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 […]
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 […]
The colony he founded is now the largest of the United States east of the Mississippi. James Edward Oglethorpe was born in 1696 in London and was educated at Oxford. He gained valuable military experience in the Austrian army fighting the Turks. Oglethorpe chaired a parliamentary committee charged with prison reform. It inspired him and […]
Georgia might have become a Spanish colony had it not been for the Battle of Bloody Marsh, fought on this day in 1742. The battle on St. Simon’s Island was part of a global clash of arms between two empires: England and Spain. The two nations were at odds over pirateering on the high seas […]
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, […]
One of the most popular preachers in England and America in the 18th century first arrived in Savannah on this day in 1738. George Whitefield was born in 1714 in England, and educated at Oxford, where he met John and Charles Wesley; together they were the first leaders of the Methodist movement. After the Wesleys […]
Georgia Indians traveling to London in 1734 was hardly an everyday thing. One year after James Oglethorpe founded the Georgia colony, he returned to London to report to the Trustees–and took a group of Georgia’s Yamacraw Indians with him. Led by Chief Tomochichi, they wanted to make requests for education and fair trade directly to […]
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 […]