built in the county, and I am sure, upon the poorest spot of land
within fifty miles of where it stands. Here was born my uncle,
Robertus Love, who was the first white child born in the State west of
the Ogeechee River.

Colonel Love, my grandfather, was eccentric in many of his opinions,
and was a Puritan in religious faith. Oliver Cromwell was his model of
a statesman, and Praise-God Barebones his type of a Christian. While
he was a boy his father married a second time, and, as is very
frequently the case, there was no harmony between the step-mother and
step-son. Their jarrings soon ripened into open war. To avoid
expulsion from the paternal roof he "bundled and went." Nor did he
rest until, in the heart of the Cherokee nation of Indians, he found a
home with Dragon Canoe, then the principal warrior of the nation, who
resided in a valley amid the mountains, and which is now Habersham
County. With this chief, who at the time was young, he remained some
four years, pursuing the chase for pleasure and profit. Thus
accumulating a large quantity of peltries, he carried them on
pack-horses to Charleston, and thence went with them to Europe. After
disposing of his furs, which proved profitable, he wandered on foot
about Europe for some eighteen months, and then, returning to London,
he embarked for America.

During all this time he had not heard from his family. Arriving at
Charleston he made his way back to the neighborhood of his birth. He
was ferried across the Pedee river by a buxom lass, who captured his
heart. Finding his father dead, he gathered up the little patrimony
left him in his father's will, should he ever return to claim it: he
then returned to the neighborhood of his sweetheart of the ferry; and,
being a fine-looking man of six feet three inches, with great blue