a net work of steel, or commerce and trade had blackened the skies of
blue, John Hamilton and Tabitha Thweatt were married. There was no
cutting of Dutchess satin or charmeuse draped with shadow lace, for it
took time in those days to prepare for a wedding. Silk worms had to be
raised, thread spun and woven into cloth before the bride's clothes
could be fashioned. Waiting was no bar to happiness; the bride-to-be
sang merrily while spinning or weaving at her loom and as the shuttles
went in and out her day dreams were inter-mingled with the weaving of
her wedding garments.
In the year of our Lord, 1770, the making of silk in the colonies was a
new industry and when Mistress Tabitha decided on silk for her wedding
dress she had to plant mulberry twigs and wait for them to grow. She
had to pick the leaves to feed the worms until they wrapped themselves
in their silken cocoons and as soon as the cocoons would web they were
baked to keep them from cutting the raw silk. It took one hundred
cocoons to make one strand of silk. After all these preparations
this colonial girl's dream of a silken wedding gown grew into a
realization. She not only raised the silk worms, but spun the silk
that they had webbed and wove it into shimmering cloth, from which her
wedding gown was made. She also knit her wedding stockings of silk; but
only one pair of silk went into her trousseau for the rest were knit of
cotton.
The family records say that this couple had no worldly goods except
what their own hands had wrought. They were God-fearing people of the
Puritan type. He felled the trees and sawed them into logs out of which
their home was constructed. The logs that went toward the building of
their home were mortised and pinned together with wooden pegs. The
floors were puncheon flat slabs split from whole tree trunks and the
doors and windows were made of oak and were swung on great wooden
hinges. The chimney was of "stick and dirt" and across the broad fire
place hung the crane from which were suspended the cooking utensils.
John Hamilton was a member of one of Virginia's most distinguished
families. He possessed an iron will that defied adversity; he blazed
the way through his state and was brave enough to "hew down forests
and live on crumbs." Mistress Tabitha was a help-meet to her pioneer
husband. She not only cooked his meals but carried them to him when
he worked in the field. He had the honor, and in those days it was
indeed an honor, to be elected as a representative from his state
to Congress. The frugal and beautiful Tabitha accompanied him to
Washington. Her preparation for the replenishing of her ward-robe was
quite as elaborate as those formerly made for her wedding. With deft
hands she carded from the snowy cotton piles of rolls that were spun
into thread and she wove many yards of cloth from which she made her
underwear. From carefully carded bats of cotton she spun many spindles
of fine smooth thread that was woven into fine cream cotton goods,
some of which were dyed with copperas. Some was spread day and night
on the grass where the dew would fall to bleach it. From the bleached
cotton this industrious woman made her dresses and the snowy whiteness
of some of her gowns was the envy of her neighbors. She also carried
in her little hair trunk to Washington, not only many well made cotton
garments, but was the proud possessor of one black silk dress and
two black silk aprons. The dress was afterward described as being so
heavy that it could "stand alone." Mistress Tabitha, although a little
overworked, was not too weary after reaching Washington to attend the
Presidential ball and dance the minuet with the gallant Washington and
the noted LaFayette.
John and Tabitha Hamilton had eleven children. All were born in
Virginia except one, who came after they moved to Hancock County,
near Sparta, Georgia, in 1791. Their home was destroyed twice by the
Tories and once by a Tornado. Mr. Hamilton had just completed a nice
dwelling for his family when the memorable tornado and cyclone passed
over that portion of Georgia in April, 1805. All of the family except
Jack and Everard were away from home. There was but one small house
left on the place, their new house having been blown away, none of
it left standing. Some of the doors were found six miles off in an
adjoining county. Clothing, books and papers were carried promiscuously
away. Jack was much bruised, having been struck by many things. His
booksack was blown away, and his "Ovid" was found forty miles over in
Baldwin County and returned to him. This book is now in possession of
one of his descendants. Everard was carried into the air and lodged in
a swamp about a quarter of a mile away, where he was caught up by the
whirl wind. Madame Hamilton took this misfortune as coming from God and
helped her husband to collect anew his scattered fortune. Later we read
of them as living on their plantation surrounded by their servants, who
ministered to their comforts and attended their broad fields.
