Notes |
- "The lands, between Ebenezer and Briar Creek, belonged to the Uchees, who refused to dispose of them. But to secure this part of the country, two forts were built on the South Carolina side of the [Savannah] river, which answered the purpose. Establishments were made at Silver Bluff, and at the falls of the Savannah, where the town of Augusta was laid out, warehouses erected, and a garrison thrown into a small fort. Augusta immediately became a general resort for Indian traders, where they purchased annually about two thousand pack-horse loads of peltry. Six hundred white persons were engaged in this trade, including townsmen, pack-horse men and servants. Boats, each capable of carrying down the river a large quantity of peltry, were built, and four or five voyages were annually made with them to Charleston. A trading highway was opened to Savannah on which few of the creeks were bridged, or marches and swamps causewayed.
He who became the wealthiest and most conspicuous of all these Indian traders, was George Galphin, a native of Ireland. When quite a young man, he established himself upon the site of De Soto's ancient Cutifachiqui, where the remarkable adventurer first discovered the Savannah river, in 1540. Upon the site of this old Indian town, on the east bluff of the Savannah, in Barnwell District, South Carolina, now called Silver Bluff, and at present the property of Gov. Hammond, young Galphin first begun to trade with the Creek Indians. Although he made Silver Bluff his headquarters, he had trading houses in Savannah and Augusta. He was a man of fine address, great sense, commanding person, untiring energy and unsurpassed bravery. His power was felt and his influence exerted even to the banks of the Mississippi. Among the Upper and Lower Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws, he sent forth numerous pack-horse men, with various merchandise, who brought back to Georgia almost countless skins and furs, kegs of bears' oil, hickory-nut oil, snake root and medicinal barks, which he shipped to England. He often went himself into these nations, fearlessly trading in the immediate vicinity of the French Fort Toulouse [near present-day Wetumptka, Alabama], upon the Coosa. Commercial policy and an amorous disposition led him to form connections with several females, who were called his wives, and from whom descended many intelligent and influential persons, now inhabiting Georgia, Alabama and the Arkansas Territory."
[5]
- "One of the first Indian traders was George Galphin, an Irishman. He raised a large family; and of the five varieties of the human family; he raised children from three, and no doubt would have gone the whole hog, but the Malay and Mongol were out of his reach. His white children were of the highest and most polished order- Mrs. Governor Milledge was one of them. He had two negroes, Mina, a woman, and Ketch, a man; they were brother and sister. He raised one daughter from Mina and called her Barbary. She married an Irishman by the name of Holmes, and raised Dr. Thomas G. Holmes, whom Col. Pickett often alludes to in his History of Alabama, as having had conversations with him. At Galphin's death Mina was set free and died at old Timothy Barnard's, on the Flint river, Ga., many years back. Ketch was an interpreter among the Indians for Galpin- was his stock minder- kept stock at Galphin's cowpens, where Louisville in Jefferson county, Ga., now stands, and which was once the seat of government of that state. Ketch helped put up the first cabin at old Galphinton, on the Ogeechee, for an Indian trading house. At Galphin's death Ketch was sold, and was purchased by Gen. [John] Twiggs of the revolution. He was a body servant of Gen Twiggs during the war. At the close of the war, Ketch left his master and went into the Creek Nation. * * * Gen. Twiggs gave Ketch to me. He (Ketch) was about six feet six inches high, very straight, and retained his bodily strength as well as mental faculties, to a most astonishing degree. The Gen. did not give me Ketch expecting me to profit by it, but wished him cared for in his old age, as he had been a faithful servant to his father in trying times. I purchased Ketch's family, and he live till 1840. I buried him under a large oak about a mile from Tuskegee, a place that he selected for that purpose. I had a little mill on a creek near Tuskegee, where I kept Ketch and several other Indian negroes, and here I used to spend much time listening to them tell over old occurrences of by-gone days. From the best calculations we could make, Ketch lived to be near a hundred years old." [6]
- Mina and Ketch are the subject of a deed of sale by George Galphin dated 2 Feb 1775. South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Sec. of State, Misc. Records, Bk. 2, R, pp. 287-290.
- http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~scedgefi/pioneers/galphin-thomas.pdf
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