He went to Virginia, and married the miser, Miss Carter, who counted her gold by stockings full

Fascinating. I am investigating the Bibb family at the time of the American Revolution. They were a very old Virginia family, tied by marriage to most of the other old established families of the Tidewater. One branch of the family came south to Georgia after the Revolution and then west into Alabama, along the way providing judges, legislators, and governors.

In that research, I came across Sketches of some of the first settlers of upper Georgia, of the Cherokees, and the author by George Rockingham Gilmer. Who he?

Well, as it turns out, George Gilmer was a two term governor of Georgia in the early 1800s and a lifelong politician in a variety of state offices. He is probably most noted as the Governor who facilitated the removal of the Cherokee from the state.

However, he was also a writer. Much of the post-revolution settlement originated from Virginia and settled in northeastern Georgia. The above sketches is a combination of gossip, history, social-register type genealogy, autobiography, and commonplace. A mishmash informative and charming.

Some samples follow.

Sarah Smith Wyatt was my fifth great-aunt by marriage to William Bibb. Sarah Wyatt Smith survived her husband by some thirty years, late in life marrying another prominent politician William Barnett. I had known of this from other research indicating the marriage, that as it was late by age, there were no children and their subsequent passings. Gilmer adds detail.

William Barnett was a member of the Legislature for a long time, and for several years President of the Senate. He and Mr. Forsyth were candidates for Congress, each for the first time, to fill a vacancy. Wm Barnett’s popularity was proven by his success over the most talented man of the time. He continued a member of Congress for some years. He received many other proofs of his countrymen’s confidence. He and his first wife were devoted to each other. They had a large family of children. Mrs. Barnett’s love was subjected to a test which proved too much for her capability of endurance. He was so dangerously ill of fever that his life was despaired of. His wife became frantic, and died. He recovered, and years after married Mrs. Bibb, the mother of Dr. William W. Bibb. Though Mrs. Barnett was very sensible and agreeable, it was not possible for her to make herself acceptable to a man who had lived most lovingly from his youth to advanced age with a wife who was altogether devoted to him, and had died for love of him. Each of them had children, most of whom were married. They had no common property. They began to separate in visiting their children, until they finally ceased to live together. He removed to Alabama, and died shortly after. He had six children by his first wife; none by his last.

A love story of a sort but a tragic one.

With regard to his own love life, in browsing I came across this snippet. Wonderful in its recognizable understatement and elliptic opacity.

When the year of my school-keeping closed, I set out upon a traveling excursion to Virginia. A young man, by the name of Muse, who had been keeping school like myself, was my companion. By agreement, we were to meet at Mr. William Barnett’s, who lived then on the Savannah River. Mr. Barnett had been my father’s neighbor, was his kinsman, and very good friend. Muse did not meet me at the time appointed: I had to wait for him several days. I spent the delay in courting Mrs. Barnett’s daughter, Martha Bibb, a young lady rather younger in her teens than myself. The old folks of both families had taken it into their heads to make a match between us; and I suppose would have succeeded, if the young people had been particularly attractive to each other. It was difficult, however, to pass days with a very pleasant, familiar female acquaintance in the country — the old people keeping out of the way — without saying something that one of the parties would afterwards wish had never been said. As soon as Muse joined me, we set out on our journey.

One may only speculate at this remove.

Here is his diplomatic(?) description of Revolutionary War hero/Robin Hood Elijah Clark.

The struggle between liberty and loyalty had gone on for some time, and the States declared their independence of Great Britain before much more was understood about the cause of the contest by the North Carolina settlers in Wilks than what was learned from passing rumor. When the British troops marched into Upper Georgia and required the people to submit to the power that would tax them, Elijah Clark felt that his forte was fighting. His bold, fearless spirit made him at once the chief of those who felt like him.

When Col. Boyd, the leader of the North Carolina tories retreated into Georgia, Elijah Clark, at the head of the Georgia whigs, and Col. Pickens, with the whigs of South Carolina, pursued and overtook him at Kettle Creek, in Wilks, where they drubbed him and many of his followers to death, and dispersed most of the remainder.

Shortly after the British troops and tories united in such strength that Elijah Clark could not meet them in the field. With the tact of the successful partisan, he got out of the way, that he might fight more advantageously another day. He fled to the mountains, taking with him most of the whig old men, women, and children, to secure them from the cruelties of the poor tory scamps, who thought that the best way of serving their king was to put to death those who refused to swear allegiance to him. Placing his non-combatants in security, he marched at the head of the fighters wherever the enemy were to be found. He had no pretensions to be the great general who, standing aloof from danger, directs and conquers by the skill of his manoeuvres. He led in the fight, and ordered his men to follow him. He was present, if he could be, wherever fighting was to be done, until liberty was won.

When the independence of the States was acknowledged, and the people of the other States enjoyed peace, there was no peace for the people of Georgia. The tories fled among the neighboring Indian tribes, and excited their warriors to plunder and murder the frontier people, until Elijah Clark, aided by his son Jack, frightened them away by the great victory which he obtained over them at Jack’s Creek.

Elijah Clark had but little scholastic learning, nor had he been very accurately taught in early youth the distinction between right and wrong, or the lessons afterwards slipt from his memory. He was very poor when he took to soldiering. He was better off when the war was ended. He thought, as many great men have done, that those who fight against their country forfeit both life and property. He showed his faith in his doctrine by letting tory prisoners live by their letting him have what they had.

