Patriots, Loyalists, and Revenge on Georgia’s Revolutionary Frontier

So I wanna start with when we talk about Georgia in the Revolution, obviously there's a lot of conversation around Savannah, right? Obvi- it makes a lot of sense 'cause that's where so much was going on.

But there was also a lot that was going on outside Savannah, uh, further up north, sort of in the woods, in the frontier as it were.

And I guess I'll start with you, Greg.

Um, can you give us a sense of Georgia as a s- colony at the time in the revolutionary era in the frontier and what sort of, what, what were we d- what are we dealing with here?

Well, by the 1770s we are dealing with, um, a great deal of immigration to Georgia, to the frontier, uh, to the Augusta region, uh, as after Governor James Wright opened up, uh, additional lands to be settled, uh, hopefully, he said, by, uh, small families rather than large plantation owners.

Uh, small families because they could help defend the frontier.

Um, now he didn't actually necessarily stay true to that [laughs] when it came to his own land dealings, uh, but that's what we're dealing with.

And, uh, i- i- i- it's an influx of, of, of immigrants that are causing troubles in the back country with the Native Americans, uh, as, uh, uh, as the two You know, two cultures collide

Bob, I'll turn to you with this.

Um, you know, the, obviously the Tory Pond story and that marker particularly is, uh, you know, sort of the ending of the John Dooley story.

But I wanna start at the beginning to some extent of, you know, if we're gonna tell the story of Tory Pond and John Dooley, where does the John Dooley story begin?

All right, the murder of Colonel John Dooley is one of the greatest whodunits in Georgia history.

He ca- he was probably born in Ireland.

His family settled in Phil- in, uh, Philadelphia, then later they settled in the valley of Virginia, then at 96 in South Carolina.

John Dooley becomes a very ambitious man who wants to achieve all the things his father never did.

He acquires thousands of acres of land.

He becomes a merchant.

He, um, uh, becomes a deputy surveyor.

Um, but in his rise to power, he gets into conflict with a lot of people, um, and some of it turns violent, and some of it turns to threats of life and death.

Now, just before the American Revolution, Dooley and his family are among some 800 families that move to Georgia to an area called the Ceded Lands.

This is today Wilkes and surrounding counties.

Now, this is a great moment for the settlement of the frontier because the British have cut off all free land on the frontier they'd been giving before this time.

And, uh, this land that is sold cheap, and you could borrow money from a man named Thomas Waters to buy, make the first payments on your land.

Okay, Dooley is into this thick, thick and heavy.

When we talk about John Dooley, you know, uh, some of the research that I have read from historians like Otis Ashmore and Hugh McCall, right, the historians of the, of the day, there's a great reverence for Colonel Dooley and, and sort of the way they describe him.