Letter from Charleston 31 July 1776

Extract of a Letter from Charlestown, South Carolina, Dated July 31, 1776.

We are just setting out for the burning sands of Georgia.  An expedition is planned against part of East Florida.  Two brothers of Governour Wright, with many others, are intrenched on St. Mary's River, which divides Florida from Georgia.
Sir James Wright (1716-1785) served as the royal governor of Georgia from 1760 to 1782.  Mary R. Bullard writes that two of Governor Wright's brothers, Jermyn and Charles, built Wright's Fort in 1773-74.  The simple stockade was on the Georgia side of the St. Marys, about five miles inland from where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean.  Wright's Fort, Bullard explains, became a refuge for Tories (Americans Loyal to Britain) during the American Revolutionary War.  

From St. Augustine, 20 Aug 1776

In a letter, dated August 20, 1776, from an East Florida resident to a Gentleman in London, the St. Augustine resident observed, “The smallest degree of sense or prudence must have shown any person the necessity of keeping this weak, infant Province as much as possible in a state of neutrality….”

Instead, East Florida colonial leaders sent “a body of plunders” into Georgia.  “These freebooters, in the most cruel and wanton manner, destroyed the crops, broke up the plantations, drove off the cattle, and carried away the negroes belonging to several of the Georgia planters.”  In response, the Georgia militia under Colonel Lachlan McIntosh “retaliated on the miserable Colony of East Florida.  Every settlement to the northward of St. John’s River is broken up, particularly Lord Egmont’s, and the planters thrown in the greatest distress.”  John Perceval, Earl of Egmont, owned plantations in East Florida, including Amelia Island, now part of Nassau County, Florida. 
The inhabitant of East Florida added, “The…troops stationed at the new fort on St. Mary’s River are made prisoners, as are also Sir James Wright's two brothers, Charles and Jermyn.”
 
Lord Egmont’s Amelia Island holdings are mentioned in David T. Courtwright, Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996), page 168, quoting Daniel L. Schafer, “‘Yellow Silk Ferret Tied round Their Wrists:’ African Americans in British East Florida, 1763-1784,” in The African American Heritage ofFlorida, ed. David R. Colburn and Jane L. Landers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), page 90.