Tacitus Gaillard (before 1718âÂÂNovember 1786) was a planter, slave owner, and public official in British Colonial South Carolina, North America. He became one of the first Anglo-American colonists in the Natchez area of the lower Mississippi River valley. He was involved in a failed attempt to assert that the U.S. state of Georgia had jurisdiction over the Natchez District.
Tacitus Gaillard was part of a family of French Huguenots who arrived in South Carolina in the late 17th century. The largest concentration of French Huguenots in the province outside of Charleston was along the Santee River. According to a study of Huguenot colonists in South Carolina, "Until the Revolution the principal occupation of the settlers was the culture of rice and indigo." Gaillard's parents were Bartholomew Gaillard and Elizabeth Guerry Gaillard. He lived first in the St. James Santee parish, in close proximity to a number of his cousins and kinsmen. He owned a plantation near Eutaw Springs. He was said to have "large land holdings in Ninety-Six District".
In 1741, he pledged ã31-6-0 to the construction of "the new chapel of Echaw". He married, sometime before June 1746, Anne LeGrand.
According to a history of Orangeburg County, "Up to 1768, when the Province of South Carolina was divided into districts the townships of Amelia, Orangeburgh and Saxe-Gotha formed parts of Berkeley County, as already stated, and the only civic officers in those townships were the Justices of the Peace, and the Inquirers and Collectors of taxes." Galliard served as a justice of the peace for the county in 1756 and 1762 and 1768âÂÂ1769. He was a colonel in the "township battalion" for "the region southwest of the Santee, and outside of the old parishes". The battalion was described in 1898 as "frontier mounted police". His militia commission and "commission of the peace" were revoked by the provincial governor, Lord Charles Montagu, in February 1769.
Tacitus Gaillard's wife Anne Gaillard advertised around the same time that she was "sole dealer and separate trader, exclusive and free from any concern with my husband Tacitus Gaillard". He advertised for sale a plantation called Wamhaw, "containing about 500 acres, 200 of which is good river swamp, belonging to Tacitus Gaillard, Esq., situated on Santee river in St. James' parish, on which is a very good dwelling-house and sundry convenient out-houses".
Gaillard was a member of the South Carolina Commons House of Assembly, representing St. James Santee, in 1765. A plan of 1765 to organize a parish of St. Matthew would have benefitted him specifically as one of terms of the organizing act was that "That the new road leading from the ferry of Tacitus Galliard, Esquire, to the road leading from Charlestown to Orangeburgh, shall he, and it is hereby declared to be, a public road. and shall be worked upon and kept in repair by the inhabitants of each parish through which the said road runs, in the same manner as all the other public roads in this Province are..." Tacitus Gaillard and William Thomson were elected to represent the planned St. Matthew parish but "His Majesty having been pleased to Repeal, the Act for establising St Matthews Parish, Major Gaillard and Collo Thomson quitted their seats in the House the 10th day of November One thousand seven Hundred and sixty-seven." In 1767 he gave the parish church of St. Matthew's a silver cup that remained in the vestry as of 1894.
He may have been trained as a surveyor because in 1767 "the Legislature passed 'An Act for granting to his Majesty the sum of Eighteen Thousand Pounds current money, to be paid for a general survey of this Province, and for appointing commissioners to enter into a written agreement with Tacitus Gaillard, Esq. and Mr. James Cook, for that purpose'. (Stats. of S. C., Vol. IV., p. 262.)" The South Carolina Historical Society holds a 1770 survey map of eastern South Carolina made by Cook and Gaillard. This land later became the Sumter district.
He represented St. George, Dorchester in the assembly in 1768.
He was also a provincial representative from 1772 to 1775, the last legislature under King George III, representing Orangeburg district. Fraud was alleged in the election of 1773; as described by a 20th-century historian:
In 1773, he was seated on a grand jury and helped organize a court of common pleas.
