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Carl,
Thanks for the information. I saw a Frederick Ray listed drawing for land in the 1805 Georgia land lottery. They had a number of land lotteries in Georgia in the early 1800's giving land (about 200 acres) to fortunate drawers in an effort to get people to settle in Georgia and as you know land was just about everything back then. If you owned land you could grow crops and feed your family and sell crops and maybe sell the land. I was not sure that was the same Frederick Ray. I read an interesting article about Georgia and some of the southern states. As you know the states that grew tobacco depended largely on slaves for labor. Most people did not have slaves or could even afford slaves. If a family had slaves it was usually not many. And of course there were many people that were against slavery that could affortd to buy slaves but refused to. Most people did not need many slaves. They just needed a few to help farm the land mostly for crops for the family. There was some cotton grown but it was so hard to process and so time consuming it was usually grown mostly for family use although there was some cotton grown for commercial use. When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin it made processing cotton very easy and very fast. Farmers or planters as they were known then started raising cotton for commercial use. They needed people to work the cotton fields so they bought as many slaves as they could. Cotton farming became the basis for the economy in the south. In other words if Eli Whitney had not invented the cotton gin when the government made owning slaves in 1863 illegal ( I believe that was the year the govt made woning salves illegal) there would have been many people in the south objecting but there probably would not have been a war. The abolishment of slavery meant the destruction of the economy and the way people made a living and provided for their family and of course got rich sometimes. Interesting.
Would you know who the parents of Frederick Ray were or where he was from? George Wray was born I believe in the 1740's and lived in Brunswick co Va from at least 1769 and probably before that. Frederick spelled his last name Ray and George spelled his last name Wray. Usually it seems the name was Wray in Va and when people went to NC and Ga the name seemed to change to Ray. All but two records I have found about George in Georgia used Ray as the last name except two documents I found that used Wray. Thanks,Ross
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