Re: George Galphin

George Galphin was a Creek trader, born in Ireland in 1709. He was in South Carolina in 1739 and settled at Silver Bluff, below Augusta on the east side of the Savannah River. By 1746 he was trading with the Creek Indians from Coweta.

In 1794 he was described, along with Lachlan McGillivray and John Pate, as a partner in the trading firm of Brown, Rae, and Company.

In 1775, the year that trader James Adair dedicated his HISTORY OF THE INDIANS to him and McGillivray, George ws appointed South Carolina's Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Two years later, he visited the noted naturalist William Bartram. George Galphin at Silver Bluff on December 2, 1780.

Historian T. S. Woodward wrote that Galphin "raised a large family; and of the five varieties of the human family, he raised children from three, and would no doubt have gone whole hog, but the Malay and Mongol were out of his reach".

Galphins wives and concubines included:
1Bridget Shaw, a white, whom he married on July 1, 1742 at St. Phillips' Parish.

2Sapho, a slave

3Nitehucky, an Indian

4Rachel Dupee, a white, who died at Placentia, Georgia on October 31, 1795.

5Metawney, the daughter of Tustenugee Micco, the great Warrior of the Coweta's.



He was the father of:

1Barbara Galphin ( her mother was Sapho) She was given a land grant near Augusta in 1775 which was bounded on one side by Lachlan McGillivray, and on another the Savannah River.

2Rachel Galphin( her mother was Sapho)

3Betsey Galphin ( her mother was Sapho)

4Rose Galphin ( her mother was Nitehucky )

5Thomas Galphin ( his mother was Rachel) born in 1762. Served in Capt. Partick Carr's Loyalist Rangers in Burke County, Georgia 1781 - 1782, along with his brother, George. He was a planter in Barnwell District South Carolina when he died on May 5, 1812. He married Sarah who died November 6, 1802. He had children named; George ( born 1789, died 1807), George, Milledge ( who married Eliza Ardis in 1819), and Martha, who married Capt. Timothy Barnard on October 7, 1800.

6Martha Galphin ( her mother was Rachel) She married John Milledge who served as Georgia's governor from 1802 to 1806. She died at Sand Hills near Augusta on November 5, 1811. John died there on February 9, 1818.

7George Galphin (his mother was Metawney) He served as a private in Capt. Patrick Carr's Loyalist Rangers in Burke County, Georgia in 1781 - 1782. Married a woman named Frances.

8Judith Galphin (her mother was Metawney)

9John Galphin ( his mother was Metawney ) Was the Speaker of the Lower Creeks in 1789. In 1793 he attacked and robbed several traders near St. Mary's apparantly because Georgians had conviscated some 40,000 acres of his Tory father's estate.


George Galphin wrote his will on April 5, 1776, providing for his family and many others, including David Holmes, the son of his sister, Margaret, and his trading partner until David's death at Pensacola in 1779, his sisters Judith Galphin, Margaret Holmes, Mrs. Young who was in Ireland, and Martha Crossley, the wife of William Crossley, to Timothy Barnard, and to all the "poor widows and fatherless children within 30 miles of my home", as well as to "all the orphan children I have raised, to the poorof Eneskilling and Armagh in Ireland, to John McQueen and his brother Alexander Galphin, and to Parson Seymour and his wife."

Source of this info:

1Who Was Who Among the Southern Indians 1698 - 1907, by Don Martini,(book) published 1997, pages 271 - 272

2English Crown Grants, (book)by Hemperley

3Adiar's History (book)

4 Men of Mark in Georgia ( book) Vol 1:99

5South Carolina Marriages ( book)

6 Abbeville District Wills and Bonds, pages 128 - 129

7Georgia Intestate Records

8Men of Mark in Georgia ( book ) M.B. Warren pages 262 - 269