Colonial

Their arrival in Georgia on this date in 1734 heralded the beginning of one of the most culturally distinctive communities in Georgia. The Catholic Archbishop of Salzburg expelled German Protestants from the region in present-day Austria in 1731, and England’s King George II offered them refuge in the new colony of Georgia. Some 300 Salzburgers […]

Next to James Oglethorpe, he was the most important person in founding the Georgia colony. John Percival was born in County Cork, Ireland, and was educated at Magdalen College at Oxford. He won a seat in the Irish Parliament before he was appointed to the British Privy Council, the sovereign’s private council, a seat he […]

They were originally banned from the Georgia colony, but when 42 Jewish immigrants from Europe arrived in Savannah on this day in 1733, James Oglethorpe welcomed them. The migrants arrived onboard the ship William and Sarah on a trip financed by members of a London synagogue. Of the 43, 34 were Sephardic Jews, of Spanish […]

After years of planning and two months crossing the Atlantic, James Oglethorpe and 114 colonists climbed 40 feet up the bluff from the Savannah River on this day in 1733 and founded the colony of Georgia. George II granted the Georgia trustees a charter for the colony a year earlier. The trustees’ motto was Non […]

Georgia began as an idea, the brainchild of James Oglethorpe and several other Englishmen who wanted to establish a new British settlement between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers, on land claimed by both South Carolina and Spain. The new colony needed official blessing, and Oglethorpe and his associates—who became the Georgia Trustees—petitioned the Privy Council, […]

Long before Plymouth, or Jamestown or even St. Augustine, there was another settlement in North American: the very first European attempt to establish a permanent colony on the mainland since the Vikings 500 years earlier.  Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon and 600 Spanish colonists landed on Georgia's coast on this day in 1526, over 200 years […]