Georgia Natural Wonder #220 - Elijah Clark State Park - Elijah Clarke/John Dooly. 543

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Georgia Natural Wonder #220 - Elijah Clark State Park

We have talked about Elijah Clarke in many post on this Forum, the namesake of UGA's current county. Today we are going to do a deep dive on him and John Dooly and the State Park where they currently rest. Our Natural Wonder is another State Park and it is quite worthy for its beauty and lakefront sun sets.



Elijah Clark State Park is a 447-acre Georgia state park located in Lincolnton, on the western shore of Clarks Hill Lake (I refuse to call the Georgia side Lake Strom Thurmond).



The park is named for Elijah Clarke, a frontiersman and war hero who led a force of pioneers in Georgia during the American Revolution. A reconstructed log cabin displays colonial life with furniture and tools dating back to 1780.



The park is also the site of the graves of Clark and his wife, Hannah. They lay atop Clarks Hill close to John Dooly Spring.



The graves of Elijah and Hannah Clarke were first moved from their original burial places near Graball, Georgia (10 miles North) to a site on the Community House Grounds in Lincolnton, Georgia in 1952 to prevent inundation by the Clarks Hill Lake. Following the establishment of Elijah Clark Memorial State Park by Legislative enactment, the graves were removed to the present site in 1955 by special dispensation of the Army Corps of Engineers.



The grave site is an enclosure with historical marker just inside the park grounds.



A museum is also housed in a period log cabin near the memorial.

   

About a quarter mile from the park entrance is Dooly Spring. The spring is the location where the Revolutionary War Patriot, John Dooly once lived. Dooly fought with Elijah Clark and was killed here by a band of Loyalists.



This park is located on the western shore of 71,100 acre Clarks Hill Lake, one of the largest lakes in the Southeast.



Where is this cliff on Clarks Hill?



With its boat ramps and accessible fishing pier, it is especially popular with anglers and boaters.



"Elijah Clark State Park, a gem of Georgia’s freshwater coast, offers you a glimpse back at our Revolutionary Era history and abundant recreational opportunities in the beautiful setting of Clarks Hill Lake."



A sandy swimming beach welcomes visitors to cool off during Georgia summers.



Rental cottages are located on the edge of the lake and the spacious campground is nestled into the forest.





Tent campers will enjoy extra privacy in the walk-in section.



Comments

Lakeside activities feature everything from picnicking to swimming to boat rentals.



The views can’t even be real...simply a gorgeous place in the fall to unwind and relax.



The leaves are changing, people are boating, kayaking and just enjoying nature.



THE MOST STUNNING SUNSET!! WOW!! Right from the comfort of our site over dinner.



There are 2 trails available at Elijah Clark State Park.

Hannah Clark Trail

This trail, which begins at a trail head near the park office and ends near the archery range, is a classic out and back style trail.



Along the trail visitors may encounter white tail deer, foxes, turkey and a multitude of other plant and wildlife.



One of the main features of the trail are the bridges that cross the small creeks fed from the Dooly Spring, which occupies private property adjacent to the park.



3-Mile Trail

This trail takes visitors through dense mixed pine and hardwood forest.



At the same time it offers breathtaking views of Clarks Hill Lake from the several overlook/rest areas located on the trail.



Damn worthy of a GNW ranking down here at 219.





TRD Adendum


Hounds on the lake.


Map of Park.

I may do some more on Clarks Hill Lake when I come to Mistletoe State Park. But from my Google search there is evidently a large rocky cliff on Clarks Hill Lake that may also qualify as a Natural Wonder of Georgia.



Couple good YouTubes jumping the rock.



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Tangent on Elijah Clarke

Among the few heroes of the Revolutionary War from Georgia, Elijah Clarke (sometimes spelled “Clark”) was born in 1742, the son of Scotch-Irish parents John Clarke near Tarboro in Edgecombe County, Province of North Carolina. Information about Elijah Clarke’s life is sparse and at times contradictory. He was a Revolutionary War hero, Indian fighter, and land speculator. He acquired no formal education. As a young man he moved to Anson County, where he built a home for himself and his family on the edge of the wilderness. He married Hannah Harrington around 1763.  Disturbed by many of the grievances that motivated the Regulators, he determined to leave North Carolina and in 1771 moved to a grant on the Pacolet River in Spartanburg County, S.C. He found South Carolina unsatisfactory for farming, so in 1773 he pushed on to Wilkes County, Ga. As an impoverished, illiterate frontiersman, he appeared in the ceded lands, on what was then the northwestern frontier of Georgia, in 1773.


Clarke.

Clarke’s name appears on a petition in support of the king’s government in 1774. While Clarke apparently signed the petition, with the outbreak of war he became a supporter of the rebellion. He subsequently joined the rebels and served in the Georgia Militia during the American Revolutionary War. Here he quickly gained prominence as a captain of the militia and a strong advocate of independence. His reknown grew even more rapidly once the Revolution began; he became a leading partisan commander in Georgia.



