William Manson arrived in Georgia from England in 1775 with the intention to settle 4100 acres in the colony's backcountry. A loyalist at the outbreak of the American Revolution, he was briefly imprisoned and banished from the state in the spring of 1780. He then acted as an agent on behalf of Thomas Brown, a colonel in the King's Carolina Rangers, which was a loyalist regiment that took Augusta, Georgia for the British in 1780. Manson is referred to variously as a colonel, major, and general, though in his own claims Manson simply refers to himself as a guide. Manson received the surrender of some 400 Patriot troops on Brown's behalf. The Patriots seized all of Manson's property and he returned to London after the war.