Habersham, John
Habersham, John
HABERSHAM, JOHN. (1754–1799). Continental officer. Georgia. Third surviving son of James Habersham, John was educated at Princeton and in England before entering business. On 7 January 1776 he became a first lieutenant in the First Georgia Continental Regiment and was promoted to captain on 8 May 1776. He became brigadier major to General Robert Howe on 25 December 1777, major of the First Georgia Regiment on 1 April 1778, was captured at Savannah, 29 December 1778, and was again a prisoner after the surrender of Charleston in May 1780. Exchanged both times, he served to the end of the war under General Anthony Wayne in the liberation of Georgia and then patrolling the eastern Florida border. He served in the state assembly and the Continental Congress in 1785. During the ten years before his early death in 1799 he was a planter and customs collector at Savannah.
SEE ALSO Habersham, James; Habersham, Joseph.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kennedy, Benjamin, ed. and trans. Muskets, Cannon Balls and Bombs: Nine Narratives of the Siege of Savannah in 1779. Savannah, Ga.: Beehive Press, 1974.
McCowen, George Smith Jr. The British Occupation of Charleston, 1780–1782. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972.
revised by Leslie Hall