d in Georgia, it is probable that the curious
episode in which Mary took a leading part would never have occurred.

Oglethorpe left Georgia on the 23d of July, 1743, and never returned.
John Musgrove died shortly afterwards, and Mary married a man named
Matthews, who also died. She then married a man named Thomas Bosomworth,
who had been chaplain to Oglethorpe's regiment. In 1743, before
Oglethorpe's departure, Bosomworth had been commissioned to perform all
religious and ecclesiastical affairs in Georgia. Previous to that he had
accepted a grant of lands, and had taken up his abode in the Colony. He
appears to have been a pompous and an ambitious person, with just enough
learning to make him dangerous.

Before Mary Musgrove married Bosomworth she had never ceased to labor
for the good of the Colony. No sacrifice was too great for her to make
in behalf of her white friends. It is true, she had not been fully
paid for her services; but she had faith in the good intentions of
the government, and was content. In 1744, a year after Oglethorpe's
departure from the Colony, Mary married Bosomworth, and after that her
conduct was such as to keep the whites in constant fear of massacre and
extermination.

In 1745, Thomas Bosomworth went to England and informed the trustees
of the Georgia Company that he intended to give up his residence in the
Georgia Colony. The next year he returned to Georgia, and violated
the regulations of the trustees by introducing six negro slaves on the
plantation of his wife near the Altamaha River. This action was at once
resented; and President Stephens, who had succeeded Oglethorpe in the
management of the Colony's affairs, was ordered to have the negro slaves
removed from the territory of Georgia. This was done, and from that time
forth Bosomworth and his wife began to plot against the peace and
good order of the Georgia Colony. He used the influence of his wife to
conciliate the Indians, and secure their sympathy and support. While
this was going on, he was busy in preparing a claim against the
government of the Colony for the services rendered and losses sustained
by his wife, which he valued at five hundred pounds sterling. In
her name he also claimed possession of the islands of Ossabaw, St.
Catharine, and Sapelo, and of a tract of land near Savannah which in
former treaties had been reserved to the Indians.

Bosomworth was shrewd enough not to act alone. In some mysterious way,
not clearly