach expense was so great at ten cents a mile, that the bulk of the travel was still made in carriages, carts, gigs and on horseback. In event of stormy weather these travelers were often detained at our house. Sometimes floods in rivers and washed-out roads intercepted travel. All mules and horses and hogs brought into the state were driven from Kentucky and Tennessee, as there was no railroad in Georgia to furnish markets in southeastern Georgia. When my grandmother, Lucy Swift, began housekeeping, wool and flax were the dependence of housekeepers for clothing their families. Silk culture was exploited in Gen. Oglethorpe's time, but the use of cotton was handicapped. Before there were any cotton gins the cotton lint was picked from the seed by human fingers. The lint was then carded by hand, spun on home made wheels, then reeled into what were called “hanks,” by use of home-made reels, then the warp was prepared for the home-made loom, by a variety of processes, all tedious and slow and all the work done by the house mother and her helpers. The thread was “sized” with a thin corn meal mush, then rolled on to home-made corn-cob spools from these stiffened “hanks,” then the spools were carefully placed and manipulated on warping bars, then rolled on the beam of the loom, then drawn thread by thread into the “harness,” keeping exact count of each thread, one to go up and another to go down when the treadles were moved by the weaver's foot, then carefully pulled through what was called a “sley,” fashioned from canes gathered in swamps. After all this was performed the soft spun thread for “filling” was carefully transferred to small spools that were fitted into “shuttles.” The warp being thus made ready for the weaver's shuttle, the process of cloth making was nearly accomplished, so the weaver pressed one treadle with her right foot and rushed the shuttle through, then pressing the other treadle with her other foot, she again dashed the shuttle back again, each time beating up the “filling” by fierce muscular strength in her arms. In this slow, tedious, intricate and nerve-racking and painstaking way all the wearing apparel of the masses was constructed. Well-to-do men generally contrived to get a broadcloth coat, maybe once in a lifetime. The rest had coats of plain jeans. Silk dresses were scarce and with scanty lengths and they were only worn occasionally, at weddings or brilliant occasions. A “Leghorn bonnet” would last a woman a lifetime, and kid slippers were the fashionable and expensive footwear of the belles of the period. The shoe problem was an immense proposition and the hides were generally tanned in dugout troughs, stretched out, dressed and dried at home. The traveling shoemaker made periodic visits and one pair of shoes per annum was considered a liberal provision for grown-ups. Suffice to say the children as a rule all went barefooted summer and winter, and how remarkable they were for good health and lusty frame, and their longevity was astonishing. And this perplexing shoe-making problem lasted a long time. I recall with vivid memory the first time the family shoe-maker measured my feet for a pair of shoes. He brought along a piece of white pine board, and I stood flat-footed on the board, while he marked a line in front of my toes with his big coarse horn-handled knife. Then he marked another line behind my heel and cautioned me that I must not draw my toes together or try to crumple up the bottom of my foot. I felt quite a somebody when the new shoes came home and I had liberty to lay aside the red-morocco baby shoes to which I had been accustomed. Stumped toes in summer and cracked heels in winter were always in evidence with pupils during my school days, when the country child had a log cabin for a school room and “puncheon” benches for seats, and the farmer boys and girls of the rural neighborhood wore coarse home-fashioned clothes spun and woven in looms at home. Towels, table cloths and shirts were made in the same slow way, and even the “best-fixed” families were glad to use “thrums” for towels and soft soap in a gourd to wash hands, and the family had a shelf for the wash basin outside for young and old.