The Georgian partisan force was fighting against not only the British, but Creek and Cherokee Indians on whose land white settlers were encroaching. As a militia captain, he received a wound fighting the Cherokees in 1776. The following year, he commanded militia against Creek raiders. As a lieutenant colonel in the state minutemen, Clarke received another wound at the Battle of Alligator Bridge, Florida in 1778.



In June 1778,Decisive battle of the 3rd Florida Expedition fought at Alligator Bridge. After breaching the outer perimeter, American forces under command of Col. Elijah Clark were routed by British Regulars and Florida Rangers.



When the state troops disbanded after the surrender of Savannah, he became a lieutenant colonel in the Wilkes County Militia. He fought in the southern theater and served under Col. Andrew Pickens on February 14, 1779.



As a lieutenant colonel of militia, Clarke led a charge in the rebel victory at Kettle Creek, Georgia. He was largely responsible for the patriots' victory at Kettle Creek, and was promoted to colonel by General Andrew Pickens.

Kettle Creek

At the same time 340 South Carolina and Georgia militiamen, under Colonel Andrew Pickens of South Carolina and Colonel John Dooly of and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke of Georgia, were preparing to attack Colonel John Boyd's camp at Kettle Creek in Georgia.



Boyd was apparently unaware that he was being followed so closely, and his camp, even though guards were posted, was not particularly alert.



Pickens led the center of his 200 men in a direct assault on the rocky hill on Kettle Creek, while Dooly and Clarke attacked the camp across the creek on the left and right respectively. Pickens's advance guard disobeyed orders and fired on the Loyalist sentries, announcing the attack. Boyd formed a defensive line near the camp's rear and advanced with a force of 100 men to oppose Pickens at a crude breastwork made of fencing and fallen trees. Pickens, whose advance gave him the advantage of high ground, was able to flank this position, even though his own wings were slowed by the swampy conditions near the creek.



Boyd led his men in ambushing Pickens's troops while Dooly's and Clarke's men were entangled in the swamp.



By all accounts, outnumbered and caught by surprise, the Patriots were losing the battle.



Clarke alertly noticed some high ground across the creek that they seemed to be heading for and led some of his men there, having his horse shot from under him in the process. The Loyalist line was eventually broken, and its men were killed, captured, or dispersed.



Surrounded on 3 fronts, with the creek to their back, about 450 Tories followed Boyd's second in command, Maj. Spurgen, across Kettle Creek. While they were crossing the creek, Clarke emerged on the other side and charged with 50 men. The Loyalists fled, soundly defeated.



From beginning to end, the Battle of Kettle Creek lasted about four hours.



33 Patriot prisoners being held by Boyd were freed when their captors were scattered.



Colonel Thomas Brown and his rangers, now styled the King's Rangers, garrisoned Augusta. In 1779 Brown became superintendent of the Creek and Cherokee Indians and attempted to employ them against rebel resistance according to his original plan.


Brown

In September 1780, however, Brown was surprised by a raid of approximately 600 Georgians under Clarke at his camp in Augusta. Elijah Clarke's failed attack upon Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown in September 1780 was a prelude to the American victory at Kings Mountain.



In the course of a four-day battle Brown was again wounded but was relieved by British reinforcements from Ninety-Six, South Carolina. Either Brown or Lieutenant Colonel John Harris Cruger, who outranked him, ordered thirteen American prisoners hanged in accordance with Lord Cornwallis standing order regarding those who swore to lay down their arms and took them up again. For better protection of Augusta, Brown constructed Fort Cornwallis on the grounds of St. Paul's Church, dismantling the church in the process.



All of Georgia and most of South Carolina fell to the British in 1780. Individual commanders led small groups of Rebel militia whose major job was to see that the backcountry did not fall into anarchy. James Jackson, William Few, Elijah Clark and John Dooly commanded the largest and best organized of these militia. They were so despised by Governor James Wright that a force of Regulars was sent to dispatch the leaders. They did find Dooly, who was murdered in his home in front of his two young sons.



Since the defeat of the Continental Army at Savannah the British had been trying to make inroads with the farmers in the Georgia backcountry. Repeated attempts to disarm those not trusted by the British and Tories met with little success. These soldiers and militia met Whig resistance with force, killing men, assaulting women and children, and destroying property. As Clarke returned from his near victory at Augusta he stumbled upon a group of some 400 backcountry women and children who were fleeing the ravages of these British and Tory soldiers. He and his men escorted them to the Watauga Valley of North Carolina (now Tennessee), firmly in the control of the Whigs whom he had aided at Musgrove's Mill.




Ford by Musgrove's Mill.

Elijah Clarke and thirty men passed through the Native American lands to continue the fight in the Carolinas. After the British capture of Charleston in 1780, Clarke and his Georgians participated in the guerilla campaign against the British and their supporters in the South Carolina backcountry. As a partisan, Clarke led frontier guerrillas in inflicting a heavy toll against the British and American Loyalists at Musgrove’s Mill.