In reading about the women who lived in the early days of Georgia,
their splendid lives stand as a beacon to the reckless and extravagant
ones of today. They not only spun the thread and wove the cloth used
in their homes, but they made all of the clothes their children wore,
and reared them to be God-fearing men and women. They visited their
neighbors for thirty miles away and extended a glad welcome and cordial
hospitality for any and every guest. One with impunity may ask the
question: "Are they pleased with their descendants, these women of
Georgia's pioneer days?"--MRS. J. L. WALKER, Lyman Hall Chapter, D. A.
R.
MOLLY PITCHER FOR HALL OF FAME.
The movement to place in the hall of fame a bust of Molly Pitcher, the
only woman sergeant in the United States army, has the enthusiastic
support of former Senator Chauncey M. Depew.
It was in the important movements of the year 1778 that at the battle
of Monmouth Molly Pitcher was carrying water to her husband, who was a
gunner of a battery at one piece of artillery. He was disabled and the
lieutenant proposed to remove the piece out of danger, when Molly said,
"I can do everything my husband could," and she performed her husband's
duties at his old gun better than he could have done.
The next morning she was taken before General Washington, her wonderful
act was reported and its influence upon the outcome of the battle,
which was a victory, and Washington made her at once a sergeant in the
army to stand on the rolls in that rank as long as she would.
It seems appropriate now for us to place among the immortals and
in the hall of fame this only woman sergeant of the United States
army, who won her title fighting for her country upon the field of
battle.--_National Magazine._
REVOLUTIONARY RELICS.
Great grandmother's spinning wheel stands in the hall,
That is her portrait there;
Great grandfather's sword hangs near on the wall,
What do you girlies care,
That in seventeen hundred and seventy-six,
One bitter winter's night,
When the air was full of sleet and snow,
And the kitchen fire burned bright.
He stood with a face so thoughtful and sad
With his hand on her hair,
"Asenath, I start at the break of day,"
Oh, that bride was so fair!
But country was dearer than home and wife,
Proudly she lifted her head,
"Go, David, and stay till is ended the strife,
God keep you, dear," she said.
Toward the loom in the kitchen she drew,
She had finished that day,
A beautiful blanket of brown and blue,
"Was it plaided this way?"
It was just like this but faded and worn,
And full of holes and stain,
When our soldier grandsire came back one morn,
To wife and child again.
When his eyes were dim and her hair was white,
Waiting the Master's call,
She finished this blanket one winter's night,
That hangs here on the wall.
And dreaming of fifty years before,
When she stood by that wheel,
And that cradle creaked on the kitchen floor,
By that swift and reel.
There's a rare old plate with a portrait in blue,
Of England's George the Third,
A porringer small and a stain shoe,
That five brave hearts has stirred,
There's an ancient gun all covered with rust,
A clock, a bible worn,
"Fox Book of Martyrs" and "Holy Wars,"
A brass tipped powder horn.
Great grandfather sat in that old arm chair,
Grandmother rocked by his side,
Till the Master called through the sweet June air,
They both went out with the tide.
--_Florence I. W. Burnham in American Monthly Magazine._
TRAGEDY OF THE REVOLUTION OVERLOOKED BY HISTORIANS.
BY T. H. DREHER, M. D.
Before the William Thompson Chapter, D. A. R., invaded this neck of
the moral vineyard and put its delicate, historical fingers upon the
tendrils of local happenings, there was no blare of trumpets over a
foul and bloody deed which occurred near the "Metts Cross-Roads," in
this county, during the Revolutionary war. But the gruesome case was
never without intense interest to those concerned in the episodes of a
past age. The strange and mysterious always throws an additional halo
over our heroes. This feeling is intensified, in this case, by virtue
of the fact that the same blood which ran in the veins of the victim of
the "cross-roads plot," now pulsates in the arteries of many lineal,
living descendants who are part and parcel of Calhoun County's sturdy
citizenship.
The malignant, cruel and cowardly feature of this dastardly crime,
garbed in a plausible and hypocritical cloak, make it unique, even in
the gory annals of criminal warfare and harks our memories back to the
murder of Duncan, King of Scotland. Here, as there, we have no doubt,
but that souls grew faint over the details of the foul conspiracy
and "their seated hearts knocked at their ribs" until spurred to
the "sticking place" by the evil eloquence of some overpowering and
unnatural genius, like unto Lady Macbeth. John Adams Treutlen (for that
was the name of our hero) is in his grave.
