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About William Rabun, Gov of Georgia
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2824
William Rabun (1771-1819)
William Rabun served as governor of Georgia from 1817 until his death in 1819. He was born in Halifax County, North Carolina, on April 8, 1771, to Sarah Warren and Matthew Rabun. He moved with his father to Greene County (which later became part of Hancock County) in central Georgia in 1785. The family home in Powellton is located ten miles northeast of Sparta. In 1793 he married Mary Battle, and the couple had one son and six daughters.
http://www.giddeon.com/wilkes/bios/rabun-w.shtml
During the Seminole war in 1818 Governor Rabun called out the militia, placing the state troops under the command of General Gaines. Capt. Obed Wright of the Chatham militia was ordered to destroy the Indian villages of Hoponee and Philemi in retaliation for outrages committed on the whites of this neighborhood, and by mistake he burned the Indian village of Chehaw and killed some of the inhabitants. General Jackson demanded that Captain Wright be prosecuted for murder and imprisoned and kept in irons awaiting the pleasure of the President. In reply Governor Rabun refused to acknowledge the authority of the United States over the state troops and added, "When the liberties of the people of Georgia shall have been prostrated at the feet of a military despotism, then, and not till then, will your imperious doctrine be tamely submitted to. You may rest assured that if the savages continue their depredations on our unprotected frontier I shall think and act for myself in that respect."
https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/rabun-william
William Rabun, planter, Baptist lay leader, legislator, state senator, and governor of Georgia, was born in Halifax County of Scottish-English ancestry, the son of Matthew and Sarah Warren Rabun. The parents, William, and four sisters moved to Wilkes County, Ga., in 1785, when William was fourteen. In 1786 the Rabun family moved to an area later known as Horeb Baptist Church, four miles south of Powellton, in Greene (later Hancock) County, Ga. William probably was educated at local academies in both North Carolina and Georgia, but it is also likely that he received most of his formal education at home.
William Rabun, like his father, became a planter and a prominent Baptist layman at age seventeen and remained so throughout his life. William Northen reports that "he was a man of fine physique, tall and large, with no surplus flesh. He had brown hair and blue eyes, with a countenance full of kindness." Hancock was the county of his continuing residence and eventual death and burial. He married Mary Battle on 21 Nov. 1793, and their children included a son, John William, and six daughters.
From 1802 to 1810 Rabun was a justice of the Inferior Court for Hancock County, and in 1805 and 1806 he won a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. Beginning in 1810, he served six one-year terms in the Georgia Senate, of which he was president from 1812 to 1816. In 1812 his plantation consisted of five hundred acres and he owned fifteen slaves. On 4 Mar. 1817, at age forty-five, he became, as president of the senate, ex officio governor of Georgia when Governor David B. Mitchell resigned to accept the post of U.S. agent to the Creek Indians offered to him by President James Madison. In November 1817 Rabun was elected governor by the General Assembly with a vote of 62 to 57, defeating John Clark by 5 votes. He never lost an election.
Governor Rabun, who died a few days before his term was to expire, served for two years in a period of considerable prosperity for Georgia: funds were appropriated for schools, roads, canals, and other waterways; the penal code was revised; the state penitentiary was completed; and a steamboat company was chartered. Also during his governorship there was a notable exchange of correspondence between Rabun and General Andrew Jackson concerning an attack on Cheha, an Indian village. And according to James Z. Rabun in Coleman and Gurr's Dictionary of Georgia Biography, "The continued smuggling of slaves from Africa into inlets on the Georgia coast made Rabun indignant. He denounced it and was pleased when the American Colonization Society in 1818 agreed to return a shipload of captives to Africa."
After a brief illness identified only as "a malignant autumn fever," Rabun died at home and was buried privately on his estate four miles south of Powellton in Hancock County. At the request of the state legislature, he was publicly eulogized by the Reverend Jesse Mercer (Rabun's friend and Georgia's leading Baptist minister at the time) at the Baptist church in Milledgeville, then the state capital, on 24 Nov. 1819. Rabun County, Ga., was formed and named in 1819 in honor of Governor William Rabun.