He was one of three American commanders at the Battle.



Georgia militia were called on by Col. Isaac Shelby of North Carolina to assist in driving the British from an encampment at Musgrove's Mill on the Enoree River.



Elijah Clarke answered this call with some 300 men, and helped Shelby rout the British foes on August 19, 1780.



Clarke suffered a serious wound during the battle.


The hill the Rebels defended at Musgrove's Mill

His return trip took him through South Carolina, where he meted out justice to the Tory occupiers at Thicketty Fort, Cedar Springs, Wofford’s Iron Works, Fishdam Ford, Long Cane, and Blackstocks. Clarke's militia then joined Thomas Sumter to win the Battle of Blackstock (variously described as a ferry, a plantation or a farm), defeating Banistre Tarleton on November 20, 1780.


Battle Blackstock farm.

He was wounded again at Long Cane, and defeated Major Dunlap—the man who had burned Pickens's home—at Beattie's Mill.



Besides receiving several battle wounds, Clarke also survived smallpox and the mumps during the Revolution. Although he was not present at the battles at King’s Mountain and Cowpens, his campaigns were partially responsible for both of those major patriot victories.

The Liberation of Georgia

Clarke returned home and after a brief rest reformed his brigade to attack Augusta. Clarke nearly succeeded in taking Augusta from Loyalist Thomas Brown in 1779, but was stymied when British Regulars arrived from Ninety-six in support of Brown's militia. Returning to Georgia his men dispersed for Winter. Spring would bring better news. As Cornwallis moved further from his base in the South, it became easier for guerillas to operate effectively. Colonel Isaac Shelby raided Georgia, killing some forty Loyalists.


Shelby.

Thomas Brown and Colonel James Grierson, Loyalists in charge of Augusta, could not mount a retaliatory offensive against the agitators. Shelby, though, was not the Augusta commanders major problem.


Grierson.

Elijah Clarke reformed his brigade in the Spring of 1781 and joined with a group of South Carolina militia under the command of Micajah Williamson to invest the city of Augusta.


Williamson's grave.

If it seems that Clarke was obsessed with freeing Augusta, he was. The city was an outpost connected to Savannah by the 80 mile River Road. The few British troops in the state remained in Savannah and Ebenezer, where they guarded vital outposts such as Hudson's Ferry on the River Road.


Guarding the Ferry.

On May 20, 1781, Clarke and Williamson got welcome support from General Andrew Pickens, in command of a group of South Carolina militia and Lieutenant Colonel Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, who had learned tactical cavalry support under Casimir Pulaski. Colonel Lee commanded the first Continentals to make it to Georgia in a year and a half.



A second group of Continentals, under the new Commander of the Southern Department Nathanael Greene was laying siege to Ninety Six not far from Augusta.


Siege of Ninety-Six.

Clarke and the other Georgia commanders were greatly relieved at Lee's arrival. On May 21, Lee and Pickens raid Fort Galphinton on Silver Bluff, securing a significant amount of British stores including munitions. On May 25 they took Fort Grierson, and on June 5 the patriots secured Augusta. Grierson, who had been so abusive to the upcountry Whigs, was killed after the surrender of the city. He was murdered under the nose of General Andrew Pickens, who sat 10 paces away. His body was stripped of clothing, and mutilated, mob style and thrown out of the fort. He was later interred there at the fort, most likely in an unmarked grave. The murder was considered, even decades afterwards to be an Assassination by the British population.



After two weeks of fierce fighting in Augusta, during which Americans dug trenches near the fort and mounted a cannon on an improvised tower, Brown, together with his rangers and their Indian allies, surrendered on June 5, 1781.





Now that Augusta was freed Elijah Clarke decided to address a problem that had plagued Wilkes County for years. Living somewhere in the Cherokee Nation, a group of white men had been raiding the farms in the county since the British had taken the state, preying on the weakened conditions of the upland farmers. Clarke did not know exactly where these raiders were living, but he figured it had to be in the southeastern corner of the Nation.

Heggies Rock

Two small battles occurred in what would become the County during the Revolutionary War between Patriot Militia and Torries; the area was then primarily still frontier and loyalties were badly divided. Legend has it that a small band of Patriots sought refuge from marauding Tories at the County's most anomalous geological feature, Heggie's Rock.



One of these fights occurred on September 11th, 1781, between the forces of Elijah Clarke and a band of Torries and British Soldiers.



At the end of 1781, the Cherokee invaded Georgia once again with a group of Muscogee. By the fall of 1782, Lt. Col. Thomas Waters of the Loyalist Rangers, formerly stationed at Fort Ninety-Six in South Carolina, had retreated to the frontier of Cherokee-Muscogee territory just outside Georgia. From his base at the mouth of Long Swamp Creek on Etowah River, he and his remaining rangers, in conjunction with Cherokee and Muscogee warriors, ravaged backwoods homesteads and settlements.