In the rough, country-made looms, the last ends of the warp were cut loose and the warp made slack and thin, so these rough sleazy lengths were only good for towels and wash clothes. The old timers called them “thrums,” and the modern factories call them “mill ends.” All the men's wear was woven at home, coats and pants, and the wool was grown on the farms and picked of cockelburrs by hand, spun and woven just as cotton and flax cloth was fashioned. Men's socks were home knitted of woolen thread (they generally went sockless in summer) and overcoats were an unknown quantity. Grandfather Swift owned and wore a blue camlet cloak, with a cape on it. It was a family treasure, perhaps it was an heirloom. Grandmother owned a woolen shawl made up North. In cold weather the women folk used the shawl if they had to go on an outside trip. But the homespun clothes were warm and enduring. My mother and grandmother had “bed-gowns,” short affairs when I was a child, and the young women had chemises and bare arms for nightly repose. Home-made sun bonnets were always in evidence. A pretty white complexion was the call of that period. The young women were emphatic on this line. They were constantly busy, often with cloth making work, but they were scrupulous in care of the skin. They wore gloves for washing dishes or when washing clothes. “Tomboy” girls were sometimes encountered, but the belles of Georgia enjoyed beautiful complexions. They also laced very tight, and it was fashionable to faint on occasions. Weddings were sumptuous affairs. When my mother married there was a crowded wedding at night and three more days of festivities, with a different dress for each day. “Infairs” were popular, where the wedding spreads were transferred to the groom's home. Everything good to eat was bountifully furnished, meats in abundance, all sorts of home collections and concoctions topped off with pound-cake and syllabub. There was always a sideboard where gin, rum and peach brandy held distinction. Loaf sugar brought from Charleston and Augusta by wagons was uniformly present. I can remember with accurate recollection those beautiful snowy cones of white sugar encased in thick bluish-green papers, that were always in request when company came, and the sideboard drinks were set forth in generous array. “Peach and honey” was in reach of everybody that prided in their home. Those primitive farmers had abounding peach orchards and bee-hives were generally in evidence more or less on Georgia farms. Everything to eat and to wear that could be grown at home was diligently cultivated and the early fortunes of Georgians were promoted by such thrift, economy and conservation of resources. In the summer time the drying of fruit was diligently pursued, and it was a poor and thriftless domicile which failed to supply itself with dried peaches, apples, cherries, pears, etc. My careful grandmother put up bushels of dried white English peaches of which she often made family preserves for home consumption in the scarcer spring-time. In this present emergency of war strenuosity the remembrance of those affluent households with always something good to cook inside, and no stint anywhere in big-house or negro cabin, appeals to me with most suggestive force. The present generation lives in paper sack supplies. They buy everything in paper sacks, from a goober-pea to a small sack of meal, when everybody knows the soil will yield a superabundance of good eatables if it is only “tickled with a hoe.” I plead guilty. I am now buying peaches (July) at thirty cents a dozen, when I might be handling the fruit from that many peach trees planted on my own waste ground and with a minimum of expense in the care of them.

My grandmother made all the starch she used, sometimes from whole wheat, oftener from wheat bran Her seven girls, big and little, delighted in dainty white muslin frocks, and laundry work for thirteen in family was always going on, and insistent in that large household. She was a rare soap maker and every pound was prepared at home with diligent care. The meat scraps and bones were utilized and cooked with lye, drained in ash-hoppers. It made perfect soap for domestic uses. Hard soap was prepared for the big house in various ways, tempered with age and used by young and old alike. For wounds and baby usage there could be bought Castile soap, but the soaps of the multitudes were prepared at home. Except salt, iron, sugar and coffee, everything was raised by those early Georgia planters necessary for human comfort and sustenance. Coffee was scarce and high, sometimes a Sunday morning luxury, and brown sugar was generally used, the exception being the beautiful loaf sugar brought from the North. The family loom was kept going from Monday morning until Saturday night. My grandmother's home was a two-story frame dwelling also with a brick basement, largely above ground. In that brick basement there were three spacious rooms. The principal room was used for the family meals, with capacious fireplace and safes stationed around the wall. In these safes or cupboards there was storage room for all sorts of domestic supplies. The middle room was the “loom room,” the third was the kitchen, with wide hearth, cranes in the chimney for hanging pots and kettles. (I never saw a cook stove until I was grown) These rooms had brick floors and were well ventilated. My grandmother had an easy chair in the dining room and the coffee and tea were made under her direction. She supervised the cooking in her kitchen and that cloth-making business went on exactly where she could overlook it. The colored women were always busy and likewise the mistress. The daughters were taught to spin and weave, to knit and sew, and to overlook the dairy, etc., as the mother directed. There was plenty of work for all because a large slave family had to be clothed from that busy loom, and the cloth was to be cut out and made into garments as soon as woven, and that large house was to be kept in “apple-pie order.”