GEDCOM Note
William Rabun served as governor of Georgia from 1817 until his death in 1819. He was born in Halifax County, North Carolina, on April 8, 1771, to Sarah Warren and Matthew Rabun. He moved with his father to Greene County (which later became part of Hancock County) in central Georgia in 1785. The family home in Powellton is located ten miles northeast of Sparta. In 1793 he married Mary Battle, and the couple had one son and six daughters.
Self-educated in the backwoods tradition of reading and observation, Rabun was a devout Baptist. He was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives from Hancock County in 1805 and served in the Georgia senate from 1810 until 1817.
Due to his position as president of the senate, Rabun became the ex-officio governor of Georgia on March 4, 1817, when Governor David B. Mitchell resigned to accept U.S. president James Madison's appointment as U.S. agent to the Creek Nation. Mitchell replaced famed Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins, who had recently died. In November 1817 Rabun was elected by the legislature to a full term as governor from the Democratic-Republican Party, and he pushed for both more support of free public schools and internal improvements for the navigation of the state's rivers.
During the First Seminole War (1817-18), Governor Rabun called out the state militia, under the command of General Edmund Pendleton Gaines, to respond to raids on southern Georgia settlements. He ordered the Hopaunee and Philemmee Indian villages to be destroyed for their suspected participation in the raids on white settlers. By mistake Captain Obed Wright burned the Creek village of the Chehaws, and his men killed ten inhabitants. Andrew Jackson, a general and the future president of the United States, had promised to protect the village, and he wanted the captain prosecuted for murder and held in leg irons at the pleasure of the president.
Rabun rejected the authority of the federal government to intervene in the affairs of a state, and especially over a state-controlled militia. He famously remarked to Jackson, "When the liberties of the people of Georgia shall have been prostrated at the feet of a military despotism, then, and not till then, will your imperious doctrine be submitted to." The governor went on to criticize the general for his failure to protect white Georgians from the Seminoles and the Creeks. Although he created a bitter rift with Jackson, Rabun endeared himself to the Georgia people and had the full support of the state legislature.
While home in Powellton between legislative sessions, Rabun caught a fever and died unexpectedly on October 24, 1819. The president of the senate, Mathew Talbot, assumed the governor's office, and two months later the General Assembly created Rabun County, ceded from Cherokee territory in northeast Georgia. Jesse Mercer, a prominent Baptist minister, delivered a sermon in memory of the late governor at the behest of the legislature.
"William Rabun (1771-1819)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. Georgia Humanities Council, 14 May 2013. Web. (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/wil... : accessed 29 May 2014)
GEDCOM Source
MARY BATTLE— Sparta, Ga.; b. Nansemond Co., Va., Dec. 12,
1774; d. Dec. 8, 1842; m. Nov. 21, 1793, William Rabun (b. Halifax Co., N. C., Apr. 8, 1771; d. while Governor of Ga., Milledgeville, Oct. 24, 1819; removed 1785 to Wilkes Co., thence 1786 to Hancock Co.; served Ga. Legislature 18 yrs.; 1817-19, Governor; Baptist; s. of Matthew Rabun 1 and Sarah Warren).
The Battle Book: a Genealogy of the Battle Family in America, with Chapters Illustrating Certain Phases of Its History Battle, H. B., Lois Yelverton, and William James Battle Montgomery, Ala.: Paragon, 1930. Archive.org. 26 April 2018. Web. <https://archive.org/details/battlebookgeneal00batt> p. 307.
GEDCOM Source
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. "William Rabun." 24 Sept. 2018. Web. 23 Feb. 2019. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rabun>. 3 Political partyDemocratic-Republican Party
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William Rabun, Gov of Georgia's Timeline
| 1771 |
April 8, 1771
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Halifax County, NC
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| 1794 |
September 8, 1794
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Powelton, Hancock, Georgia, United States
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| 1798 |
November 24, 1798
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Hancock, Georgia, United States
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| 1800 |
September 1, 1800
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Hancock, Georgia, United States
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| 1802 |
January 15, 1802
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Hancock, Georgia, United States
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| 1803 |
November 22, 1803
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Hancock, Georgia, United States
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| 1805 |
November 5, 1805
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Powelton, Hancock, Georgia, United States
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| 1807 |
August 23, 1807
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Powelton, Hancock, Georgia, United States
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| 1810 |
April 13, 1810
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Hancock, Georgia, United States
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