The states of South Carolina and Georgia sent out a joint expedition led by Andrew Pickens and Elijah Clarke to put an end to his insurgency. Evading the American force, the Cherokee withdrew, adopting a scorched earth strategy to deny their foes supplies. The force eventually retreated, opening the back country to further raids.Leaving September 16, they invaded that section of the country, ranging at least as far as Ustanali, where they took prisoners. Just east of Traveler's Rest in Georgia, they raided Tugaloo Old Town, Nachoochee Valley (near Helen, Georgia) and headed west to Long Swamp Creek, the major settlement of the area. Here Clarke and Pickens engaged and defeated the Cherokee, forcing them to surrender the men who had been raiding the white settlements and a large portion of land. In all they destroyed thirteen towns and villages. By October 22, Waters and his men had escaped and the Cherokee sued for peace.



For his services in the war, North Carolina presented him with a gratuity of thirty thousand dollars and Georgia rewarded his services and granted him the plantation of Thomas Waters, a Loyalist. He also obtained thousands of acres of land grants, some by questionable methods, and participated in the notorious Yazoo land fraud of the 1790s.



After the war Clarke served in the Georgia House of Assembly from 1781 to 1790, on the commission of confiscated estates, and in the state constitutional convention of 1789. He also acted as a commissioner for Georgia’s treaties with Native American groups. He negotiated a series of Indian treaties, and was promoted to brigadier general of the militia.



As a general of militia, he led his men in defeating the Creeks at Jack’s Creek, in present-day Walton County, on September 21, 1787.



In 1793, frustrated by Spanish intrigues in Georgia, he joined a venture sponsored by Citizen Genet, the French minister to the United States, to drive the Spanish out of Florida. Clarke resigned his commission in the Georgia Militia to become a major general in the French army at a salary of ten thousand dollars a year. But Genet's recall was soon demanded by the Washington administration, and the plot came to nothing.



The following year, Clarke became involved in another scheme to relieve Georgia of an oppressor, this time the Creeks. Clarke grew impatient with the failures of the national and state government to bring peace to the frontier and took matters into his own hands. Instead of invading Florida, Clarke led men from Wilkes County into Creek lands. In the process he hoped to acquire additional lands for himself. He led a body of troops across the Oconee River into Creek territory and even went so far as to draft a constitution and erect a chain of forts in his "Trans-Oconee State" In 1794 he organized several settlements in traditional Creek territory, on hunting grounds reserved by the federal Treaty of New York (1790) exclusively for the Creek Indians. Georgia had not been consulted on the original treaty and many Georgians viewed it unfavorably because they saw it as limiting the possibilities for the future expansion of their state. Clarke's frontiersmen made settlements on lands in present-day Greene, Morgan, Putnam, and Baldwin counties of Georgia. The settlers built several towns and forts over the next few months. They also wrote and ratified their own constitution, indicating the permanent intention of their endeavor. With little overt opposition from the Creek, they were taking control of the lands before the state or federal governments could react.



From there he attacked Creek villages, before Governor George Mathews of Georgia, at the request of the federal government, forced the abandonment of Clarke's republic. The United States government viewed Clarke's actions as a violation of the Treaty of New York, which provided recognition of Creek lands in an effort to maintain peace and guarantee their neutrality. President George Washington pressured Mathews to remove the illegal settlers from the Creek lands. Mathews initially ignored the "unauthorized military expedition", because he shared the state's resentment of the treaty and was aware of Clarke's popularity as a hero of the Revolution. He took only token measures to stop Clarke and his party, such as issuing a proclamation in July 1794 that went unenforced. It is unlikely that Mathews had enough public support to move against Clarke at that juncture, but the tide of public opinion eventually changed and he took actions to remove the rogue general from power. In September, 1200 Georgia militiamen, acting in conjunction with federal troops stationed on the Oconee, surrounded and isolated General Clarke's fortifications. After some negotiation, Clarke surrendered without a fight after receiving a promise of amnesty that provided that he and his men would not face prosecution for their actions. Clarke and his followers departed, and the militia burned down the new settlements and fortifications. Clarke returned home without any charges being pressed against him: his popularity in Georgia defeated attempts by some citizens to have him arrested.


Georgia Militia ready to kick ass.

Wait a minute General Elijah Clarke was attacked and forced to surrender by the state of Georgia?


Clarke cabin near Lincolnton.


Clarke Grave Clarke Hill.

At least twice, he became involved in plots to invade neighboring Spanish East Florida. In 1795, Clarke joined another expedition whose object was the expulsion of Spain from Florida. He organized an army of three hundred men, known as the Sans Culottes, and actually invaded Spanish territory before the scheme was again frustrated by Mathews.

Death and legacy

He continued to be involved in land speculations until his death at his Wilkes County home. Disenchanted with a settled Georgia, discredited, and almost bankrupt, Elijah Clarke died in Augusta on December 5, 1799. He was buried at Woodburn in Lincoln County, Ga. Clarke County, on the former Oconee frontier, is named for him. Clarke County, in northeast Georgia, is the state's twenty-sixth county.



