The Life and Times of Mary Musgrove

Conclusion: Remembering Mary Musgrove

232 Conclusion Remembering Mary Musgrove [Mary] pretended to be descended in a maternal line from an Indian King, who held from nature the territories of the Creeks, and Bosomworth now persuaded her to assert her right to them, as superior not only to that of the Trustees, but also to that of the King. Accordingly Mary immediately assumed the title of an independent empress, disavowing all subjection or allegiance to the King of Great Britain. Alexander Hewatt, 1779 God had placed her there for good, and all her prior movements were but the inner wheels within the circumference of His great designs. . . . Mary became at once a friend of the colony . . . standing as a mediatrix between the pale and the red man. . . . She was the Pocahontas of Georgia. William Bacon Stevens, 1847 All woman part swamp rat half horse . . . . . . The Creeks say Mary came back as Sherman just to see what they’d taken away burned to the ground and returned to her once more. Rayna Green, 1981 Conclusion: Remembering Mary Musgrove · 233 WHile Mary’s deatH elicited no comment from her contemporaries, it is perhaps fitting that the infamous Georgia land case outlived even her. Isaac Levy, still smarting from losing his share of the disputed lands, continued to petition British authorities for a decade following Mary and Thomas’s settlement. Now living in Philadelphia, Levy petitioned the Privy Council three times between 1759 and 1767, asking for financial compensation or title to his “moiety” of the islands. After being brushed off on the first three occasions, Levy submitted a final petition in 1768, and the Privy Council agreed to provide a small sum, far below the amount he requested,as compensation for his past troubles.Levy continued prodding the board of trade for another three years, after which he abandoned his case. It is not known if he was ever aware that Mary had passed away. If nothing else, Levy’s continuing protestations are indicative of the wide-ranging impact that Mary’s case had on people who knew her, and on those who didn’t. Firmly embedded in the collective consciousness of prerevolutionary Georgians, the story of Mary Bosomworth was passed on to later generations, who selectively used bits and pieces of it to create a legendary figure suited to their own needs and ideologies. The Creek Indians, for example, were said to “glory” in her name, recalling that she had“restored peace”between them and the colonists about the time Georgia was founded. While the Creeks viewed her as a peacemaker, most nineteenth-century historians depicted Mary as a traitor to the colony, fixating almost exclusively on her most desperate moments in Savannah in 1749. Still, there were always a few sympathizers who conceded that she had been useful to the Georgia colony in its infancy or imagined her as a symbol of Native beauty and virtue. By the turn of the twentieth century, schoolgirls in Georgia had begun dressing up as Mary Musgrove, and a renewed interest in Georgia’s colonial past paved the way for her eventual rehabilitation. In more recent times, Mary has been celebrated as a pathbreaking feminist, a symbol of Native American pride, and as an entrepreneur . To schoolchildren, Mary is perhaps best known as the“Pocahontas of Georgia,” reflecting her uncanny ability to be all things to all people. • What more, then, is to be said about Mary Musgrove? If the past is any indication of the future, then I think it safe to assume that my words on the subject will not be the last. I’m sure that someday novel theoretical insights will enable historians to see the documents in ways I could not, 234 · The Life and Times of Mary Musgrove and perhaps new archival discoveries will allow us to fill in some missing details. Nevertheless, I am hopeful that this book will have some enduring impact on the lore of Mary Musgrove. At the very least, by systematically investigating the original source material I think I’ve corrected a few errors of fact made by my predecessors. It is also my hope that readers will be able to transcend the narrow question of Mary’s cultural orientation : was she“Creek” or was she“English”? The vague assertion that Mary was a “combination” of the two cultures does not rest well with me, and for that reason I have intentionally refrained from employing terms like...