Beyond the South End

Oglethorpe and the Founding of Savannah

Photo from Wikipedia

General James Oglethorpe was granted a charter by King George II to establish a colony south of the Savannah River to protect the Carolinas from Spanish Florida and French Louisiana.

Oglethorpe arrived in 1732 in the ship Anne which carried the general and 114 colonists. In 1733 the settlers landed at Yamacraw Bluff and were greeted by Tomochici, the Yamacraws, and John and Mary Musgrove, Indian traders.

With Mary Musgrove acting as translator, Oglethorpe and Tomochici formed a lasting friendship. The result was the founding of the city of Savannah, along with the Province of Georgia. The Yamacraws chose to live on the island, leaving Savannah to the colonists. In this manner Savannah was able to flourish without the threat of warfare with their Indian neighbors unlike the troubles other beginning colonies had with native Indians.

As noted before, Oglethorpe placed four bans on the colony as it was formed:

1.    No hard liquor allowed, beer and ale were all right

2.    No Catholics (because of the first paragraph in this story)

3.    No slavery

4.    No lawyers

We can understand why he would place the first three bans, but the last one, no lawyers, is still a mystery. Maybe he had bad relations with some lawyer along the way. In any event, all four bans went by the wayside within about 25 years of the founding of the city.

Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County. It was the first colonial and state capital of Georgia. It is known as America’s first planned city. Its unique architecture, much of it surviving Sherman’s march to the sea during the Civil War, attracts many visitors to the area.

Some historic sites include the home that was the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.; Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences (one of the South’s first public museums); the First African Baptist Church (one of the oldest black Baptist congregations in the U.S.); Temple Mickve Israel (the third-oldest synagogue in America); and the Central of Georgia Railway roundhouse complex (the oldest standing antebellum rail facility in America). Savannah’s downtown historic area is one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the U.S.

Today Savannah is also an important center of the arts with its art schools making an important mark in their host city. SCAD or Savannah College of Art and Design have restored antebellum buildings and it continues to go forward in that pursuit.