370 LIBERTY COUNTY. 



they arrived at Midway, so called from its supposed equal dis- 

 tance from the rivers Ogeechee and Alatamaha. Having exa- 

 mined the country, they returned and made their report. About 

 this period the Council of Georgia granted them 31,950 acres 

 of land. In the beginning of August, 1752, six persons set off 

 by land, and seven more by water, to survey the lands and 

 make settlements, but both parties returned without accom- 

 plishing their objects. " On the 6th of December, 1752, Mr. 

 Benjamin Baker and family, Mr. Samuel Bacon and family, 

 arrived at Midway, and proceeded to form a settlement. Soon 

 after, JMessrs. Parmenus Way, William Baker, John Elliott, 

 John Winn, Edward Sumner, and John Quarterman, arrived 

 and began to settle. Finding a general disposition in the peo- 

 ple to remove, the Rev. Mr. Osgood went into the new settle- 

 ment in March, 1754, and the whole church and society gra- 

 dually collected and settled there."* This settlement formed 

 a considerable part of what, in the early division of Georgia 

 into parishes, was called St. John's parish. In 1777, the pa- 

 rishes of St. James, St. Andrew, and St. John, by an act 

 of the Legislature, were formed into Liberty county ; the 

 spirited determination of her inhabitants at the breaking out 

 of the Revolution to send delegates to Congress before the 

 rest of the province had acquiesced in that measure, having 

 induced the Legislature to change the name of St. John's 

 parish to that of Liberty county. 



Situation, Boundaries, Extent. — Liberty county extends 

 from the Atlantic Ocean on the east, where it takes in the 

 island of St. Catherine's, sixty or seventy miles into the inte- 

 rior, where it is connected with Tattnall county on the west. At 

 this latter point it has a breadth of between thirty and forty 

 miles, but at its eastern extremity it is narrowed to a distance 

 of ten or fifteen miles. It is bounded on the N. by the xMedway 

 river, and partly by the Cannouchee ; and on the S. by the South 

 Newport river, Mcintosh county, and the Alatamaha. 



Nature of the Soil, Products, Market. — The eastern 

 part is intersected by many large and dense swamps. The 

 surface is level, and the soil is composed mostly of sand and 



* A short account of the Congregational Church at Midway, Georgia, by 

 John B. Mallard, A. M. 