After recounting the history of the Taliaffero family, another old Virginia family come to Georgia, Gilmer provides a thumbnail sketch of the nine children, each of which is marked by generosity, kind words, or stiletto comment as warranted.

Burton, the youngest of the Taliaferros, was very handsome — had the manners, and wore the dress, of a well-bred gentleman. He read and enjoyed novels and plays, and fashioned his habits accordingly. He married Sally Gilmer, daughter of John Gilmer. He resided, during the year that his wife lived, near Broad River, on the land, and close by Thomas M. Gilmer. He loved good eating, drinking, and fine clothes. His property was not sufficient for free indulgence. After the death of his first wife, he went to Virginia, and married the miser, Miss Carter, who counted her gold by stockings full, upon condition that she would allow him enough of her treasure to enable him to feast his animal appetites.

I love this description of his older years when the time of leadership and engagement had passed. He became a collector.

One of the most difficult things to do, is to find out what to do, when one is too old and feeble to do any thing well. Law and politics are too exciting. Money-making too engrossing, planting too laborious, and keeping the spirits up by pouring spirits down too overpowering to be suitable employments for advanced life.

When I got up from the bed of sickness to which I was confined so long, in 1844, I was unable to do any thing which required much exertion of body or mind. I commenced daily exercise on horseback, or in a carriage. Acting without object, produced ennui and fatigue. After a while, by some accident or providence, my attention was directed to the minerals and quartz crystallizations which cover the surface of the earth around my residence. The ridings which in the beginning were continued with tiresomeness from the want of some immediate and tangible object in view, improved my health after I had acquired a taste for hunting rocks.

Treasuries of matter for thought are often unknown or unobserved, because observation is too listless to look at them. I found abundance of the wonderful, where nothing had been seen before. In addition to the pleasure which I have derived from increasing good health through my daily excursions, I have found many incidental accompaniments, which have added to its benefits.

I discovered about a mile from Lexington, in a little cove formed by the surrounding hills through which a stream of water flows, tire remains of an altar, where the people who preceded the Indians made sacrifices. I found a great many places where the people have secretly dug into the earth among the crystallized quartz, in search of gold. I have gone on carrying home from each day’s excursion a basket full of rocks, until my collection of crystallized quartz about my house and yard has become very large, and my cabinet of minerals very beautiful and valuable.

Friends and strangers have continued to add to it curious things, of various sorts, until it is now the means of giving pleasure to the old, and instruction to the young. Among the things which attract attention are some very large and highly colored amethysts, whose angles are so perfect, as to show that they are not the work of human hands.

Emeralds from Bogota and other precious stones from elsewhere; marbles from Hindostan, Italy, and Alabama; gold from California and Upper Georgia; silver from Peru; mercury from Mexico; copper from the bowels of the earth in Mississippi and the shores of the Northern Lakes; spar from England; agate from Germany; a piece of the rock of Gibraltar; coal from Pennsylvania; jasper from Connecticut; porphyry, zinc, mica, asbestus, gypsum, from the Blue Ridge and Alleghany Mountains; lead from Illinois; lava from Etna and Vesuvius; basalt from the Giants’ Causeway; lime crystallizations from the caves of Virginia, and ocean deposits of the alluvial region of Middle Georgia; petrifactions of dead animals and trees; two ammonites in the form of snakes, petrified in their coil, from Rockingham, the place which gave me my middle name; matrix of the diamond from Upper Georgia; two rocks, each of which contains a drop of water inclosed when matter assumed its appropriate shape upon the formation of the planet, Earth; sand from the desert of Sahara; a witch's ball as big as a child’s fist; the half hour glass, by which Santa Anna marked the time for shooting American prisoners; a dirk handle of one of the Spaniards who accompanied De Soto as he passed from the seaboard to the Cherokee gold mines; a chip from the tree under which Gen. Oglethorpe made the first treaty with the Creek Indians; a vase made of the Georgia live oak which formed a part of the timbers of the frigate Constitution; half of the bombshell which fell through the roof upon the floor of the Cathedral Church in Vera Cruz when the city was besieged by the American army, and killed and wounded eighteen or twenty nuns on their knees; the first gold watch owned by a native Virginian; a snuff-box made of the wood of the outer coffin which inclosed the body of General Washington when it was deposited in the family vault; Indian pipes, idols, amulets, lances, and arrowheads; coral and shells from the Indian and Atlantic Oceans; a marble image of Rebekah at the well from the London fair, with a great many engravings, some original paintings, and a library of books formed by continual additions from my childhood to old age.

Looking around my office-library my eye falls upon the tooth of a sperm whale, a branch from the oldest living tree in Europe and a further branch from the oldest living trees in America, the bristle-cone pine. Quartz from Australia, fossils from Sweden, WWII ammunition from the Sahara Desert, amulets from ancient Egypt, a Persian bronze dagger, a harpoon, ebony carved statues from Nigeria, a model drilling rig, a replica mammoth tooth, an ostrich egg, a wood shark carving from New Guinea - the list goes on and on. And walls of books supplemented by stacks of books at the base of the walls.

And I recognize a kindred spirit to Governor Gilmer.