Clarke was instrumental in securing treaties with the Creeks in 1782 and the Cherokees in 1792, which temporarily halted hostilities between settlers of European descent and the indigenous Native American populations.


Clarke


In nearby Lincolnton, Clarke’s cabin.

Several of his descendants have been prominent in politics, including his son John Clark, governor of Georgia from 1819 to 1823.



Married to Hannah Harrington, Clarke fathered eight children, including John Clark, above. There is a portrait of Elijah Clarke at the Georgia Department of Archives and History.



Clarke and his actions served as one of the sources for the fictional character of Benjamin Martin in The Patriot, a film released in 2000. He is also a major character in the historical novel The Hornet's Nest by Jimmy Carter.



Tangent John Dooly

The colonel was Georgia’s first folk hero. His life is an epic heroic tale of how he lost his brother Thomas in an Indian attack, led his forces to victory at the Battle of Kettle Creek, and died as a martyr to the American cause. This story inspired more legends and even a variation on a Boy Scout marching song. Tales were told of woman warrior Nancy Hart capturing the Dooly’s killers. American humor literature began in part with the sayings of Judge John Mitchell Dooly, the colonel’s son and whom the story goes was treated with great deference by the famed crippled black Revolutionary War veteran Austin Dabney.


Dooley Spring at Elijah Clarke State Park

The spring, to the left of this marker, was used by the John Dooly family.



The simple log cabin, in which Colonel John Dooly and his family resided, was situated across the road opposite the spring. It was here that Colonel Dooly was murdered by a band of Tories.

History

Early twentieth-century Georgia historian Otis Ashmore wrote that "of the many heroic men who illustrated that stormy period of the Revolution in Georgia that 'tried men's souls' none deserves a more grateful remembrance by posterity than Col. John Dooly." Almost all of the source material on Dooly came from Hugh McCall's The History of Georgia (1816). Collectively, what McCall wrote about the colonel formed an heroic tale of a martyred battlefield leader in the struggle for American independence who lost a brother in an Indian attack, led Patriot forces to victory over the Tories at the Battle of Kettle Creek and, finally, died at the hands of Tories in his own home. Unintentionally, McCall gave literature its first Georgia folk hero.


Hugh! (Durham)

A name that abounds in Georgia legend, John Dooley was not a native to the area. Dooley’s colonial origins lay in South Carolina where he worked as a merchant, surveyor, and land developer in the 1760s. It was in 1772 that Dooley had Georgia on his mind when he mortgaged 2,050 acres of his South Carolina land to finance investment in the neighboring colony of Georgia. His investment led him to become a surveyor in Georgia, where he eventually took control of a 500 acre plantation situated upon the Savannah River.



The Southern colony had initially opposed the revolution because of their peaceful lives under Georgia’s progressive royal governor, Sir James Wright. The back country dissenters argued that Georgia had no connection with troubles over taxation, tea, or Boston, and that the province depended upon the king's protection from the neighboring tribes of Indians. Many Georgia men, including Dooly, signed protests in opposition to the oncoming conflict between Patriot and British forces. While the Southern colony had little connection to the colonial unrest in Boston, it depended upon the British for protection against Native Americans. Dooly actively participated in the efforts for home defense by serving as a colonel in a vigilante militia.



While initially opposed to revolution, Dooly had been slowly swayed to the side of revolution. Georgia rebels saw the revolution as an opportunity for social, economic, and political progress in the southern frontier, an issue that had laid idle in the hands of British rule. In his revolutionary pursuits, Dooly stepped up as captain of his local militia company, with his brother Thomas as a first lieutenant. He also became justice of the peace and deputy surveyor. Frontiersmen like Dooly had significant military experience to contribute to this new rebel army. Far from being a mob, the frontiersmen had decades of experience in military organization and discipline. Even his father in Virginia in the 1760s had been a member of the militia. Andrew Pickens, John Dooly's later ally had also served in the militia in the French and Indian War, alongside British regulars whose cruelty he found appalling. On February 11, 1776, Governor Wright fled to a British vessel after frontiersmen fired at but missed the royal official.



Defending his adopted home of Georgia, as those same ships threatened Savannah, Dooly marched his company for four days from the Ceded Lands to reach the threatened town for the Battle of the Rice Boats.



In the summer of 1776, Dooly and his men proceeded to join an expedition that resulted in the destruction of two Cherokee villages. Sixty of his neighbors under Jacob Colson headed for South Carolina to help in putting down a counter revolution by the king's supporters. In response to Cherokee Indian raids of that summer of 1776, Dooly and his company, as part of an expedition under Maj. Samuel Jack, destroyed two villages.