"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well,
Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further."
That is true. The cold pen of a true chronicler, however, must again
allude to the utter negligence and gross indifference of an earlier age
to a proper appreciation of significant events. That a noted Governor
of Georgia should be brutally done to death by revengeful Tories
because of the intense Whig fires which consumed his very soul; that
children, and children's children, should grow up around the scene of
his untimely taking-off, and still his home and his grave should be,
today, unidentified spots on the map of Calhoun County force us to
exclaim with Mark Antony: "But yesterday the word of Caesar might have
stood against the world. Now lies he there and none so poor to do him
reverence."
The salient facts in the life of Treutlen are interesting. Born in
Berectsgaden, 1726, as a German Salzburger, he was brought to this
country in a boat load of Salzburgers that landed at Savannah in 1734.
If early impressions count for anything, there is no wonder that the
spirit of liberty and independence sank deep into the very inmost
recesses of his soul. His father, along with thousands of other German
Protestants, was exiled by a fanatical decree of Archbishop Leopold,
which drove out from his domain all who would not accept the Catholic
faith. It was this Salzburger strain and religion which was unterrified
and unwashed, amid the raging tempests of an angry sea, while others
aboard, including John Wesley, trembled for life, and confessed to a
livelier awakening to the rejuvenating and sustaining power of God upon
frail humanity.
Some 25 miles from Savannah these brave and devout pilgrims, after
singing a psalm "set up a rock and in the spirit of the pious Samuel,
named the place Ebenezer (stone of help) 'for hitherto hath the Lord
helped us.'" Amid these crude but inspiring surroundings the young
Treutlen received a splendid education, for that day, under the strict
tutelage of his scholarly Lutheran pastors, Bolzius and Gronau. Thus
it was that, when the red gloom of impending war was already visible
on the distant horizon, and the Provincials had gathered at Savannah
to take steps against the high-handed measures of England, John Adam
Treutlen answered the roll-call from the Ebenezer country and was
one of its leading and most aggressive spirits. Thus it was that,
in the teeth of strong Tory influence and friends he espoused the
patriot cause with all the ardor of a Knight Templar, thus becoming
the chief object of Loyalist hatred and vengeance, his property being
confiscated, and his home, with many of its treasures, burned to ashes.
Elected first Governor of Georgia under an independent Constitution
by the Legislature, in 1777, there was not as yet the fearful carnage
and bloody battles which were still to come, and which were to make
the South and its manhood a synonym for courage and endurance the
world over. It is true that the immortal conflict on Sullivan's Island
had been fought and won, but Clinton and Parker, still hopeful under
drooping plumes, had shifted the scene to the North.
The "blue bloods" of the Palmetto State--with the exception of
Charleston's brave firebrand, Christopher Gadsden, were still
praying for that peace, borne of wealth, intelligence and
luxurious ease. Georgia, now perched upon the top-most round of
empire--pre-eminence--was then weak in its swaddling clothes and viewed
only as a promising child to be brought up in the aristocratic South
Carolina Sunday School. With a cool and calculating diplomacy which
smacked somewhat suggestively of the rising Talleyrand, we are told
that the gentle ripples on the waters little betokened the torpedoes
which were being laid beneath. Bludgeons, not the velvety hand of
artful diplomacy, were calculated to narcotize the grim-visaged ruler
of the satrapy across the Savannah, as all accounts agree that Treutlen
was a somewhat "stormy petrel," a sort of pocket edition of Oliver
Cromwell, the greatest civilized dictator that the world has ever
produced--who could rout a parliament of sitting members, lock the door
and put the key in his pocket.
And so it came to pass that, when the Governor heard of the so-called
"Machiavellian scheme" to annex his little kingdom to the great
Palmetto Commonwealth, by a coup d'etat, he pounded the floor viciously
with his "condemnatory hoof" and shot a fiery proclamation over the
official mahogany, denouncing the conspiracy in bitter vein and
offering a heavy reward for the chief emissary--Drayton. When the
Georgia patriot Government fell in 1779, Treutlen, along with hundreds
of others, took British protection and fled to St. Matthews Parish, in
the present County of Calhoun; and the road he travelled was a thornier
path than that from Jerusalem to Jerico with
"Injuns on the upper way,
And death upon the lower."