In February 1775 he was listed as a representative of "Continental Associations". In July 1775 Henry Laurens sent men to the Ninety Six district to recruit for the forthcoming revolution: Judge William Henry Drayton and the Reverend William Tennent "spent several hours at the home of Tacitus Gaillard, the Huguenot leader in St. John's Parish who was a Regulator and member of the House. As the two Associators left Eutaw Springs, they felt satisfied that they had won him over to the principles of Association and Non-importation. Through him they had access as well to his sons-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Farrar in Amelia and Colonel John Savage at Ninety Six." The text of the letter written to the Council of Safety by Drayton and Tennent from Congaree Store, on August 7, 1775: "Gentlemen:-Having left Charles Town on Wednesday morning, we arrived here early on Saturday afternoon, 130 miles distant from town. In our way, we spent some hours at Col. Gaillard's and we flatter ourselves the visit had a good effect. It is to be hoped. He has not delivered himself in public so warmly, as he has expressed himself to us." Gaillard was a representative in the first revolutionary South Carolina congress of 1776, representing Orangeburg district.
On March 8, 1776, Tacitus Gaillard listed for sale his Santee River plantation.
Gaillard and his son-in-law Dr. Benjamin Farar arrived in British West Florida in 1778. They had traveled up to Pittsburgh and used "five big bateaux equipped with cannon" to transport approximately 35 free whites and 400 to 500 slaves via the Ohio River and the Mississippi River to the Natchez settlement. They were initially suspected of intrigue, and people who encountered them believed they would prefer to settle under a Spanish, rather than British, flag. According to historian Robin F. A. Fabel, "...suspicion lingered. One [reason] was the unwillingness of their leader to take an oath of allegiance to the British crown until he had seen Governor Chester at Pensacola. Another was their background. Tacitus Gaillard had been a member of a rebel provincial congress. Benjamin Farrar, a former deputy surveyor in South Carolina, had been a Son of Liberty. Alexander McIntosh, the Indian commissary who had to entertain them at Natchez, thought it prudent not to insist that they take the allegiance oath there. Governor Chester had heard that the pair were supporters of the popular party in the Carolinas up to the time of the declaration of independence, after which they had turned decisively against the American cause, but he remained uncertain about their ultimate intentions." In 1781, a Spanish intendant in Louisiana, Martin Navarro, mentioned Gaillard as an instance of the increasing, and alarming, American presence in the Mississippi River valley. As retold by historian Arthur P. Whitaker, "Navarro reported the rapid growth of Kentucky and of the American settlements at the Illinois, and shipments of American corn down the Mississippi. The Americans were an active, enterprising people, he said, citing by way of illustration the case of a former South Carolinian, Gaillard, who had emigrated from that state to Natchez by way of Pittsburg with his family and slaves, stopping in Kentucky long enough to make a crop for their support. Such energy and resourcefulness, said Navarro, combined with the greedy ambition of the Americans, made them a menace to Mexico. Spain had a remedy, however, for it could strangle the American West by closing its only commercial outlet, the Mississippi."
In February 1785, Gaillard was named a justice of the peace for the ultimately short-lived jurisdictional experiment of Bourbon County, Georgia, along with John Ellis, Nicholas Long, William Davenport, Nathaniel Christmas, Sutton Banks, William McIntosh, Benjamin Farar, Cato West, Thomas Marston Green, William Anderson, and Adam Bingaman. In the words of historian Thomas P. Abernethy, "They were instructed to claim the country for Georgia and to establish her authority, but not to bring on hostilities with Spaina very large order for any thirteen men."
Gaillard died in Natchez in November 1786. The commandant of a nearby fort traveled to "where his body was found and examined [it] in presence of Don Estevan Minor, Don Joaquim Ossorno, Don Luis Chacheret, interpreter, and inhabitants John Ellis and Abraham Ellis".
Anne LeGrand Gaillard died sometime after 1763.