The Savannah morning news., 1904-03-24
HISTORIC TOWNS In
EBERT COUNTY
Prominent Men Who Have Lived and Died in
Them
By T. LARRY GANNT.

l do not know a spot in Georgia
richer in historic interest, or that pre-
sents a more inviting field for research
of the antiquarian than the little pen
insular formed by the conjunction of
the Broad and Savannah rivers, in Ell
bert county, and the country imme-
diately adjacent and surrounding.
Up the Savannah river, but a short
distance, begins the Trotter shoals,
and at the foot of these shoals, in an
abandoned mill house, did Henry
Grady spend a stormy night only a few
weeks before his death. In an island
near by Gen. Robert Toombs sought
refuge at the surrender, and there re-
manned until he could escape to the
mountains of Northeast Georgia, and
from thence make his way to Cuba,
France and England. For several
miles up the Savannah are ante-bel-
lum duelling grounds for the chivalry
of the two states, and whose sands
have been often dyed with the life
blood of the combatants. About a mile
down the river, upon it's banks, are the
remains of an old revolutionary fort,
while here also crossed Mr.. Davis and
his cabinet, and the remnants of the
Confederate army, when so closely
pressed. For several years after the
war there was seen in an old field near
the river two large Napoleon guns,
and which had been abandoned by the
Confederate soldiers.
Nancy Harris Home.
A few miles up Broad river lived
that Revolutionary heroine, Nancy
Hart, and there is still pointed out the
site of her cabin, where she captured
the Tories and turned them over to
the Continental soldiers to be hanged
on a tree in her yard. Nancy Hart is
the only woman 1 know who has been
honored by having a county named for
her
And it Is but a few miles from this
place, on the Washington road, where
the Confederate treasury train was
robbed by Confederate soldiers, and
wagon loads of gold and silver. be-
longing to the Richmond banks, was
either scattered over the ground. bur-
led in the woods and fields, secreted in
ponds and branches, or divided among
the boys in grey.
And in Lincoln county, near here,
was the scene of one of Judge Long
streets most racy sketches in his
Georgia Scenes" where the would-be
Court House bully was practicing an
imaginary pugilistic encounter with a
clay-bank for an adversary.
The Town of Petersburg.
The prophecy that a New Zealander
would sit upon the remains of London
bridge and sketch the ruins of Eng
lands great metropolis, would not
seem more improbable to those island
ers to-day than the prediction made
during the close of the nineteenth CEN
fury, to the people of Petersburg, Ga,
that another century would see their
| town vanish from the very face of the
earth, and the spots then occupied by
| imposing brick stores and warehouses,
and handsome private residences, be
| turned over to the plowshare, and
| transformed into fields of corn and
cotton.
About 1890, my grandfather mer-
chandised at Petersburg, and at that
time, While the town was on the de-
cline, it boasted thirty-two stores, and
was still a rival to Augusta and Ham,
burg. But to-day not a vistige of the
! town remains, or has one stone been
| left upon another. The only signs that
| this was at one time the site of an i'm
| portant city, are the numerous half
| filled wells, surrounded by small
groups of china, mulberry and other
ornamental trees, and sunken spots,