By an act[256] of the General Assembly assented to November 26th, 1802, eighteen of the principal citizens of the town were incorporated into a society “under the name and style of the Petersburg Union Society.” The avowed objects of this association were the diffusion of knowledge and the alleviation of want. It maintained an active existence for some years and exerted a marked influence for good.
On the first of December, 1802,[257] Robert Thompson, Leroy Pope, Richard Easter, Samuel Watkins, and John Ragland were appointed Commissioners of the town of Petersburg, and were charged with its “better regulation and government.” They were to hold office until the first Monday in January, 1804. Then, and on the first Monday in every January thereafter, the citizens entitled to vote for members of the General Assembly were required to choose by ballot five persons to act as Commissioners of the town. These Commissioners were invested “with full power and authority to make such by-laws and regulations, and to inflict or impose such pains, penalties, and forfeitures as in their judgment should be conducive to the good order and government of the said town of Petersburg:” provided such by-laws and regulations were not repugnant to the constitution and laws of Georgia, and that the pains and penalties contemplated did not extend to life or member.
Two years afterwards[258] the powers of these Commissioners were materially enlarged, and they were directed to have a correct plan of the town and commons made by the County Surveyor and recorded in the office of the Clerk of the Superior Court of Elbert County.
Speaking of Petersburg in 1800, Mr. George Sibbald says:[259] “In point of situation and commercial consequence it is second only to Augusta.... It is a handsome, well built Town, and presents to the view of the astonished traveller, a Town which has risen out of the Woods in a few years as if by enchantment: It has two Warehouses for the Inspection of Tobacco.”
So long as the cultivation of tobacco engrossed the attention of the planters in the circumjacent region, Petersburg continued to be a place of considerable commercial importance. In the zenith of its prosperity it contained a distributing post-office, a market place, a town-hall, several churches, and not less than forty stores and warehouses. Its population then has been estimated at between seven and eight hundred souls. During the early part of the present century its trade was greater than that of Augusta. It is claimed that goods of a superior quality were then there sold, and in greater quantities, and at cheaper rates. A large and lucrative business was transacted by the Petersburg boats, which, along the line of the Savannah river, constituted the favorite common carriers of passengers and goods. The existence of the town was due to the concentration at this point of the tobacco crop of a considerable area. The necessity for a rigid inspection of this product forced the planters to bring it here. With Petersburg the presence of this plant was emphatically the cause of population and the parent of trade. After inspection, most of it was purchased on the spot by merchants and speculators, who, from their full stores, supplied every need of the producers. Thence was it shipped to Augusta and Savannah. So soon, however, as the cotton plant began to assert its ascendency, the fortunes of the town commenced to wane. Requiring no inspection, and capable of easy shipment from any convenient point, the cotton bales were sent to various bluffs along the river for transmission to the coast; and thus it came to pass that with the discontinuance of the tobacco culture Petersburg dwindled away and died. Sickness, and the attractions of new and fertile fields in Alabama hastened its ruin:—and now sunken wells and the mounds of fallen chimneys are all that attest the former existence of the town. Its corporate limits are wholly included within the confines of one well-ordered plantation; and extensive fields of corn and cotton have obliterated all traces of warehouse, shop, town-hall, church, and dwelling.
Beneath the conserving shadows of tall trees which mark the outlines of the old cemetery on the left bank of Broad river may still be seen numerous graves, fresh and green when the town was replete with life, but neglected and overgrown with brambles now that the village too is dead.
A few sleepy houses mark the spot where Lisbon,[260] with envious eye, in former years viewed across Broad river the rising fortunes of Petersburg; and, beyond the Savannah, narrowly scanned the efforts made by Vienna to participate in the lucrative tobacco trade.
Federal-Town, in Washington County, on the east bank of the Oconee, was another of these Tobacco villages. It perished so soon as the cultivation of cotton became general in the region, and its fort was no longer required as a protection against the incursions of the Creeks.