Bedford Village & Plantation
Friends of Coleman-Leigh-Warren Cemetery
Towns and Villages
James Edward Oglethorpe and the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of
Georgia in America prescribed in the Rules for 1735,
And such Persons are to be settled in the said Colony, either in new Towns or new Villages.
Those in the Towns will have each of them a Lot Sixty Feet in Front and Ninety Feet in Depth
whereon they are to Build an House, and as much Land in the Country as in the whole shall
make up Fifty Acres.
Those in the Villages will each of them have a Lot of Fifty Acres, which is to lie all together,
and they are to Build their Houses upon it.
In the beginning
It is unknown to this researcher an exact year in which there was laid out a
Colonial village named Bedford in the Parish of St. Paul (Richmond County,
Ga.) Nevertheless, a village there was. Research is ongoing that one day will
document the story of this village. For now, there is reason to believe that
Timothy Rickerson [Ricketson], Jr. who hailed from New Bedford, Mass.,
may have been responsible for the village's early beginnings. It can be
safely surmised that the village was not begun until inroads to Fort Augusta
had been established after 1737. We do know that Rickerson flourished in
the area at least by 1774. What happened after 1737 and before 1774 is still
unknown in large detail.
Richmond County Maps
The earliest Richmond County map known to this researcher showing the
village of Bedford is from 1822. However, Bedford had long been winding
down as a village, the last of its lots having been absorbed into the land
acquisitions of Lindsay Coleman prior to 1817. Benjamin Holmes Warren,
Coleman's son-in-law, purchased what is believed to have been the last two
remaining acres of the original village 4 January 1825.
Although cartographers continued to document the village as a place until
1846, this is most likely due to dependency on secondary sources and not the
result of primary research.
The maps above were taken from the Carl Vinson Institute of Government,
University of Georgia, Historical Atlas of Georgia Counties Web site.
Also, there is a remarkable map of Richmond County located in the Reese
Library Special Collections at Augusta State University that not only shows
the village of Bedford location but actually denotes where buildings stood in
the village. It is hoped that a digital image of this map can be acquired soon.
Newspaper accounts
The earliest Village of Bedford newspaper record known to this researcher
is found in The Augusta Chronicle and Gazette of the State, Saturday, 25
August 1792. The newspaper's 1786-1791 issues have yet to be researched
for references to Bedford and it is possible that earlier records exist.
As late as 1810-12, newspaper accounts refer to the Village of Bedford with
a tone that implied the village still functioned on some level.
The plantation
Under construction.
This is not a picture of the Bedford
plantation house, only a suggestion
of how it might have appeared from
the road. The cemetery was only a
stone's throw away from the house.