And the abounding hospitality! My grandfather was a deacon in the Baptist church at Sandy Creek church and the Saturday and Sunday meeting days always brought friends and neighbors for at least one meal, many to spend the night. My mother said it looked like a camp meeting when the kinspeople, the neighbors, the beaux and girl friends alighted from their horses and the crowd collected in the house. Servants carried the riding saddles into the harness room in the barn yard. The daughters prepared the Saturday big dinner while grandmother went to conference meeting. On Sunday grandmother supervised the big Sunday dinner and the girls mounted the riding horses, wore their best dresses, and went to church, and, as was the custom of the time, there was a lot of courting going on when the beaux rode home with the girls they were inclined to marry. It would take the genius of a Judge Longstreet to faithfully picture what took place on these big meeting days, after the congregation vacated the meeting house. Sometimes an unlucky swain would find himself “cut out” as a shrewd fellow would often mount his own horse and watch his rival as he led the young lady to the horse block to mount her steed, and before the latter could untie his nag and start the shrewd fellow was cantering off with the girl. In some old books that I read with delight in the long ago, it was told how the young swain would hold out his hand, the beautiful girl would place her left foot in his hand and he would swing her up to the saddle with a skilful use of his muscular strength. That was not the early Georgia style in the up country. There were always horseblocks prepared for use at church and at home and at country stores to mount from, and it accorded likewise with the modesty of the girls and the timidity of the boys. Every woman who rode horseback had a riding skirt made of substantial home weaving with a belt, but open to the hem. These riding skirts protected the dresses and were in universal use when my mother and grandmother were young. After I came along, also a horseback rider until I was seventy years old, I owned once or twice a riding habit, but I had my early training with my mother's riding skirt and side saddle. I began to ride at six years old and one of the proudest days of my life came along when my father slackened his firm hold on my pony's bridle and let me go alone to manage for myself. To this delightful and frequent horseback exercise I attribute much of the vigor of my later life. It is essentially a delicate woman's opportunity for healthful recreation and it never lost its charm for me even when I became a grandmother, for I could canter over the fields and farm lands with perfect freedom, assured of my ability to manage my horse. I always had some sort of a horse to ride up to old age.

This universal use of horses for men and women contributed very greatly to the raising of fine stock in the early days of Georgia, and Kentucky furnished droves of them to supply any lack at home. My father prepared barns and lots for such horse drovers and they were sometimes detained for days by high water at our house. During one long period of detention, the drover ran short of funds and the horses were “eating their heads off.” When starting time came he led out a fine pony-built horse and told my father he would give him the horse for his feed bill. Pointing to my small self he said, “pony will be a treasure for your little girl. He has sense like folks, and is as gentle as they are made.” So I came into ownership of dear old Pony at a very early age. Everybody could ride him in the family, including children. The negro boys learned to plow with him and he was the dependence for going to mill, with a sack of corn on his back for more than a dozen years. When I married he was still in fine appearance and doing good service, and one of the most beloved appurtenances of the family home. We owned also a twin pair of “claybank” horses at one time, a perfect match, named Pompey and Caesar, in my early girlhood days. Hitched to a barouche they sped along in famous style, flinging white manes and tails to the breeze, and it was perfectly delightful to me to see my father and mother, mounted on the “claybanks” for a horseback ride, and both were good riders in their early prime and dearly loved the sport.

We had singing schools in our section seventy-five years ago, about the time I could be trusted to ride Pony and hold my own in a merry crowd of youngsters. It was three miles from our home to Macedonia meeting house where the whole neighborhood gathered for education in old fashioned round and square note books, and where we closed the exercises by marching around and singing, old and young, to the bent of our inclinations. We traveled along a leafy road, crossed two or three clear branches, and occasionally the big girls and boys raced their horses. This racing woke up in Pony's brain a remembrance of his “Old Kentucky Home.” Whenever I saw him lay back his shapely ears and arch his proud neck I always clutched the horn of the saddle to hold on. The race was all right for the rider and pony were in full accord in a frolic of that sort.

