by Robert S. Davis, Jr.

Georgia's Colonial Rangers

General James Oglethorpe, Georgia's founder, held colonial provincial rangers in high regard. Such mounted troops could patrol vast frontier areas, wherever and in whatever numbers they were needed. Unlike the citizen militia, the rangers were a permanent professional military force. They did not require mustering or operate under special legal restrictions. Oglethorpe's troop numbered as many as fifteen officers and 122 enlisted men; and they were with him at his great victory at Bloody Marsh in 1742.1 With the end of his war with Spain and the removal of the British regulars in 1749, the rangers were disbanded. Georgia's defenses against the neighboring French and Spanish provinces consisted of only the poorly equipped, indifferently trained militia. Until long after the American Revolution, most of the province's boundaries adjoined the Cherokee and Creek lands. War parties could potentially reach anywhere within the colony in a day, even to the capital at Savannah.

In light of Bosomworth's accusations, the incident that brought back the Georgia rangers seems highly suspicious. On September 10, 1756, James Lambert reported that four Indians attacked the settlement where he and Andrew Clement lived, near present-day Louisville. However, when the smoke cleared, three of the Indians were dead and the fourth, wounded, had fled into the swamps. The frontiersmen only suffered only one casualty, one wounded horse. Georgians petitioned Governor John Reynolds to raise troops. The colonial commons house of assembly urged him to raise a troop of rangers to consist of six officers and seventy enlisted men. By December, Reynolds enlisted a troop of forty men under Captain John Barnard, Oglethorpe's former ranger commander. The next month, the House requested that the governor bring the unit up to full strength and to raise two additional troops of seventy men each. Reynolds appointed the officers but, without the means to pay for the men he already had, he could not add more soldiers.3

Henry Ellis succeeded Reynolds as governor and inherited the problem of the rangers. He paid for what men he had with £200 advanced to Reynolds by John Campbell (Lord Loudon), commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America. Loudon would advance Ellis a further £850, but when that ran out the governor laid off troops until all that remained were "twenty odd," rangers carried on his own credit. Governor Ellis wrote that the rangers were "well calculated for the

Country being trained to charge both on foot, and on horseback and to ride full speed thro' the Woods."4 The British government took over the cost of Ellis' troop in May 1759 and the following year authorized the creation of the Second Troop.5 Each troop consisted of five officers (a captain, three lieutenants, and a quartermaster), a cadet or cadets, and seventy enlisted men.

The officers of the two troops were wealthy and prominent Georgia landowners, traders, or merchants. John Milledge became the captain of the first troop on September 2, 1757, following the death of Bernard. Milledge had been one of Georgia's first settlers and had become one of the colony's wealthiest men. In Oglethorpe's rangers, he had served as quartermaster. His son John Jr. served as a cadet. The younger Milledge would become a staunch patriot in the American Revolution and later serve as governor. He gave his name to Milledgeville, Georgia's antebellum capital. Perennial colonial office holder James Edward Powell commanded the Second Troop. In 1758, he had the responsibility for breaking up the bizarre attempt by Edmund Gray to establish his own colony on the Satilla River. Powell remained loyal to the King during the American Revolution, for which the new state of Georgia had him banished.

The enlisted men were not so prominent and many of them apparently were recruited from outside of Georgia. Few of these common soldiers owned any land and some of them may have even been criminals.6 When not on special assignment, the rangers were divided among a number of permanent outposts throughout the colony, notably Fort George near Savannah; Fort Barrington on the southern frontier; and the fort at Augusta. They maintained patrols that arrested criminals and unruly settlers; watched for marauding Indians; and captured escaped slaves. Recruitment also became a continuous task.

Their routine had several significant interruptions. The rangers were, in some ways, both the ancestors of today's Georgia national guard and state patrol. Captain Milledge and his troop escorted an Indian peace party to Savannah in 1757 and a year later marched to Ebenezer to prevent travelers from going to Augusta and elsewhere in the province where small pox had broken out. Shortly afterward, they marched to Savannah to prevent a breakout from the colony's over crowded jail. The rangers next escorted Indian agent Edward Akin to Fort Moore, South Carolina. In 1760, during South Carolina's troubles with the Cherokees, the rangers worked to keep the war from spilling over into Georgia. They were aided by friendly Indians working for scalp bounties. When Georgia Governor James Wright traveled to Augusta for a meeting of southern governors and Indian leaders in 1763, he had an escort of fifty rangers under Second Lieutenant Moses Nunez Rivers of the First Troop and Third Lieutenant Mungo Graham of the Second Troop. Rivers also acted as an Indian translator. In November 1765, Lieutenant Robert Baillie of the First Troop received orders to break up a nest of "villains" on the Canoochee River.7

The rangers most important mission occurred in January 1766. At that time, a mob of 200 to 600 Liberty Boys attempted to seize the stamped paper brought to Georgia under the notorious Stamp Act. Governor Wright, with musket in hand, led fifty-four rangers in protecting the paper at the guard house in Savannah. They later moved the paper to Fort George. The rangers protected the

stamp master as well as the stamps, allowing Georgia to become the only one of the thirteen colonies to later rebel that issued, however briefly, stamped paper. Wright did not dare call out the militia for fear that he would have armed more Georgians against him than for him.8

The rangers also participated in a number of official ceremonies, such as the King's birthdays and the accession of George III in 1761. The most important such event for the Georgia troops came in 1763 with the reading of the proclamation ending the French and Indian Wars. As a result, the formerly French controlled provinces on Georgia's western frontier came under British control. Due in part to the reduced threat to the west, but more probably because of a reduction in military expenditures, the rangers were mustered out of existence on March 31, 1767. The troopers received bonuses to help them return to their home colonies although some of them, including the Herd family, would later settle in Georgia.

Governor Wright reestablished a troop of rangers in 1773, paid for from proceeds from the sales of the newly acquired Ceded Lands, today's Wilkes and surrounding counties on Georgia's then northern frontier. These soldiers were stationed at Fort James and the fort at Wrightsborough, as well as at other outposts in the new territory. Officers were again from the upper class and were given policing powers by virtue of commissions as justice of the peace. The new unit had as a commander Captain Edward Bernard, brother of ranger captain John Barnard and former second lieutenant of the Second Troop. Thomas Waters served as first lieutenant. He had been quartermaster of the old Second Troop. During the American Revolution, he would become one of Georgia's most prominent Loyalists. Timothy Bernard, son of Captain John Bernard, became the third lieutenant. He would later have a career as an Indian agent. Following the death of Edward Bernard on June 6, 1775, James Edward Powell, the former commander of that same Second Troop, became the captain of the Ceded Lands Rangers.

Recruits for this unit seem to have come from a variety of colonies and to have been the same sort of landless vagrants who enlisted in the earlier ranger troops. Each man had a uniform consisting of a blue coat faced in red, with a red jacket, blue or buckskin pants, and cloth boots. A Georgia ranger came equipped with a rifle, two dragoon pistols, a sword, a powder horn, a shot pouch, and a tomahawk. Unfortunately for Governor Wright, by 1775 he had no rangers to uphold his authority and fled when the province's rebels took control of the government. Indeed, the enlisted men of a new ranger troop in the "Ceded Lands" had abandoned the King's cause, and hence Wright, and joined the First Battalion of the Georgia Continentals in 1776.9