Some more American Cousins.

The start of our second week on the road!

Morning in Statesboro was lovely after a brief rain near dawn.  Another day off my quota of really nice days, I guess.

We’re now well enough stocked to have breakfast in the trailer. We won’t even try to get the fridge working until we get to Naples. Just too much to do to wait again for repairmen who don’t phone and we’ve both done enough camping with coolers and ice that it won’t be a giant deal.

I’ve long used the example of my Ogilvy ancestors as a glib way to turn any bad judgement on my part into a joke about DNA...  My ancestors were kicked out of Scotland by the English and then came to Georgia only to be kicked out by the Americans for siding with the English.  I’ve always wondered why?  My Dad and his wife Susan have worked very hard to establish his family tree;   more than half of mine as a result as they’ve been kind enough to do research on my Mom’s line a little as well. They find out quite a few interesting things and have found a number of new cousins as a result as well.  My grandmother’s mother’s line ends here in northern Georgia.  Not in Statesboro specifically — although it would be very cool to be related to Blind Willie McTell, now that would be a story.  But in what used to be called St. George’s Parish which has now been replaced by Burke, Jenkins, Screven and a couple of other Georgia Counties.  I had already considered looking for the footprints of James Ogilvie when we passed this way so when my Dad suggested it again before we left it was a lock.

We don’t know a lot about James — some research done by others suggests that he was probably one of the James Ogilvies at the battle of Culloden and then was transported to North America.  His son Peter Ogilvie was born here ( probably) about 1749 or maybe 1750 — which is a little early for James to have been captured at Culloden as the prisoners transported were all white slaves in North America for 7 years or at least that was the usual deal.  At any rate James Ogilvie, or Oglesby or Ogilby shows up in Georgia with a land grand of 100 acres on the Boggy Gut Creek, a tributary of Brier Creek, adjacent to the path between Augusta and Savannah.  He achieves to more land grants to a total of 350 acres and has between 4 and 6 children in total — and that’s all we know about James’s wife assuming he had only the one.  Anecdotally,  James is buried in the St. James Parish Churchyard where he died sometime before 1786 — but this is nonsense St. George’s Parish would have had dozens of Churches even in the 1780’s.

So, today’s task was to follow-up on the weak clues in the land grant.  Sadly, there are two Boggy Gut creeks in the area that was once St. George’s Parish.  One is north-east of Waynesboro and flows directly in the Savannah. It is mostly swampy and may not have been settled in the 1780’s.  The other is south and somewhat west of Waynesboro and flows into the Ogeechee River but does cross the Old Augusta/Savannah Road in two places near Wadley Georgia.   I know enough about historic place names to know that the only thing sure about the description was the adjacency to the Augusta Savannah Path and that this was likely followed today by the Old Savannah Road.  This was our route today — take the Old Savannah Road to Wadley and right after breakfast we shut the dogs in the trailer we were off.

The countryside is through the whole route is very rural and still shows the rack and ruin of both the Great Migration and Sherman’s March. This is mostly pretty poor country and the population was probably higher in 1900 than it was in 2000.  Sandy soil, low lying piedmont, cypress swamps and creeks with cotton, mustard, peanuts and yellow pine forming the backbone of the rural economy.

It was a real long shot, but we started looking for signs of Ogilvy by any of it’s many and varied spellings as soon as we turned off highway 25 onto the Old Savannah Road.  We hit paydirt pretty quickly — well before Wadley, in fact — just south and east of Midville.  Where the Deep Creek, also a tributary of the Ogeechee crosses the Old Savannah Road there was Oglesby Road.  Oglesby is the spelling of the last name on the cattle brand marks registered for James and 3 of his children Peter, Ann and John.  Had the creek name changed? Had Ogilvies, James’s younger children, moved here from Boggy Gut after the revolution?  More research will be required but certainly all through the area the cemetaries are full of Oglesbys dating back into the early 19th century — certainly people born around the time of the Revolution.  If Peter had 6 kids, at least 3 sons, then it is likely we have cousins here and maybe I found a cluster.

There are at least 4 Baptist Churches on the Mt. Olivet Road running back south from the Old Savannah Road — we checked out every Cemetary — newer the further south we went.  There were dozens of Oglesbys — I think we’ll find that the Oglesby Road is James’s and Peter’s land grant locations.  We didn’t really see anyone to ask so we really just researching the geography.

We also found where the Boggy Guy crosses the road near Wadley — no Oglesbys or Ogilvies there.  But I took a few pictures anyway.  We also checked out a Cemetary somewhat close to the area — fully of Moxley’s and sad stories.  Something we’ve never seen before in several of these cemetaries was homemade concrete headstones and grave covers.  Sad to see a stone of a baby live for a day and have his epitaph written with a finger in wet cement.  Oh life; I have been so fortunate to have the life I have.  ( Thank you James — yours could not have been easy).

We had a quick drive back — but near midland, just parallel to where we had stopped near Deep Creek we saw the largest flock of Vultures, lined on either side of the highway, we have ever seen.  These are Black Vultures ( I believe — I’ve only seen pictures before) and not the Turkey Vultures we get in Ontario.   One half of the Flock was lined on the railings and under the carport of a baptist church.  This was creepy as heck after spending a day looking through at least 6 Cemetaries — some untended.  Baptists are a severe lot — but 50 Vultures? One of the 7 seals?

At that point Lorraine was happy to leave me to finish my Creative Writing Assignment ( If only I’d seen the Vultures a week ago — there’s a story there for sure) and go shopping.

Dinner in the trailer tonight — our first truly home cooked dinner in the trip so far. Between the fridge and BBQ lunches we’ve not had dinner in the trailer yet beyond Toast and Peanut Butter.  This was Caesar(ish) Salad with Shrimp, Eggs and Tomato with oven-crisped bread on the side — yummy.