Chapter 1: “Between Kingdom and Republic – The Making of Lott Warren”

Lancelot “Lott” Warren was born around 1750, in the forests and fields of Henry County, Virginia, where the rules of the crown governed law, land, and loyalty. It was a world of powdered wigs and horsehair courts—but for families like the Warrens, the daily reality was soil and sweat, smoke from the hearth, and the cry of a newborn muffled in muslin.

His father, Hackley Charles Warren, was likely a landowning farmer or tradesman—a man who could read Scripture, survey a plot of timberland, and swing a hammer all in one week. His mother, Sarah Shipley, would have borne children close together, baked in cast-iron pots, and whispered Psalms while shelling peas by lamplight. In that world, Lott was raised not with silver, but with scripture, labor, and land.

By his early twenties, he was already part of the frontier migration pushing deeper into the interior. The South was still wilderness then—unmapped, unsettled, and boiling with conflict. British colonists were clashing with Native nations, French agents, and each other. The great experiment of America was not yet conceived, but the edges of empire were already fraying.

It was sometime before or around 1771 that Lott Warren married Rebecca Bussey Gordon, likely in the hills of Virginia or the contested wilderness of South Carolina. She was strong and sensible, a woman who could ride a horse bareback, birth a child, and cook over open flame. Together, they settled in the Ninety Six District of South Carolina, one of the most violent and unstable frontiers in the colonies.

There, Lott Warren became a Patriot, joining local militia forces resisting British loyalists and Tory raiders. He was no aristocrat’s officer—he was a horse-mounted militiaman, a man who fought with hunting rifles and corn cakes in his pack. The South Carolina Roster of Patriots lists him as a saddler for State Troops—a skilled tradesman trusted to repair and supply gear in the heat of war. His job was not only to ride—it was to keep the men riding.

The South was not like the North in revolution. Here, the war was personal. Families turned against families. Barns were burned. Wives were harassed. Whole towns were caught between redcoats and rebels. In that world, Lott had to choose not just a side—but a future.

And he chose the dream of something new.
Something that did not yet have a name.

In 1772, a year after his marriage, his son Thomas Hackley Warren was born—likely in a small, hard-walled cabin in the pinewoods of South Carolina. It may have been during a lull in fighting. Or it may have been during the smoke and noise of conflict. Either way, that child’s cry marked something more than life. It marked legacy.

Lott Warren fought through it all. He saw the country shift beneath his boots—from colony to battleground, from battleground to uncertain independence. By the time the 1780s arrived, he was once again on the move—trading the ashes of war for the promise of land in Georgia, where new counties were forming, and the Republic was planting its roots.

Before he left, he left his mark in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, where land records confirm a Warren presence—farmers, tradesmen, and patriots staking their claim. One deed lists Lancelot Warren and his wife Margaret selling land on the south side of the Middle River of Mattapony, a place once bloodied, now bounded by ink and surveyor’s chains.

But Lott Warren was not a man who stayed still.

He was a bridge between kingdoms—between the fading empire of Britain and the fledgling republic that would become the United States.

By the time he crossed into Georgia, he had earned more than land. He had earned the right to be called founder, father, and survivor.

CHAPTER 2: The Georgia Frontier – Land, Legacy, and the Final Years of Lott Warren

The war was over. The smoke had lifted. The stars and stripes now flew over thirteen new states.

And Lott Warren, once a horse-mounted Patriot in South Carolina, now stood in Georgia—no longer a rebel, but a builder.

After the Revolution, Georgia became a beacon for men like him: soldiers who had given years, blood, and youth for liberty, now eager to claim what had been promised—land, peace, and a chance to make something their own. The frontier offered no easy life, but it offered a future. And for Lott, that was enough.

By the 1790s, he had settled in Lincoln County, Georgia—just west of Augusta, where the land rolled in red clay ridges and pine shadows. The rivers were wide, the fields fertile, and the boundaries loose. Here, with his wife Rebecca and grown son Thomas, Lott helped clear forests, build fences, and carve a life from the wild.

He was no longer a young man. The leather of his boots was worn. His back bent a little more each season. But his presence was still commanding—a man who had fought, ridden, bartered, and prayed his way across three colonies, now a father and grandfather in a country he helped win.

Neighbors likely knew him as “Mr. Warren” or simply “Lott,” a man who could speak plainly but with wisdom, who brought out the Good Book after supper and could recall the smell of powder and pine smoke from Cowpens or Ninety Six. He was a settler, but he was also a memory-carrier, the living link between rebellion and rest.

Family mattered. Land mattered. And in the quiet of his later years, Lott made preparations—not just for his soul, but for his line.

On June 17, 1798, Lancelot “Lott” Warren died in Lincoln County, Georgia. His will was recorded not long after, sealing his name into the legal bones of the state.

The document likely passed from hand to hand—sheriff to clerk to kin—but its impact was personal. He had land to divide, tools to pass down, and perhaps a favorite ax or a pair of worn boots left by the hearth. He left behind his wife, children, and a country that now stretched far past the frontiers he had once known.

His son, Thomas Hackley Warren, would carry forward the name—through Georgia’s wilderness, through cotton booms and coming wars. And long after Lott was gone, the stories of his grit and grace would linger in porches, family Bibles, and the soil he once turned with his own hands.

He began in a British colony. He died in a free republic. And somewhere in between, he gave his family a future.