It is not for me to split fine hairs over the principle involved in
conditional agreements during the days of war, when every man is
showing his teeth and reaching at the throat of his enemy. Suffice
to say, that he chafed under the Tory bit and would have none of it.
A born fighter and a man of rugged individuality, it was impossible
for him to hug both sides of any fence. A dictator by instinct (and
by Georgia statute,) well educated, and fresh from the Gubernatorial
eiderdown he would naturally bring around his head swarms of bitter
enemies, in times of war, and he was a marked man. He met his doom on a
dreary night in 1780 under peculiarly atrocious conditions.
It is said that a small band of vindictive Tories went to his home
during that fateful evening, and enticed him out, on a treacherous
plea of surrender on certain plausible conditions. As he emerged from
his door, he was seized, and not only brutally butchered, but, (all
traditions agree,) literally hacked to pieces. The exact spot where
the fragments of his dismembered body were buried will probably never
be known. But there is every reason to believe that his bones rest in
the vicinity of his home, from the fact that his tenure of life in this
section was short; that he was without relatives beyond his family
circle, and those relatives continued to live in the neighborhood.
The mere fact that a Governor of Georgia could come here and be
brutally and foully murdered by Tories, in the heat of war passions,
and not a line recorded about it, in any South Carolina history or
newspaper bearing upon that period, should open our eyes to the danger
of swallowing the spurious pill offered to us by the Emily Geiger
exterminators.
But for the Georgia records and a straight line of descendants,
hereabouts, the Treutlen individuality and tradition would be tabooed
as a "myth" and fabrication from beginning to end. Through the laudable
efforts of the local D. A. R.--and particularly its regent, Mrs. F. C.
Cain--a "marker" has been promised from the quartermaster general's
office, Washington, D. C. It will stand in the vicinity of the "Metts
Crossroads" and will remind the passerby of as true and loyal a Whig as
lived during those perilous days.
Treutlen's general appearance, even in repose, as exhibited in an old
photograph now in the possession of a descendant, is interesting.
The orthodox military coat, unbottoned and spread abroad over his
shoulders, brings into bold relief a "dicky" shirt front, emerging into
a high and ferocious collar, which nestles snugly and smugly under
his lower jaws. There is a profuse shock of hair, futilely bombarding
an obstinate "cow-lick," the whole showing little or no subserviency
to comb and brush. His large, piercing eyes, fringed by shaggy brows,
with a drooping upper lid, produces a sad, if not sinister, aspect. The
nose has a Roman slant, which meets a bold, intellectual forehead in
an almost unbroken line. Marked cheek bones and a thin face ease down,
more or less hastily, to a sharp and angular chin. A pair of thin lips,
closely plastered to each other, bespeak firm determination; and his
whole contour impresses one, forcibly, that he was not a safe man to
take too many liberties with.
As intimated at the outset, there is an interesting ramification of
descendants from the Treutlen family, many of whom are still living in
Calhoun County. Some have gained prominence in Alabama, Washington, D.
C., and other places, but I will note only those of local (and some,
at least, of state-wide) interest. There were three sons and three
daughters: John Adam Treutlen, Jr., Christian, Depew, Mary, Elizabeth
and Hannah. Mary married Edward Dudley. From this union was born Mary
Dudley, who married Adam Amaker, February 10, 1820, and from the latter
was born Adam Perry Amaker, who married Augusta Zimmerman, and they,
in turn, were the parents of Perry and T. A. Amaker, now living--the
former of Denver, Col., and the latter a leading business man of St.
Matthews. Amanda Amaker (alive) married Major Whitmarsh Seabrook
Murray, of Edisto Island, who recently died here. They moved to this
place after the war and leave many descendants.
Elizabeth Treutlen, another daughter, married William Kennedy and from
them descended John W. Kennedy, who resided here for years, and now at
Tyron, N. C. His only daughter, Vernon, married Dr. A. McQueen Salley,
originally of Orangeburg, and a son of the present sheriff of that
county, now of Saluda, N. C. John Adam Treutlen, Jr., married Margaret
Miller. Their son, Gabriel, married Ann Connor and to them was born
Caroline Treutlen, who married Jacob Dantzler. Their son, Col. O. M.
