Were there really Pirates on the Chattahoochee River?

Sept. 1, 1826 | Appalachicola to Sandtown

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Did the Pony Club of old Carroll County, Ga. owe its origin to the pirating of William Augustus Bowles on the Chattahoochee River after the American Revolution? Some thought so, positing that the pirates of Appalachicola and the Mikasuki Nation of Bowles were pushed north by the Spanish Governor and with the death of Bowles in Cuba migrated north until they settled on the old Hillabee settlement of Octahazauzua, or Sandtown on the Chattahoochee opposite Carrol County, Ga. This group of Tories, crackers from Virginia's dismal swamp, halfbreeds and Seminoles purportedly formed a horse stealing operation that would descend on Carrollton or Campbellton on court day, steal horses and sell them in another county or even state.

There were indeed some very shady characters operating in Florida during the Revolutionary War. Dan and William McGirt, the Burgesses, Bloody Bill Cunningham and many others created havoc for the Americans as members of the Tory "East Florida Rangers". They continued their treachery, becoming involved with the Camden County "Moccassin Boys", involved in stealing Indian cattle and running imported slaves thru the south despite an 1807 ban on imported slaves.

Was this hodgepodge of malcontents and losers from the British cause the precursors of the group lionized by William Gilmore Simms in Guy Rivers? Apparently not. The Pony Club associated with Carroll County, Ga. and written about in "border romances" and treatises by Dickens and Twain were from McMinn County Tennessee. A group of about 50 interrelated families left Tennessee in 1826 and found there way to Sandtown in Dekalb County, Ga. on the Chattahoochee River. According to descendants, the group left Tennessee for the explicit purpose of forming a pony club to raid Cherokee and Creek settlements, stealing horses and passing them on to club members in other counties and states for sale.

This group operated until 1834 in Paulding County, Ga., a haven they inhabited after being run out of Carroll County in 1832. A wave of "Captain Slick" activity from Alabama and parts of North Georgia resulted in Ga. Gov. Schley calling the militia to run down the club, which they did in 1834, near CleanTown in then Paulding, now Polk County. The members were horsewhipped, hung and others run out of the state, moving first to Alabama, then Mississippi and Texas.

The purported association between Bowles men and the Tenneseans never existed.

(from History of the Pony Club, unpublished)

Pirates on the Chattahoochee?