and remained undisturbed from 1798 to 1817, precisely as he left them.  I ventured to remove the cane upon one occasion; and, with a little negro or two, was merrily riding it around in the great lumber-room of the house, where scarcely any one ever went, when she came in and caught me.  The pear-tree sprouts were immediately put into requisition, and the whole party most mercilessly thrashed.  From that day forward the old buckhorn-headed cane was an awful reminder of my sufferings.  She was careful not to injure the clothing of her victims, and made her appeals to the unshielded cuticle, and with a heavy hand for a small woman.

It was an ill-fashioned but powerfully-built house, and remains a monument to this day of sound timber and faithful work, braving time and the storm for eighty-two years.  It was the first framed house 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 eyes, round and liquid; and, Othello-like, telling well the story of his adventures, he very soon beguiled the maiden’s heart, and they were made one.  About this time came off the battles of Concord and Lexington, inaugurating the Revolution.  It was not, however, until after the declaration of independence, that he threw aside the plough and shouldered the musket for American independence.