By 1777, Dooly became captain of a new Georgia Continental cavalry regiment. As captain of a new regiment, Dooly set forth on a journey to recruit. He enlisted 97 men in North Carolina and Virginia by illegally signing on deserters. The consequences of making a commitment into the Revolution now affected John Dooly in a most personal way. On July 22, 1777, Thomas Dooly, with twenty-one men in two companies, set out to return to their post after having recovered some horses stolen by Creek war parties led by Emistisiguo. Some two miles from Skull Shoals on the Oconee River, fifty Indians launched an ambush. Thomas Dooly fell with a wound to his heel string. Unable to move, he cried out in vain to his fleeing comrades not to leave him to suffer death at the hands of the Indians.


Emistisiguo

Learning such news, he seized an oncoming Creek peace delegation meeting with Indian Agent George Galphin so to seek revenge for the death of his brother. Upon Dooly’s unruly action, his superiors were infuriated and compelled him to release the delegation, stand trial, and resign from his position. However, it wasn’t long until Dooly returned to a position of power.




Galphin and his plantation above.

Within a year Dooly became a representative for Wilkes County in Georgia’s new legislative body. In addition, he became colonel of the Wilkes County militia. He was celebrated for his victory against Creek raiders in the summer of 1778. In 1778, and during the years that followed, Dooly and his neighbors erected a string of forts to provide additional protection from Indian attack. These forts served as only temporary refuge, however. The settlers could not live all the while in forts, because they must gain subsistence from the land, and they could not live all the while on their farms without imminent danger.


Frontier Fort Georgia.

Dooly was not known for his compliancy and became a foe of Brigadier General Andrew Williamson when he failed to cooperate with South Carolina militia when they came to the aid of Wilkes County. Wilkes County was indeed in need of assistance as Georgia’s capital, Savannah, was captured by British forces in December of 1778.


No found images Williamson, but did find Historical Marker mentioning him in South Carolina.

Dooly pursued Tory horsemen across Wilkes County, northeast to southwest, from Thomas Waters's plantation, near the mouth of the Broad River, to Heard's Fort. They finally caught up with and besieged their prey at Robert Carr's Fort, near the Little River and the last outpost in Wilkes County that the horsemen intended to visit. After an attempt to entrap the Loyalists between the fort and his men failed, Pickens had the fort's water supply cut off as he prepared to use a burning wagon and even cannons to force the besieged into surrendering. He then received news that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Loyalists from North and South Carolina were en route to Georgia with the clear intention of joining the British in Augusta. Pickens chose to give up the siege of Carr's Fort and withdrew his forces in the night on February 12.


Heards Fort Marker - Finding Carr's Fort.

Kettle Creek

Men of the two state militias had already joined and clashed with the oncoming Loyalist force with disastrous results at Vann's Creek, Georgia, on February 10. Pickens's and Dooly's combined Whig command tried to pursue the Loyalists in South Carolina and then, into Wilkes County, before rendezvousing with the survivors of the Vann's Creek battle. The militiamen found themselves back at Carr's Fort two nights after having left it and after two days of long marches. Colonel John Boyd and his regiment of North and South Carolina Loyalists camped at a cowpen or small farm in a meadow atop a steep hill in a bend of swampy Kettle Creek, less than a mile from Carr's Fort and hardly much further from Wrightsborough, on Sunday morning February 14. Pickens then ordered a complicated attack through thick canebrakes, creeks, and woods with his combined force of only three hundred and forty men. The some six hundred Loyalists who held a strong position on both sides of the creek knew that they were being pursued, but they had a capable leader in Colonel Boyd, a man reportedly known to Pickens and quite possibly an acquaintance of Dooly.



Pickens sent Dooly and Clarke to lead columns through the woods and swamps to assault the enemy camp on the flanks. When Pickens directed his own men up a narrow path to attack a cowpen atop the hill in the center, Boyd launched an ambush. Dooly would later write that only the hand of Providence saved him, Clarke, and Pickens, as they exposed themselves on horseback during the fight at Kettle Creek. Unbeknownst to the militiamen, they had not assaulted the main Loyalist camp, but merely a location where some of their enemy had found a cow to butcher for a meal. Most of the king's men had crossed the creek and camped on the west side, from where they rallied and then decided, individually, whether to join in the fight or slip away to their Carolina homes.



Still, Pickens's usual good luck had held. Many of the Loyalists, having come along only under threats and intimidation, had already deserted before the battle began. Three of Dooly's rifle men found themselves behind the lines and mortally wounded the enemy commander, Boyd. Elijah Clarke, despite having a horse shot out from under him, led a successful charge against Loyalists across the creek. Unable to find John Moore of North Carolina, their second in command, most of the king's men fled, either back to the Carolina's or to sympathizers in the nearby settlement of Wrightsborough. From the latter, 270 of their number would be rescued by their pro-British allies. By the afternoon, Pickens, Dooly, and Clarke had won an overwhelming victory.



In March, Pickens and Dooly continued to defend the frontier and steered a campaign that fended off a massive force of British-allied Native Americans. George Galphin received warning of an approaching pro-British Indian invasion of seven hundred warriors under David Taitt and Emistisiguo.


Taitt's grave.

