The Past is an Interesting Place

I was over at the library doing some research for our reenacting group and came across an interesting quote in the book Quaker Records in Georgia edited by Robert Scott Davis. The passage in question was written by a young Orkney servant boy named Baikie (or Baikia) Harvey, who had come to the Friendsborough, Georgia settlement as an indenture of Thomas “Burnt Foot” Brown. (So named for being tarred, feathered, and set alight by Rebel sympathizers in Augusta.)

Harvey is listed as being an unmarried servant from Kirkwall, Scotland, gone to Georgia “to seek a better way of living.” His age is given as 16 in September of 1774. On December 30, 1775, he wrote a letter to his godfather in Kirkwall, and the following excerpt of that letter was noted in Davis’ book:

The Americans are Smart Industrious hardy people & fears nothing. our people is only Like the New Negroes that comes out of the ships at first whin they come amongst them. I am Just returned from the Back parts where I seed Eight Thousand men in arms all with Riffeld Barrill guns which they can kill the Bigness of a Dollar Between Two & three Hundreds yards Distance. the Little Boys not Bigger than my self has all thir guns & marches with thir Fathers & all thir Cry is Liberty or Death. Dear Godfather tell all my Country people not to come here for the Americans will Kill them Like Deer in the Woods & they will never see them. they can lie on thir backs & load & fire & every time they Draw sight at any thing they are sure to kill or Creple & they run in the Woods like Horses.

Just thought you might like to know.
posted by Terry at 1:56:00 PM