In the long ago the “stars fell.” My mother saw the falling. She often told me of it. Uncle William, the oldest of Grandmother's children, was to be married in November, 1833, to Miss Elizabeth Furlow. The preparation was immense in the Swift family, getting ready for the “infair.” My mother, as eldest daughter, was the mainstay of her mother and they were working far into the night with some sewing for the children of that large family. There were blazing fires in the living room and candles on the sewing table. Going out on the back porch between midnight and day, for some wood to replenish the fire, my mother saw the “falling stars.” The negroes down at the quarter also witnessed the wonderful sight. They rushed to the big house in a panic of fear as “the world was coming to an end.” Soon everybody was up and wondering what would come next. Grandfather went out on the back porch and then discovered that no star ever rested on the ground. The star disappeared and its light went out, when it reached the dirt. He therefore quieted the frightened people but all hung about the big house until daylight came. Uncle William got married all right and raised a large and splendid family of children in Houston county. Charley Northen was the oldest grandson in that delightful household, late clerk of the Georgia Senate for a long term of years. Another of the Furlows married my mother's sister, Harriet, and Hon. Charles Furlow, their father, married, as his second wife, my Aunt Maria Latimer, born in Maryland, and my mother married Maria's brother, Charles, my father. All these weddings and infairs came along in rapid succession. Matrimony, like the measles, is undoubtedly catching, and Grandmother must have had a strenuous time of it, in getting feather beds, quilts, bed linen, china and silver spoons for the newly wed, as their lawful marriage portion. Grandfather, with lofty impartiality set down in a book what he gave as a marriage portion to each of his children, and my mother was fond of telling us, how rich she felt when he made his first visit to her, bringing a set of mahogany furniture, the household effects before noted, along with an excellent servant woman and a fine saddle horse. When I arrived on the stage of action, Agnes, the servant woman, was ready to nurse and love the little new comer, which strong affection remained intact as long as she lived. En passant. I own two of those early silver teaspoons that were in use for my comfort eighty-two years ago, also two tablespoons, part of a set given by my father to his bride, with their united initials engraved thereon. In those days there was not much to be bought but whatever was purchased was sterling and lasting. I remember well the china plates. In the centre was painted a lovely pink rose also a delicate border. When I was uncommonly good I had my molasses on one of these precious plates, and as I sopped my biscuit across I contrived to get a continuous good look at the centre rose until the lunch was concluded. My education in art, although very limited, was early begun.

It required a day and a half to make the annual journey by gig or barouche to Grandmother's house, one night of lodging to be secured on the trip. I might go to California or Europe nowadays with fewer thrills and expectations, and a globe trotter might envy the delight that pervaded my soul when we came in sight of the dear Grandmother's home, and when the aunties snatched me to themselves and kissed and petted me to my heart's content. Blessed are the grandchildren that can go on such annual journeys and revel as I did in such pure affection. My Uncle John, who made his home with us for various years, carried me along to his wedding with Miss Elizabeth Paxton, when I was but a tot, and from the wedding we made a bridal tour to see the grandparents. With the “claybanks” in fine mettle and my Sunday best in wearing and with my extra promotion as a wedding attendant, I certainly was in ecstasy. When we arrived at our journey's end and saw the kinnery swarm out from piazzas and Grandmother from the basement, with her cap strings flying, and I could so easily connect her with the good things to eat that were awaiting our arrival.