This force of Indians and Loyalists burned Folsom's Fort and other outposts along the Ogeechee River in what was then western Wilkes County. South Carolina militiamen again came to the rescue. The Indians with Alexander McGillivray met defeat at Rocky Comfort Creek on March 29 at the hands of militiamen under colonels Leroy Hammond of South Carolina and Benjamin Few of Georgia.



The battle resulted in the deaths of nine Indians, including two headmen, and three Loyalists who had accompanied them. Among the three Indians and three "white savages" (white men who lived as Indians) captured was Emistisiguo's son. The next day, Pickens and Dooly led their men against Emistisiguo himself. Three Indians were reportedly killed at the head of the Ogeechee River. In the face of such opposition, most of Taitt's followers deserted; he had only seventy warriors still with him when he reached Savannah. The men of the Georgia militia paraded the scalps of their victims in Augusta although they released Emistisiguo's son as a peace gesture. Pickens and Williamson now had high praise for Dooly and specifically for the intelligence from his network of scouts.


Killing Indians and the Grave of Hammond.

With outstanding Patriot opposition in America’s backcountry, the British withdrew to the coast. Dooly then, acting as the highest-ranking military officer, as a member of the dominant legislative body in Georgia, and as state’s attorney, began his quest to hold Loyalists accountable for their actions. He had them arrested, chained, and tried as traitors – two such Loyalists were even executed!


Mean Mean Mean. One was placed upon a cake of ice and held there “until his loyalty to King George might cool.”

Despite such a grim situation, with Augusta and Savannah now under British and Loyalist control, in June of 1779 Dooly assembled approximately 400 militiamen in an attempt to take back Savannah as British troops gradually left to focus on the invasion of South Carolina.  Dooly committed himself to using the new frontier self-empowerment for driving the British from Savannah and thus ending any hopes of returning the South to colonial rule. He left Elijah Clarke to defend the frontier while he and Burwell Smith led a series of campaigns against a British army that they did not perceive as liberators or protectors. In the summer of 1779, Dooly marched with his militiamen to the mouth of Briar Creek, in Burke County, Georgia, Dooly had the dead from the Battle of Briar Creek buried and recovered a cannon. Whatever Dooly's campaign could have been, he and his men accomplished nothing more than a cattle-rustling raid that frightened Sir James Wright, the royal governor now restored to power in British-occupied Savannah.


Briar Creek mural.

The fight for Savannah was not over in the least bit. By September of 1779, American and French forces laid siege to the city with Dooly and his men joining in on the failed attack on October 9th. For the frontiersmen like Dooly, the uniformed professional French army and fleet, the vast artillery, and the sea of tents provided an inspiring spectacle that they never forgot and which must have seemed to guarantee the success of their cause.This campaign should have been a last turning point that proved to be more decisive than the siege of Yorktown two years later. The professional British army, however, could hardly have been in a better position. Redcoats stranded in South Carolina succeeded in reaching Savannah to join the garrison in concentrating behind extensive fortifications and batteries that the engineers and slave labor erected almost overnight. Within Savannah, the British army, with its white, black, and red allies, had ample supplies of cattle and stores. The besiegers, by contrast, suffered from hunger, disease, and exposure while engaged in grueling but ineffective trench warfare. As part of an makeshift brigade under Lachlan McIntosh, Dooly and his men participated in the disastrous Franco-American attack upon the British lines on October 9, 1779.



The Georgia militia traveled half a mile across a swamp and into a barrage of musket and artillery fire as a British band serenaded them with Come to Maypole, Merry Farmers All. The bullets that fell around them often came from guns fired by Georgia Loyalists. Dooly and his militiamen hastily retreated. Elsewhere on the battlefield, the French army and the American continentals took huge losses while being repulsed largely by North and South Carolinian's loyal to the king, some of whom had survived Kettle Creek. Overall, the allied forces suffered the second highest casualties of any side in a single battle of the Revolution, even without counting the many Americans who had already deserted. Immediately afterwards, the allies began to lift the siege and withdraw. Both sick and discouraged, Colonel Dooly returned home with his men.



The bad luck worsened as in the spring of 1780, a massively reinforced British army forced the surrender of General Lincoln, the continental American army of the South, and Charleston. Now the people of the backcountry had to face the king's army and its allies alone. Andrew Williamson convened a meeting of militia leaders in Augusta to decide what should be done. Dooly and Clarke argued for carrying on a guerrilla war, even without the regular American army, against the British lines around Charleston and Savannah. However, Williamson's South Carolina militiamen compelled him to surrender with them. They all became prisoners of war on parole. Dooly held a similar meeting at his home at Leesburg soon after, with the same result, Dooly and many of his militiamen surrendered themselves and thus, became prisoners of war. William Manson, a Scotsman whose foreign settlement project in the Ceded Lands had failed because of the Revolution, arrived in Wilkes County to accept the surrender of John Dooly and four hundred of the Georgia militia on a ridge outside the town of Washington in late June 1780. Manson acted on behalf of Thomas Brown, a lieutenant colonel in command of Loyalist provincials and Indians who now occupied Augusta. Brown, an Englishman, had suffered terrible torture at the hands of a Whig mob and had also been wounded in battle for the king's cause.


