|
|
General James Edward
Oglethorpe was the colonists first leader
and is recognized as the founder of Georgia. |
The First People
There were
already people on the high ground overlooking
the vast expanse of marsh and islands stretching
to the sea. A small Creek village, Yamacraw
was established on the sandy blufff. Their
chief or mico, Tomochichi, met
Oglethorpe when he landed with the first
settlers in February . Mary Musgrove, a
Creek and her English husband John ran a
trading house at the north end of the bluff.
The first families to arrive with Oglethorpe
included carpenters, sawyers, tailors, an
apothecary, an engineer, a wheelwright,
five farmers, a cloth workers, a stocking-maker,
merchants, a baker, a gardener, a vinter,and
even in this egalitarian settlement, nine
servants. |
Creek chief Tomochichi
and his nephew Toonahowi, 1736 portrait
by William Verst, courtesy Savannah History
Museum. |
| Six months after the English
settlers arrival a ship of 42 Portugese
arrived at the new port. The passenger list
included a physician and William Cox, the
colonists' only docotr, had died of a fever
that had taken more than 20 lives. Oglethorpe
had been advised by the Trustees to turn
the Jews away but ignored thier instructions.
Savannah is now the home to the third oldest
Jewish congregation in the United States.
German protestants, the Salzburgers, arrived
in June, 1734 and proved to be "religious,
industrious and cheerful people." Forty-five
Moravian pacifists arrived in 1736 but moved
on in a few years. Protestant evangelists
John and Charles Wesley also arrived that
year and both left disillusioned with the
place. New arrivals were often placed in
outlying settlements. A company of Scots
Highlanders settled at what is now Darien,
south of Savannah, to provide a further
buffer against the Spanish. |
Salzburger minister John
Martin Bolzius |
| The Spanish threat was
contained in 1742. Bolstered with a professional
regiment General Oglethorpe had almost succeeded
in taking Saint Augustine in 1740 and repulsed
the Spainiards at Saint Simons Island in
the Battle of Bloody Marsh, a small but
strategic engagement - the Spanish never
ventured North again. Oglethorpe returned
to England in 1743. Today, his statue in
Chippewa Square faces south, keeping an
eye on the Spanish threat. By the time the
Trustees gave up management of the colony
in 1753 the slavery ban had been overturned
and one-third of the colony's population
was slaves. Silk production was dwindling,
most of it coming from the Salzburger settlement
at Ebenezer. The colony had continued to
suck up funds, including Oglethorpe's, never
quite paying for itself. By the 1750s rice
production using slaves was ushering in
a new prosperity for the region but it was
plantation agriculture rather than freeholding
farmers that drove the economic boom. The
original utopian dream was dead. |
Oglethorpe in Chippewas
Square |
|
|
© Hauntings Tour,
Inc. 1998 - materials may not be reproduced without permission
|
