Georgia's Frontier Women: Female Fortunes in a Southern Colony

Chapter Four. Immigration and Settlement

CHAPTER FOUR Immigration and Settlement ^ ^ ^ In 1752the dwindling number oftrustees surrendered their charter of government for the colony of Georgia to the king after twenty years of failing to stimulate substantial demographic or economic growth in the province. Once again utopianism had proved to be an inept midwife for the birth of a British American colony. Prohibitions on landholding and slavery had undermined the kinds of economic incentives that stimulated migration to the Chesapeake in its early years. The social, gender, and age composition of the Georgia settlers had hampered the kind of rapid population growth that the colonies of New England attained in their early evolution. In particular, the lack of young marriageable women or young married couples seriously damaged Georgia's demographic potential—explaining to some extent the inclination to abandon settlements such as Frederica or leave the province altogether. Just as military threat, economic prohibitions, imbalances in the age structure, high mortality levels, and land and community abandonment served as disincentives to colonization in the 17305 and 17408, so the reversal of many of these factors in the decades that followed prompted a considerable change in the colony's fortunes. The removal of the trustees and their sanctions changed the pattern of settlement of Georgiapermanently, although many oftheir measures (such as forbidding the use of imported slaves) had already begun crumbling into disregard.l The sudden influx of thousands of planters, their families, and their bound labor force heralded an era oftremendous growth, the population reaching about thirty thousand by 1775.2 No longer a struggling European experiment in these years under direct royal government, Georgiawould adopt the outlook of South Carolina and the West Indies, and would rapidly integrate into the larger southern economy. Naturally, the transition from trusteeship administration to royal government wasalittle messy.It wasinfluenced bythe opportunism ofsettlers, the personalities of newly arrived governors, and the mandates of the Board of Trade (formally, the Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations), a body appointed by the commission of the Crown since 1696 to oversee the direction of colonial business and that now issued directives directly to Georgia in place ofthe trustees .3 Within twenty years or so the province became intricately connected to 95 96 • CHAPTER FOUR Table 2. Royal Governors' Estimates of Georgia Population Whites Blacks Total 1756 4,500 1,855 6,355 1760 6,000 3,578 9,578 1761 6,100 3,600 9,700 1762 6,800 4,500 11,300 1766 9,900 7,800 17,700 1773 18,000 15,000 33,000 Sources: CoLRec., 26:415 (President Graham); 27:104 (Governor Reynolds);28:pt. i, 44,178 (Governor Ellis); 28:pt. i, 309 (Governor Wright); 28:pt. 2,185 (Governor Wright); Col.Rec., 37:141(Governor Wright). Only Gov. James Wright's 1773figure is likely to have been particularly inaccurate. larger movements in the Atlantic world: great wars for empire, mass migration , the slave trade, formation of a distinctive if somewhat indistinguishable backcountry, and ultimately the erosion of British authority in the colonies. As the trustees' blueprint faded, Georgia's development drew upon both the hard-nosed practical experiences of its new immigrants and the equally hardnosed realism ofveteran colonial administrators. Concerns about settling indigent paupers or Protestant refugees disappeared. Imperial administrators were preoccupied instead with securing Indian trade, establishing a constitution and economy that best fitted the needs of empire, and protecting the southern frontier . Georgia mattered not because it was a worthy pursuit in its own right but because it was a vital piece in a much larger puzzle. The Georgia governors and their advisers on the Board of Trade, which had been reinvigoratedin 1748 whenthe dynamic Earl ofHalifax wasappointed asits president, faced something of a dilemma in resolving the most visible problem with the colony—it didn't have enough people. On the one hand, the territory needed populating as quickly and as comprehensively aspossible. The province would prosper economically (through the cultivation of rice, silk, indigo, or livestock herds) only if provided with a large labor base, while it could be defended effectively and inexpensively only if it were guaranteed a large enough militia. But it wasequally critical that the new migrants be governable:occupying surveyed and registered land, divided into administrative parishes or counties , not encroaching upon Creek territory, and ideally paying taxes through a lower-house assembly whose powers would be limited. Governors wanted to avoid the creation of either a bastard offshoot of plantation-dominated South Carolina, which would be...