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ROBERT TOOMBS.

CHAPTER I.

FAMILY, BOYHOOD, LIFE AT COLLEGE.

Gabriel Toombs was one of General Braddock's soldiers who marched
against Fort DuQuesne in 1755. He was a member of the sturdy Virginia
line which protested against the dangerous tactics of the British
martinet, and when the English regulars were ambushed and cut to pieces,
Gabriel Toombs deployed with his men in the woods and picked off the
savages with the steady aim and unerring skill of the frontiersman. Over
one hundred years later Robert Toombs, his grandson, protested against
the fruitless charge at Malvern Hill, and obliquing to the left with his
brigade, protected his men and managed to cover the retreat of his
division.

This was a family of soldiers. They were found in the old country
fighting Cromwell's army of the rebellion.

Robert Toombs of Georgia was fond of tracing his lineage to the
champions of the English king who defended their sovereign at Boscobel.
But the American family was made up of lovers of liberty rather than
defenders of the King. It was one of the anomalies in the life of the
Georgia Toombs, who resisted all restraint and challenged authority in
every form, that he should have located his ancestry among the sworn
royalists of the seventeenth century.

William Toombs, the great-grandfather of Robert, was the first of the
English family to come to America, about 1650. He settled in Virginia.
Gabriel, who fought with Braddock, was the son of William. Major Robert
Toombs, the father of the Georgia statesman, commanded a Virginia
regiment during the Revolution and rendered conspicuous service in
Georgia against the British. Major Toombs came to Georgia in 1783 and
received a rich tract of 3000 acres of land in Wilkes County. This was
their share in the award to distinguished soldiers of "the Virginia
line."

"They fought for their estates like feudal barons," General Toombs used
to say, when speaking of his ancestors, now sleeping in the red hills of
Georgia. When he was asked after the civil war why he did not petition
for relief of political disabilities, he declared that "no vote of
Congress, no amnesty proclamation, shall rob me of the glory of
outlawry. I shall not be the first of my name for three centuries to
accept the stigma of a pardon."

The elder Gabriel Toombs in 1795 made his last will and testament. He
commended his soul to God who gave it, and blesse