Disfigured Brown and earlier in war in Florida, he fought Clarke back then at Alligator Bridge.

On July 3, 1780, British general Sir Henry Clinton revoked almost all of the paroles, thereby unintentionally freeing Dooly, Pickens, and others to return to the American cause without violating their oaths. Two months later, men who had not joined the restored colonial militia could have their property confiscated. Loyalist leaders such as Brown and Wright believed that Dooly and other men on parole only waited for just such an excuse to return to the war. These concerns seemed justified when, in September 1780, Elijah Clarke led Georgia and South Carolina guerrillas in attacking and nearly capturing Brown and the garrison in Augusta.


Henry Clinton.

Rescued and reinforced by South Carolina Loyalist provincials, the long-suffering Tories and Indians then began a campaign of retaliation as they went from being the oppressed to the avenged, starting with the executions of men captured during Clarke's attack on the Augusta garrison. From John Dooly's home, Lt. Col. J.H. Cruger announced the arrival of his Loyalist force in the Ceded Lands. He dispatched colonial militia under Thomas Waters and others to destroy the forts, courthouse, and settlements of Wilkes County. Wright reported that at least one hundred homes were razed. Families believed to have supported the Revolution followed Clarke into exile, or their men became prisoners confined in Augusta. Exact information has not survived, but John Dooly, having almost no other options, apparently wanted to return to the rebellion. Before he could do so, however, men arrived at his house and killed him.



While in his house one night, in the bosom of his family, a mystery party of Tories, that may have included William McCorkle, William Corker, Joseph Wilder, or John Harris Cruger. With most of the men from South Carolina, they entered at dead of night, and in the most barbarous manner murdered him in the presence of his wife and children. Colonel Dooly was about 45 years of age at the time of his death.  He left a widow and several sons. Loyalist and British leaders learned too late that, through atrocities such as the killing of John Dooly, they created rather than suppressed a widespread uprising. Of the state of Georgia’s dozen chief executives during the Revolution, for example, Archibald Bulloch may have been poisoned; Button Gwinnett and George Wells were killed in political duels; and John Adam Treutlin and Myrick Davies were reportedly executed by Loyalists.



In the latter part of the Revolution, George Dooly led a company in repeatedly taking revenge against the Loyalists/Tories for the deaths of his brothers Thomas, John, and Robert in the American cause. Reportedly, the men they killed included John’s murderers, McCorkle and his associates. 


It is rumored that the men Nancy Hart killed or captured, were escaping Dooly killers.

The American Comeback

The American army in the South would make a decisive comeback under Gen. Nathanael Greene. His professional army, in cooperation with partisans, over the next two years drove the British from the South and started the string of events that directly resulted in the decisive Franco-American victory at Yorktown. Elijah Clarke and other Georgia frontiersmen played significant roles in those battles and campaigns. The former Wilkes County militiamen who had served under John Dooly participated in the major victory at King's Mountain and played critical roles in the American success at the Battle of Cowpens. Emistisiguo's fate also became intertwined with the final days of the Revolution. He had led warriors in attacks on settlers in modern Kentucky and Tennessee who had come to the aid of the American cause at King's Mountain and in Wilkes County. On July 24, 1782, in his final act for his British patrons, he died in hand-to-hand combat with Gen. Anthony Wayne while leading a Creek war party and Loyalists in a desperate but successful effort to break through to the garrison at Savannah. The Creek headman thus joined John Dooly and so many other leaders of their conflicted and conflicting societies in failing to survive the war.


Mad Anthony Wayne.

Reportedly, the modern Elijah Clarke State Park in Lincoln County (created in 1796 from Wilkes County and named for Benjamin Lincoln) encompasses that land, including John Dooly's burial place somewhere near the "Dooly Spring."



Marker is on Elijah Clark State Park Road, 0.1 miles north of U.S. 378, on the left when traveling north. The marker is located in the Elijah Clark State Park. Arrow points left toward the site of the spring.



Dooly County

John's last surviving son, John Mitchell Dooly studied law and would also have the distinction of becoming well known in Georgia literature. He quite likely used the considerable influence he later gained as an important judge and politician, along with John Dooly's notoriety as published in McCall's history, to encourage the state legislature to create a county named for his father in 1821.



That recognition, however, came years after the legislature authorized counties honoring Elijah Clarke, John Twiggs, Button Gwinnett, James Jackson, and many of his father's other contemporaries. Dooly County suffered several Creek Indian attacks in its early years, an irony considering the career of its namesake.

Well so much for doing a tangent on Lincoln County, will have to find another natural Wonder to come back. Tee took me to a Rock formation at Clarks Hill Lake but I can not find any thing on it anywhere on the Internet. Will find it and post as a tribute to Tee. To wrap up today's post, our GNW Gals are the Center of Attraction (Elijah) Clark Bar Gals.