Mary Musgrove: The Original Persistent Woman

Mary Musgrove entering Savannah with her husband and Creek Indians

Mary Musgrove has been portrayed as a social climber, greedy, drunkard, voluptuous exotic, and uncaring. All of this comes from persons that were not her fans. Written accounts of white Europeans who were challenged by her. The negative accounts were usually because she pushed for what she thought was rightfully hers. One must remember that in European societies at the time women were to live their lives in private and not in public and politics and finances were left to the males. In Creek society women had a voice in the political world and the were a matrilineal society. European men were not accustomed to women such as Mary and she was not use to men such as them. She also had power when it came to the Europeans dealing with the Creeks. She was most of the time the only one in the room who could speak both languages. She would also become one of the wealthiest people in the Georgia Colony. Add to this the fact that she was born into the prominent Chief Brim family who was one of the most revered leaders in the Creek history and you have a failure to communicate well. Her ties with the military leaders at Fort Frederica were always an important aspect to southern Georgia and by default Savannah. She held strong footholds in both Creek and colonist societies for decades. No one else had this connection for as long. So, it is no stretch of the imagination that the early male leaders of the Georgia colony would feel uncomfortable with the power she controlled as a female not to mention their prejudices against Native Americans.
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The picture of Mary Musgrove that we have are presented by white males to the white Trustees of Georgia. The Europeans wrote the Native Americans spoke their histories.  The governors who reported back to the Trustees would present their case without a mutual presentation of Mary’s case. These are the records that have for the most part been used to interpret who Mary was. One of the other accounts frequently used was a middle-class English man who Mary basically fired for numerous reasons. To say the least they were biased accounts of who she was.

What can we say about Mary beyond what they write? She was apparently intelligent. She could speak with clarity in two languages. In fact her mastery of English and Muskogean were probably greater than most if not all her contemporaries. This is evidenced by her, and Moravian missionaries attempt to create the only written Creek language. Not only was she able to master two languages she taught herself accounting and how to run a rather big business venture. She maintained two trading posts and over five hundred farm acres. Anyone of these would have been a ‘career’ for most. But she also acted as interpreter, recruiter for Indian scouts and soldiers, and reported on Spanish and Native American activities of interest to the colonists. It is also believed that the property that she left in South Carolina at the bequest of South Carolinian Governor William Johnson was maintained by her and John for many years. She converted to Christianity although never leaving her Native American heritage and beliefs behind. We know this because she had theological discussions with John Wesley for hours according to his journals. All of this is to demonstrate that she had a significant intellect. We know that she was an articulate leader in the Creek community once diffusing a situation where Creeks and Cherokees were in a blood feud convincing the Creeks it was not to their advantage to seek revenge at a Creek council meeting of tribes.

She was a compassionate woman. When her first husband died Wesley writes in his journal after visiting his concern over her grief and needed to visit her again soon. She also acted as the conscience of the colony when the city of Savannah exiled two women who were pregnant without husbands from the city. This would have left them at the mercies of nature or the Native Americans. Mary stepped in to take both women in and offered them shelter, work, and nurture throughout their lives. She also grieved the lost of kin and friends because of a tactical error made by General Oglethorpe leaving them to defend a fort to close to the Spanish. The fort was lost and most of the soldiers in the fort lost their lives. She was deeply grieved and would return to her Native American tribal city (Coweta) to recuperate emotionally and spiritually. She apparently, even though many pointed out Oglethorpe’s gross military error, never severed her relationship with him.  She rescued the previously mentioned middle class man who caused her legal and reputational problems from angry male Native Americans who thought he was a bit too flirty with their wives.  She also showed passion if not compassion when the same man threatened her with a gun by disarming him and locking him up until he sobered up.

She was also loyal. Throughout her mistreatment by various leaders of the colonies and their refusal to grant her lands and funds for the vast and varied services she performed for the colony she never wavered in offering the young colony her assistance. Even through Oglethorpe’s tactical military mistake costing her friends and family, being jailed for her persistence, the loss of one of her trading posts because she was considered friendly to the English, being near financial disaster because of the colonists not paying her for her services, having her Christianity questioned by leaders of the colonists, and many other slights she always responded as she could when asked by the colonists for assistance.

​This is not to say that she was perfect. But she was more complex and developed than the English written records may have recorded. She was probably never the romantic historical fiction person depicted on several novels. She was one of the many remarkable women of Georgia who never quite attain their position in the story of Georgia as they should have.
 
 

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One of the many portraits of Mary Musgrove. In truth we have no idea what she looked like.