Deprived of the vitalizing influence of the tobacco trade, Harrisburgh, Edinborough, and other small towns designated as sites for the inspection of this crop, speedily lapsed into disuse and decay.
Not infrequently a change in the location of public buildings dealt a death-blow to villages of moderate size and feeble support. Take, for example, the old town of Jacksonborough, confirmed as the county seat of Screven county on the 15th of February, 1799.[261] As late as the 20th of December, 1823, an act[262] of the Legislature, passed for its incorporation, designated the Court House as the centre of the town, and extended the corporate limits a half mile in every direction. Five years afterwards the “Jacksonborough Methodist Episcopal Church” was incorporated.[263] The business of the county was, for some forty years and more, mainly transacted at this place. Here, too, for some time, resided Mr. John Abbot, whose work upon the Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia is still highly prized by the students of Natural History. Upon the removal of the public buildings to Sylvania in 1847, this place was robbed of all importance. It was speedily abandoned; and now a few sherds of common pottery scattered over the surface of the ground are all that is left to remind the visitor that the tide of life was once here.
For more than a quarter of a century Hartford was a thriving town and the capital of Pulaski county.[264] When in 1837[265] the Court House and jail were transferred to Hawkinsville, ruin and decay overtook the place, and at present there is little else save silence, desolation, and seashells on the abandoned Ocmulgee bluff.
Alarmed at the murders committed by the Cherokees, the Friends forsook their neat abodes above Augusta; and, for quite a century, no memory of that primal settlement has been perpetuated in the neighborhood except by the “Quaker-Spring.”
Military posts, maintained for temporary purposes, eventually fall into disuse and live only in history. We have already seen how the fortifications, erected for the protection of the southern frontier of the Colony, when the Spanish war-cloud had vanished returned to the dust from which they sprang. Rendered unnecessary by the overleaping tide of population some were transferred to the outer verge, and these in turn were abandoned upon the assured occupancy of the disputed territory.
Fort Barrington,—its mission ended,—long ago crumbled into nothingness beside the yellow waters of the Alatamaha. By DeBrahm’s plan and local memories is it preserved from utter oblivion. Forts Early, Gaines, Hawkins, James, Lawrence, Perry, Scott, Wayne, and Wilkinson,—and others, once potent for protection, and important in the military operations of the State,—deserted alike by soldier and Indian have utterly perished, and the tillers of the soil run their peaceful furrows over areas once swept by their guns.