There was in Grandmother's big, clean yard, a small structure, a little house, mounted on long legs. It was called the “milk dairy,” and butter and milk were kept therein for immediate use. Besides the milk and butter ready for the table supply, there were pies and cakes that could be handed out to little folks when they were hungry. This milk dairy was stationed under an enormous white oak tree, which afforded a dense and delightful shade in summer time. There was also a long bench nearby where little folks might sit and enjoy a bowl of bread and milk before sleepy-time came along. Oh! The delights of that old-fashioned milk dairy. And the odor of those pies and cakes still visits me in memory. It has hardly been a year ago since Rev. G. A. Nunnally, of Rome, an octogenarian like myself, lately deceased, and who was grandmother's nephew (sister's child) said to me: “Do you ever forget the wonderful goodies that Aunt Lucy could hand out from that milk dairy when we sat on the bench in that cool, clean-swept yard, when we were little people?” Nor do I ever forget those wonderful beaten biscuits that I ate for breakfast along with rich red ham gravy, or the dinner-time experience with a plateful of chicken and dumplings, and also a generous slice of pot peach pie, smothered with cream and sugar. And can I ever forget those enticing plum orchards where we young ones were prone to linger until my frock would be so tight in the belt that I could hardly stand it. When I see children of the present time racing to the soft-drink store, with every nickel they possess, and cramming on the painted candy until they destroy their digestion, I wish they could see what children had to eat nearly a hundred years ago in such abundance and such truly pure foodstuff. And the watermelon time beggars description. Wagon loads found their way into a dark, cool cellar and all that were not O. K. went to the pigpen when everybody had liberty, black and white, to cut and eat until satisfied so long as the crop lasted. There were no selling places for such superabundance and if any neighbors failed in such crops the way was clear to participate without stint with the lucky ones. Home-grown wheat, home-raised meat, home-pressed lard, the whitest corn selected for meal, poultry abundant and fresh eggs collected every day, and milk, cool and sweet, with cakes of yellow sweet butter and plenty of colored help to cook it all and serve it, and partake bountifully on what was left over. I honestly believe that Georgia farmers were the best fed people on the globe in our ante-bellum days. All owing to industry and thrift.

Large families were the rule, visiting was constant, and in times of festivity or bereavement, there were crowds of willing helpers to laugh with the happy or weep with the suffering ones. When my mother was quite small she soon became expert with a needle, and she remembered going with grandmother to neighbor Gov. Wilson Lumpkin's home to a “family sewing.” She sat in a high chair near a table and “backstitched” a seam in a pair of men's breeches on that occasion and I thought it was fine when I could sit in my low chair and “backstitch” seams in a pair of breeches for Uncle Dave who was our faithful colored family fire-maker. I never saw a sewing machine until I was full grown and twenty one, but there was no lack of dainty finger work in those early homes. There is a revival of this fine hand-sewing in later days and it is good fortune to find somebody with ancient experience to show what our ante-bellum women could do on this line. Homespun dresses were not to be despised by any means. Carefully spun and woven with indigo dyes and turkey red to form a pattern, they made admirable dress materials, washed well and endured mightily. Just think however of the toil that went with their home manufacture when the cotton had to be handpicked from the seed and every thread, warp and filling spun by willing and painstaking hands. What energy, persistence and fortitude. When my grandmother's brood of eleven circled around the big open fireplace in the evening, knitting work in hand, she understood without doubt, that she must rise early and work late, start before daylight and endure until after dark to put clothes on them and keep them with changes and well-fed for their health's sake. If cotton mills and factories were blotted out today is there sufficient fortitude, energy and persistence in the present generation to conquer a similar task?

