BELGIAN Settlements in GEORGIA at the time of the Civil War  

During the Civil War Rome was a medical center and wounded from both sides were brought into Rome for treatment. Hospitals were set up in churches and many of the buildings on Broad Street. 

La commune de Couture-Saint-Germain compte parmi ses habitants en 1848, le général Louis Joseph Berthold le Hardy de Beaulieu. Né à Bruxelles le 22 avril 1782, soldat de la République et de l'Empire, il se trouve du côté hollandais à la bataille de Waterloo. En 1831, suivant ses convictions républicaines, il est mêlé à l'affaire de "Risquons-tout" et doit se retirer dans la nouvelle propriété qu'il a achetée à Couture Saint Germain. 

In 1848 Gen. Louis Joseph Barthold Le Hardy (Viscount de Beaulieu), dissatisfied with political conditions growing out of the liberation of Belgium from the United Netherlands, left Brussels at the head of a company of Belgians to found a colony in the United States, for the purpose of engaging in agricultural pursuits.  The old General and those members of his household who joined him were idealists to whom the songs of birds and bees in trees and clover constituted much sweeter music than the hum-drum strife of the Old World, so they turned  their faces southward  on  reaching  America's friendly shores.

En 1849, des avis circulent dans les journaux annonçant qu'un "propriétaire -cultivateur" envisage de se rendre aux Etats-Unis avec sa famille pour y acquérir un domaine de 200 à 300 hectares destiné à la plantation du coton et du tabac. Le but premier de l'expédition était le Tennessee et le bassin du Mississippi, mais aboutit finalement en haute Géorgie, à quelques dizaines de km du Tennessee.

Et en aout 1849, le navire Unitas part d'Anvers avec à son bord le général Le Hardy, sa famille et quelques émigrants de Couture-Saint-Germain et des villages environnants ainsi que quelques jeunes gens des familles les plus respectables de Bruxelles. 

It is quite likely that they disembarked at New York, asked for new country, were directed to Charleston and there sent by a Rome "Scout" to the heart of Cherokee Georgia.  Rome was a place of some 3,000 inhabitants, and it stood out as the largest settlement in that corner of the state and a city which must grow fast.

General Lehardy was a man accustomed to army life and the hardships of the outdoors; his training had been along democratic, practical lines, and he welcomed an opportunity to remove the restraints of political obliga­tions like a bird released from the cage.  He turned his estate into cash and financed the colony across the Atlantic.  

Parmis les passagers de l'Unita : 

- le général en retraite Louis Joseph Berthold LE HARDY DE BEAULIEU, born 22.04.1782
* son fils et sa famille :
    +  Camille LE HARDY DE BEAULIEU, né à Bruxelles 03.03.1813 
    +  Marie-Louise CARLIER
    + Paul, né à Couture-Saint-Germain, 30 août 1846 il fut l'auteur d'un article dans la Revue de Belgique en 1875 sur le parc de Yellowstone. Il participa en qualité de topographe à la quatrième expédition préparée par le Gouvernement de Washington et dirigée par le capitaine Jones, du 12 juin au milieu de septembre 1873. 
*  l' autre fils de Louis Joseph : Jean-Charles resta en Europe.

- trois des fils de son frère :
    + Jules-César LE HARDY DE BEAULIEU, born 00.00.00 : qui obtint une chaire au collège médical de Philadelphie en 1855 et occupa par la suite la chaire de chimie au collège Ogelthrope à Savannah, Géorgie.
    + Eugène-Isidore LE HARDY DE BEAULIEU, né le 04.03.1817 : qui devint notamment ingénieur des chemins de fer de Géorgie. 
    + Jean-Adolphe LE HARDY DE BEAULIEU, né à Etterbeek(Bruxelles) 08.06.1814 : Ingénieur,  rentra en Belgique en 1854, au décès de son père. Il devint plus tard en Belgique vice-président de la Chambre des représentants. Il publia, après son retour, des articles en Belgique concernant l'instruction publique, les chemins de fer et le système postal américains entre 1855 et 1857. Il était aussi en 1837, avant son départ pour l'Amérique, correspondant du journal The Pycayune de la Nouvelle-Orléans. 

Les sources américaines ajoutent :

- Louis Henry Carlier, a civil engineer and Camile  LeHardy's brother-in-law;  - Prof. E. Gaussoin and daughter, Miss Elise Gaussoin, whom Henry Carlier married after they reached Rome;  - a Miss Robert (pronounced like the French), who later married Max Van Den Corput, of Cave Spring,  (Max Van Den Corput and Felix Van Den Corput, his brother, were also Belgians);  - and a number of others, perhaps a total of 25.   Parmis les personnes accompagnant les Le Hardy de Beaulieu :  Sylvère TABURIAUX, 42 ans, de Couture-Saint-Germain père de sept enfants et sa femme Anne-Marie GILLE, 46 ans, décédée en mer    + Jean-Baptiste TABURIAUX, 14 ans    + Julienne TABURIAUX, 21 ans : décédée en mer    + Marie TABURIAUX, 13 ans : décédée le 21.09.1855 à Rome,GA    + Marie-Thérèse TABURIAUX, 12 ans : décédée en mer    + Ghislain TABURIAUX, 11 ans    + Adeline TABURIAUX, 6 ans : born about 1843; married John Seay in Pickens Cty, Ga, died 1882    + Euphrasie TABURIAUX, 3 ans

Elise Gaussoin Source: Rick Ramey

 The farming Belgians raised truck and fruit, especially grapes, and they sent their goods to the Rome market in little wagons drawn by ponies or mules.  Everything they offered for sale was fresh and wholesome and put up in good style; the apples in nice boxes, the grapes covered with mos­quito netting, and their prices were as low as could be found.  The law permitted of making wine out of grapes, and considerable wine was made.