Dantzler, of Confederate war fame, was the father of O. M. Dantzler,
the popular sheriff of Calhoun County, who recently died; Fred and
Thos. W., of St. Matthews; Mortimer O., of Orangeburg and Charles G.,
an eminent jurist (deceased.)
Rachael Treutlen, daughter of John Adam Treutlen, Jr., married the
Rev. J. J. Wannamaker, of St. Matthews. From this union were born Mary
Ann (who first married Joel Butler and later William Reeves) and W.
W. Wannamaker, deceased, who for many years was a leading physician
of this community, and who married Adelia Keitt. To the last couple
was born Agelina, who married the Rev. Artemus B. Watson, a well
known minister of the Methodist Church, who died recently. Their son,
Whitfield W. Watson, married May, daughter of the Hon. Samuel J.
Dibble, and a daughter Adele Watson, deceased, married A. C. Hane, Fort
Motte. Other children of Dr. W. W. Wannamaker were: John Keitt, who
married Chloe Watson, both dead. He bequeathed $20,000 for a Methodist
Church here. W. W. Wannamaker, a successful farmer of this community,
who married Lou Banks, deceased. A son bears the honored patronymic
of "Treutlen." Mary B. Wannamaker, deceased, who married Dr. W. T. C.
Bates, of St. Matthews, the well known ex-State Treasurer.
Emma C., a daughter of Rev. J. J. Wannamaker, married Dr. W. L. Pou,
an eminent physician of St. Matthews, now 84 years old, and who has
been actively practicing his profession for over 60 years. A daughter
of Dr. and Mrs. Pou, Emma, deceased, married A. K. Smoke, a prominent
and influential citizen of this town, while Blanche, another daughter,
is living, and the joy and pride of her aged parents. A son of Rev. J.
J. Wannamaker and Rachael Treutlen, his wife, was Capt. Francis M.,
deceased, a noted lawyer in his day, who married Eleanor Bellinger,
of Bamberg. From the last couple were born the following: Jennie B.,
who married J. B. Tyler, of Georgia, both dead; Mary B., deceased, who
married J. H. Henagan, of St. Matthews; Rachael Treutlen, who married
H. A. Raysor, a successful merchant and prominent citizen of St.
Matthews; J. S. Kottowe, a leading banker and merchant of St. Matthews,
who married Lillian Salley, of Orangeburg; Francis M., who married the
writer; William H., professor of German in Trinity College, N. C.,
who married Isabella Stringfellow, of Chester, and Olin M., professor
of English in the Alabama Polytechnic College at Auburn, who married
Katherine Hume, of New Haven, Conn.
JOHN MARTIN.
When quite a little boy in his home in Caroline County, Virginia, John
Martin adopted as his motto: "I will do my best." It helped him even in
childhood to have this motto, for whenever he had any difficult task to
perform, either at home or school, he remembered his motto and did his
best.
In his veins flowed the blood of a noble ancestry and many sterling
merited qualities helped him in the formation of a manly character.
He was born in 1751, amid turbulent scenes in Virginia, for the Indians
were frequently incited by the French to commit deeds of violence and
cruelty upon the English colonists, and in consequence of this, his
early impressions were of preparations for war. At a tender age John
witnessed the departure of his father, Abner Martin, to join Colonel
Washington on his way to Fort Duquesne. He saw him buckle on his sword
and sabre and mount his charger and set his face towards the Ohio
Valley. And after that parting he experienced some of the horrors of
war, for in the silent hour of night, the stealthy tread of the Indian
noiselessly approached the Martin plantation and applied the torch to
the barns and outhouses, and morning found them in ruins. He shared
the general feeling of uneasiness and insecurity that had settled down
upon the home circle in consequence of his father's absence, and his
grandfather's illness. His mother at this time was for him his tower
of strength, and his ark of safety, for she it was who devised means
for their protection and safety. As he grew older and thought upon
these stirring scenes, no wonder that his martial spirit was stirred
within him and that he resolved "some day I'll go too, and I can if I
do my best," and he did.