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Note: N21932 Thomas Meriwether Gilmer
Georgians, Gov. George R. Gilmer
Thomas M. married Elizabeth Lewis before he was twenty-one. He removed to Georgia the year after, and settled on Broad River, at the place marked on the map as his. He had small hands and feet. His features were regular, his head large, his nose straight and well-formed, his eyes very gray and his teeth good. He was somewhat under the common height. His frame of body was small, and his limbs of proper proportions and much muscular strain. He was very fat from childhood, weighing at the age of eighteen two hundred pounds. He floated on water without any effort, except straightening his legs. The school to which he went when a boy was up the Shenandoah River, a mile or two from his father's. During the summer months he went home by floating and swimming down the river to save himself from walking. The current of the river was so continued and strong that he could easily outstrip the usual speed of his school companions. He was insensible too cold, but could not bear heat. The doors of his house were never closed day or night, summer or winter. He continued to grow more and more corpulent, until he weighed upwards of three hundred pounds. He was an excellent rider, sitting his horse so easily that few men could ride as far in the day. Though he never worked himself, he impressed the habit very strongly upon his children and negroes. He had governing manners and temper, so that his children never disobeyed him. He managed all his affairs with admirable judgment. He had eight negroes, a small tract of land, a considerable sum of money, a large amount in notes due him, besides having previously provided liberally for his children who were married. The estates which have accumulated are equal at this time to more than a million dollars. They are all planters except one. The lawyer and politician is the poorest of them all. Thomas Gilmer was a man of good sense, aided but little by reading. He was punctual in the discharge of every requirement of law. He attended musters and juries, though at great inconvenience. He was a justice of the peace for some time, and was once elected a member of the legislature. He was truthful and upright. I have often heard him mention that he never but once loaned money at more than legal interest. He was induced to do so then by the borrower being a negro trader. The mistake was corrected by the difficulty he met with in collecting any part of the loan. He never suffered his children to harass or hunt birds or beasts. I recollect a cousin, who was about my own age, instructing me during the idleness of Sunday how to prepare a chicken-cock for fighting by cutting off his comb. My father finding out our employment, took me between his knees and pulled my own comb until I scarcely knew whether the crown on my head had hair left upon it.
He bought what he wanted, and sold what he wished to part with. He had a great dislike to chaffering and swapping, believing that the habit of such trading generally ended in the habit of lying. He expressed his thoughts and purposes without equivocation. He had great contempt for foppery of all sorts. When I first went abroad to school, I found most of the boys occasionally wearing fine clothes, and told him on my return home that I desired to do as they did. His answer was, that boys neither learned more nor were less wicked by being dressed finely, that when I grew up, it would be well enough to attend to dress, because it would influence many persons' opinion of me, and thereby increase my capacity for usefulness. After going through school without shoes in the summer, or a broadcloth coat at anytime, I was immediately upon quitting, dressed in the very best which his merchant's store could supply.
During his youth my father performed a tour of militia duty under the Marquis La Fayette. He had previously gone out with a militia company to disperse or make prisoners of some Tories, who occasionally met in the North Mountain. The company caught a Tory, or, what was the same to the prisoner, one suspected by the Whigs. He was carried to a distillery, underwent examination, and was punished by being put headforemost into a large hogshead of water. He kicked his feet free from those who held him and was about drowning in the confused and flailing efforts to draw him out, when a half-witted fellow standing nearby, turned over the hogshead, letting out the Tory and the water.
My father was temperate and the use of all liquors except water. He was never even slightly intoxicated but once, and that was when he was a boy. Like most of the Gilmers, he loved good eating. He was subject to violent attacks of fever. At one time his physician thought it absolutely necessary to take blood from him. No vein could be found. The temple artery was cut. He had a violent cough, which, whenever he lay down, threw off the pressure from the artery, and covered the room with blood before the pressure could be reapplied. He was compelled to sit up in a chair for six or seven weeks, sleeping when he could by leaning his head upon a table before him. He died July, 1817, at his residence on Broad River. He left a widow and nine children.
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