As in most cases where aristocrats attempt to go back to the soil, however, the colony plan was not a success financially.  The titled Belgians undoubtedly did  their  utmost  with Dame Nature, but Herr Highness, treated to the picture of the grandeur of palaces and of refined tastes and temperamental dispositions, did not Smile her favor upon them. The story is told that a fastidious young Belgian was in the habit of driving an ox cart to Rome, the while he was dressed in a summer suit of snowy whiteness, suede gloves and patent leather shoes.

After some seven years, disintegration of the colony, individually and collectively, set in.  General LeHardy and Camille LeHardy and family left for Charleston, where they lived until 1858, when they returned to Brussels. Dr. J. C. LeHardy went to live in Savannah.  Eugene LeHardy departed Jan. 2, 1861, for Europe to buy supplies for the Confederate Government, and was there marooned until after the Civil War.

But a circumstance was eventually to arise which was to pile sorrow upon disappointment for the doughty Belgians. Camille Le Hardy, 'it will be recalled, had  married  Rosine  Marie Terese Josephine Carlier, a sister of Henry Carlier.  Relations between the brothers-in-law were apparently pleasant enough to permit Mr. LeHardy to go back to Belgium and leave the country place in the care of Mr. and Mrs. Carlier.  Quite possibly Mr. Carlier never expected Mr. LeHardy to return, so that when he and his family did come back after the close of the war, friction arose between the two men over possession of the place.  They continued to live together, but it was a house divided.  According to the story told by Mr. LeHardy, Mr. Carlier would frequent throw rocks at him from the woods, and otherwise nag him and members of the LeHardy family. Finally one day Mr. LeHardy heard a commotion in the barn, and, rushing to the scene, found Mr. Carlier astride of and pummeling Henry Le Hardy then 17.  Mr. LeHardy went to the house and got a gun, and, poking it through a crack in the barn, fired and killed Mr. Carlier, whose body was laid to rest in Myrtle Hill cemetery.  Mr. LeHardy's peaceful disposition, his un­blemished reputation and the attendant circumstances caused a jury to render a verdict of acquittal.

The tragedy occurred in the summer of 1870 and about eight years later Mr. LeHardy removed his family to Eagle Cliff, Lookout Mountain, near Flintstone, Walker County, Georgia, where he died March 6, 1888. He was the last of the Belgians at Rome, Eugene LeHardy, his cousin, having died there Dec. 27, 1874, and having been put to rest in Myrtle Hill.

CARLIER SPRINGS ( On the Chulio road , three miles east of Rome ).

Here in 1848 Gen. L J B Le Hardy , Camille Le Hardy, Louis Le Hardy and others started a Belgian Colony with the idea of housing other colonists from Belgium  if the venture proved a success.  The Belgians built a two-room log house and several out-buildings, and lived there perhaps seven years.  Around the springs was a tract of 100 acres which extended to the Etowah River.  

LE HARDY SPRINGS

 Some confusion arises between this term and the term “Carlier Springs “ the Place know as Carlier Springs , was owned by Gen. L J B Le Hardy and his son Camille Le Hardy , but Louise Henry Carlier kept it during the Civil War.  J.Paul Cooper offers the following explanation:

Eugène LeHardy bought the plantation afterward owned by Dr. GW Holmes, consisting of three land lots on part of which I now live  The spring itself was on another land lot , originally belonging to the plantation which East Rome Town Company bought and developed.  Before that purchase , however, the owner of that plantation had exchanged a corner lot , amounting to five acres, containing the spring  giving it to LeHardy in return for about the same area lying in one of LeHardy’s lots up toward Tubbs’ Mountain.  There is a small spring now owned by Dick Cothran.  All this appears from the county records.  Colonel LeHardy, had at that time, as far as I know , only a log cabin built where my house is located and not where Martin Grahame afterward built.  There was a tenant house between LeHardy’s settlement and the spring, in my boyhood days, though whether it existed there in LeHardy’s time I do not know.  ………………………….

Dr Henry Le Hardy , of Chatanooga writes, “ As well as I remember my father Gen L J B LeHardy  owned two lots of land, on the Spring Creek road, about three miles east of Tome.  The spring was a large one, flowing between some big rocks, and was situated in a fine grove of trees - oaks, hickories, sweet gums and cedars.  Eugene Le Hardy owned a farm somewhere between Rome and my father’s plantation.  I never saw his farm and could not say what kind of spring was there.  My father’s spring was known to us as the LeHardy’s and is the one that is often called the Carlier Spring.