Grandmother raised her brood in credit with genteel manners and fine reputation and her grandchildren have sung her praises and paid glowing tribute to her industry and fidelity. None of us are clamoring for a return to the hard work and unremitting effort to make cloth by hand or do sewing with fingers or cook meals on open hearths in hot fireplaces, but I hope the day will never dawn that succeeding generations shall fail to applaud the vigorous self-sacrificing and unfailing industry of their forbears. Now-a-days there is a mania for spending. In those earlier days there was a well-formed habit of saving. Therein lies the difference between the new and the old. In the present generation we tear down spacious, convenient and comfortable church buildings and replace them with palatial edifices partaking of cathedral appearance. The struggle to compass big salaries for the pastorate has advanced into strenuosity. The meek and lowly feature has entirely vanished and unless our modern congregations are out on dress parade the mass of the people remain at home on Sundays to read the daily papers or go on an auto ride to the most attractive nearby town or city for Sabbath diversion. My mind reaches back to the old-time country meeting houses where there were religious services not oftener than once a month. Everybody was anxious to go. It was a great time with children, negro nurses and dogs. There was always a spring of good water close about. The mothers provided biscuit and teacakes for their hungry tribes. A quilt or shawl was spread on the church floor, the babies that could sit alone were thus made comfortable, and the preacher was in no wise disturbed by their various activities when the little pitcher of fresh water was brought in and the young ones were duly watered. I remember these things with accuracy because I own the quaint little pitcher that Nurse Agnes carried along for my use and comfort, and it represents nothing similar in modern ware as to shape and coloring. It may be more than a hundred years old. I can vouch for more than eighty years myself. The women occupied one half of the building. The men and larger boys kept to their own side of the house. And the preacher was a discourser. He got but little as to pay and he expected little, but he omitted nothing as to creed and doctrine to explain his views to the congregation. Hard Shell Baptists had a large following in Middle Georgia a hundred years ago. I have seen a number of foot washings and I have always queried as to why the Saviour's attitude towards the washing of His disciples' feet should have been abandoned by any Christian organization. If His command as to sacrament administration is imperative it seems to me that foot washing is likewise an imperative example.

Some will ask about the preacher's pay in those early times? I remember well what was told by Capt. Felton, my husband's father, speaking on this particular line of church work sixty odd years ago. There was never, he said, a discussion, as there was no salary. At one time in the history of Oglethorpe county where his father had settled (and had removed from North Carolina, at the close of the Revolutionary war) there was however something said on a certain meeting day as to some tangible remuneration for the minister's services. Being as before said a delicate subject, there was considerable hesitation until a brother who could tan leather quite satisfactorily from cattle hides, rose up and contributed a pair of shoe soles, and another neighbor who was also skilful as a tanner, matched the proposition by offering the uppers for the preacher's footwear. There the question halted for a spell until the best shoemaker in the neighborhood agreed to get the preacher's measure and would proceed to make the shoes on the first day when it was too wet to plow. “And you young ones needn't smile,” said the Captain, who was a veteran of the war of 1812, “for a man who owned such a reliable pair of shoes as preacher ---- was given was very happy in such possession.” It is a good place to set down the fact that Capt. Felton was in the famous Indian battle of “Chalibbee” when he was commanding Oglethorpe county troops, serving under Gen. John Floyd. After a six-months campaign on the frontiers of western Georgia, helping to build Fort Hawkins at Macon, they went forward by regular marches until there was a line of forts and block houses extending from the Ocmulgee to the Alabama river. There was a Fort Mitchell erected on the right bank of the Chattahoochee river and where Antossee battle was fought, where the crafty Indians inflicted heavy loss on Georgia troops.

The battle of Chalibbee was begun before daybreak and in White's Miscellainies you will find that the Indian surprise did not affect these brave Georgians, not a platoon faltered and Gen. Floyd made a valiant charge after daylight and won the battle. Capt Felton lived to be 80 years old and despite his military services in 1812 and heavy losses in Civil War, he declined to ask for a pension. He said “pensions should be for those who were maimed or wounded in service, that every man owed duties to his country in time of war or peace. Those who were spared in life and limb were fortunate and should not be a burden on the community.” According to this creed and practice, he refused to apply for a pension. His survivors are in possession of a little cow-leather traveling trunk that he could strap on the rear of his saddle by aid of iron rings and in which he carried a six months outfit for heavy and exhausting army service, exposed to Indian attacks day and night all the time he was absent. He had a change of underclothing, a pair of extra socks, some writing materials, and his razor in this small military outfit. One suit of good, strong, homemade jeans carried him through and he made no complaint as to finding himself in service to his country more than a hundred years ago. And he was an officer, better equipped and mounted than the privates.

