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A sad thing was happening in Savannah when we were there. The Habersham
house, one of the loveliest old mansions of the city, was being torn
down to make room for a municipal auditorium.
The first Habersham in America was a Royal Governor of Georgia. He had
three sons one of whom, Joseph, had, by the outbreak of the Revolution,
become a good enough American to join a band of young patriots who took
prisoner the British governor, Sir James Wright. The governor's house
was situated where the Telfair Academy now is. He was placed under
parole, but nevertheless fled to Bonaventure, the Tabnall estate, not
far from the city, where he was protected by friends until he could
escape to the British fleet, which then lay off Tybee Island at the
mouth of the Savannah River, some eighteen miles below the city. This
same Joseph Habersham, it is said, led a party which went out in 1775
in skiffs--called _bateaux_ along this part of the coast--boarded the
British ship _Hinchenbroke_, lying at anchor in the river, and captured
her in a hand-to-hand conflict. Mr. Neyle Colquitt of Savannah, a
descendant of the Habershams, tells me that the powder taken from the
_Hinchenbroke_ was used at the Battle of Bunker Hill. After the war, in
which Joseph Habersham commanded a regiment of regulars, he was made
Postmaster General of the United States.
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