labors of Doctors Dunwoody, Alexander, and West,-and numbering among its citizens clergymen, teachers, physicians, lawyers, merchants, and planters, whose influence was appreciated in their day and generation, and whose names, if here repeated, would challenge respect and veneration. Nature survives, but nearly all the rest is shadow. In this humid soil so fecund with vegetation, neglected gravestones,-covered with brambles and overturned by envious forest trees,-"tell truth scarce forty years." V. HARDWICK. During his tour of inspection in 1755, Governor Reynolds was so much pleased with the natural advantages of the Great Ogeechee river, that he selected a bluff upon its right bank, some fourteen miles from the sea, as a location for a new town, which, in honor of his relative the Lord High Chancellor of England, he named HARDWICK. In his letter to the Board of Trade he says: "Hardwicke has a charming situation, the winding of the river making it a peninsula; and it is the only fit place for the capital.* There are many objections to this town of Savannah being so, besides its being situated at the extremity of the province, the shoalness of the river, and the great height of the land, which is very inconvenient in the loading and unloading of ships. Many lots have already been granted in Hardwicke, but only one house is yet built there; and as the province is unable to be at the expence of erecting the necessary public buildings, and the annual sum of £500 allowed for erecting and repairing public works, entertain *To Mr. G. W. J. DeRenne are we indebted for the following memoranda from H. M. Public Record Office, Georgia, Vol, 35, B. T., touching the primal settlement, and naming of Hardwick: May 13, 1754.-The Neck of Land called the Elbow on Great Ogeechee River-which (on the 10th Day of this Month) they had named George-Town." "4 Feb., 1755.-His Excellency was pleased (with the approbation of the Board) to name the Town lately laid out at a Place commonly called the Elbow on Great Ogeechee River, Hardwick." ing Indians, and other incidental expenses being insufficient for all those purposes, I am in hopes your Lordships will think proper to get a sufficient sum allowed for erecting a Court-House, an Assembly-House, a Church, and a Prison at Hardwick; which will be such an encouragement to private people to build there as will soon make it fit for the seat of government to the universal benefit of the province."* Upon the agitation of this project to transfer the capital of the colony from Savannah to the Great Ogeechee,† twenty-seven lots were quickly taken up in the town of Hardwick, and twenty-one thousand acres of land in its vicinity were granted to various parties who favored and promised to develop the enterprize. DeBrahm proposed that the place should be fortified by the erection of three polygons, six hundred feet each, and three detached bastions, to be armed with twenty-five cannon; suggested a garrison of one hundred and fifty men.‡ and The Home Government neglecting to furnish the necessary funds, and Governor Reynolds being without the means requisite to compass the contemplated change, his scheme of transferring the seat of government to Hardwick was never consummated, and the town, deprived of its anticipated dignity and importance, developed simply into a little trading village adapted to the convenience of *Board of Trade. V. 167. Stevens' History of Georgia, vol. 1, pp. 405, 406. New York, 1847. †This river was then called the GREAT HOGOHECHIE, which responds more nearly to its original Indian name than the appellation subsequently adopted. See Plans and Elevations of the Forts necessary in Georgia, forwarded with Governor Reynolds' letter of the 5th of January, 1756, and now of file in the Public Record Office, London; Maps B. T., vol. xIII, No. 14. |