In his early time there were no banks or safety vaults for depositing money. Salt was one of the main articles of domestic use, and he and his wife kept an open salt barrel in the kitchen. Black and white dipped out salt, as needed for cooking, saving meat and for salting horses and cattle. This salt barrel constructed of a hollow poplar log with a well-fitted bottom, was always kept half full of salt or over. Silver money was the favorite coin of the period. Down at the bottom of the salt barrel the early Felton's kept their silver money in a sack, and although they were accustomed to make journeys to South Carolina and eastern Georgia, they also made a safe-deposit box still safer by emptying a fresh sack of salt on top of what was still in the kitchen barrel as a preparation for leaving home. No thief or burglar ever thought of finding money in a place that was never locked and covered with salt. There were no banks in those days.

I wish I could remember all he told of the early settlers of Oglethorpe county, formerly Wilkes. He was familiar with his near neighbors, the Lumpkins, and Gov. Gilmer, Rev. George Lumpkin was his pastor at Beaverdam church and he occasionally came to see us in Cass county, now Bartow, when preacher and Captain were old men. After I married into the Felton family I gathered a lot of information as to the way Georgia pioneers lived from such reminiscences. One of the stories that delighted me was their recollections of some famous race horses that were trained and raced at Lexington, Ga. These were four-mile heats and sixteen miles to run to be declared the winner. As I recollect Col. Wade Hampton's medium-sized gray mare was the best racer of that early time. Money was staked by men from a number of different states, and crowds attended from all eastern Georgia.

Augusta was the great market place a hundred years ago. Cotton and wheat were waggoned long distances to be sold in Augusta. It required about five days steady driving from Lexington with strong teams to make the round trip to Augusta. The neighbors managed to go in large companies, camping out, with a supply of cooked victuals already prepared. After the produce was sold, salt, sugar and iron were purchased for the return trip. Store goods were bought in limited quantities for the women at home with an occasional bonnet and slippers. Calico was scarcer than silk velvet at the present time, and the stuff which was laid in for a coming baby's Sunday frock was called Leno, a medium white cloth, lighter than bleached domestic and heavier than plain white lawn. We preserved such a baby frock as an heir-loom made for Dr. W. H. Felton in 1823 (who died not long before he was eighty-seven). A queer little frock, low necked and with long sleeves and it ranked as something extra for quality when it was completed, about a half yard in length with a two-inch ruffle at the bottom. But it differed greatly from the cloth made in the home looms, where the cotton seed were picked out by hand before the thread was spun or woven. Everything a grown man wore as before stated was prepared at home from the cotton in the seed and the wool on the sheep's back down to the knitted suspenders and fingerless mittens.

Nutmegs with other spices were hunted for in Augusta, brown sugar and black molasses were in demand. There were small stores in little towns and some creditable country stores also. My father had a country store where he sold pins and needles, lute string ribbon and prunella shoes on one counter and dealt out thick black molasses and kit mackerel within ten feet of the millinery. Can I ever forget the day when my Uncle John who had adventured to Charleston to buy goods and returned with a wax doll and how I could not be parted from it and how I slept with it, ate with it in my arms and finally wrecked it by going to sleep before a great log heap fire in the living room and where the heat melted its head and spoiled its beauty for all time? Anything so rarely beautiful had never crossed my experience before. I have often wondered as to how the nude red Indians felt to see white people in accustomed dress for the first time. The change from my clumsy rag dolls to the Charleston beauty with real curls and blue eyes must have produced somewhat similar effects on the small Georgia cracker who had never seen a bought doll before in her four years of mortal life.

We had for small silver change thrips and seven pences, value 6 1-4 cents and 12 1-2. I had a few of each that were my very own and I would have given all I was worth for a recipe to restore my doll's pristine loveliness.

In these country stores there was large traffic in cotton and woolen hand cards, and joy without measure when cotton factories were built in Georgia and “spun thread” could be bought for the warp, because homespun warp was not easy to manage by inexpert weavers. It needed harder twist and stronger thread for warp uses, while the filling could be spun softer and with less care. We have preserved some of the store accounts of the early period. Indigo, madder, turkey red and copperas were staple goods for dye purposes and the housewives of early Georgia history went to meeting (church services) with every finger nail as blue as indigo mud would paint them. It was considered a badge of efficiency, experience and culture in cloth making. The wool dyes, made women's hands almost black with logwood and walnut leaves. Men's summer working breeches were copperas dyed and those plain men-folk were as yellow legged as our choicest breeds of chickens.

Among the Felton neighbors a hundred years ago was a farmer and his industrious wife who spun and wove all their wearing apparel and who had manufactured enough cloth to provide her husband with two strong, good shirts. When he returned at night from the hot corn and cotton plowing and his shirt was wet with prespiration she had always a clean, dry garment ready for she did a bit of laundry work as regularly as she washed and dried her breakfast dishes and this good woman's fame has followed her down as an extraordinary manager and capable married woman. I was impressed as to her super-excellence, because the family washing in such plain homes was done once in seven days as a rule and where children were numerous they might take off their one garment and sit in their skin on hot days until a clean shirt or frock was ready for use. In the olden times farmer boys of eight, ten, even twelve years, were provided with a summer shirt of extra length (perhaps the pattern has been retained for men's night shirts) and the youngsters had nothing to hinder their agility in athletic sports. It would be refreshing to find a chronicle of the self-made distinguished men of early Georgia who were glad to own and wear these one-piece, home-made suits when cloth was scarce and hard-work in the field a necessity for family subsistence.

In those early days the children said “Dad” and “Mam” and as history repeats itself the petted child of 1917 is happy to call his well-groomed father “daddy.” Fifty years ago it was a mark of very common raising to say daddy and mammy. Virginia and North Carolina children said “Paw and Maw.” The Hugenot or French strains said Pere and Mere, while another breed of folks in upper Georgia said “Pap and Mam.” The most of well-raised folks said Par and Mar.

But the folk raised in that early period of Georgia's history were brought up to wait on their elders and reverence for the aged was the habit inculcated early in their childhood. Old people then and now were apt to be garrulous and sometimes tiresome with their advice and platitudes, but the neglect of aged grandparents, common in many sections today, was of rare occurrence in the homes of the pioneers of our Southern country.

The first wedding I ever attended was in 1840. My baby sister had very lately arrived, but the good neighbors insisted that my father and myself (barely five years old) should be there. Black Mammy had me in charge, also the brass candlesticks and silver spoons that were loaned for the big gathering. Mammy belonged to the F. F. V. colored, in old Virginia. She always fixed her head dress turban shape with a big white neckerchief around her neck and shoulders and a big white apron about her capacious self. Mammy was an expert on big table arrangements. There was a girl in the neighbor's family with whom I had slight acquaintance but the wedding festivities accelerated our friendship. I saw the bride and groom walk out to be married and the latter had been so unfortunate as to split his big toe with an awkward axe, so his unlucky foot was outside the upper part of his shoe in a white store stocking. The rest of the time I devoted to seeing the people eat, tablefulls giving way to new comers as fast as they could be served. My new girl friend agreed with me that it was tedious waiting. Finally she made her way between crowds and found that a quantity of plates had been emptied into a capacious tin pan under a side table. I questioned the advisability of going under that table cloth and helping ourselves as one pig helps another. I did go, and I did partake, and when I was missing it was black Mammy who discovered the lost child in her ignoble plight. Time has never quite erased the feeling that possessed me when my escapade was narrated at my mother's bedside on our return. To start out as I had done with my best bib and tucker, traveling in fine style with a pair of matched horses and a driver, with the comfortable feeling that I was going to a big wedding, and then to be brought home in some sort of disgrace, because I ate under a table, out of a scrap bucket, with all the indignation that Mammy was capable of expressing by words and looks and gestures, I was given a lesson as to table manners and wedding feasts that always remained with me. So far as I know nobody but Mammy ever suffered stifling mortification about it, nevertheless the memory of it has lasted nearly fourscore years with the delinquent.