Founding of Georgia (1733): Oglethorpe's Colony at Savannah

The founding of Georgia came on 12 February 1733, when James Oglethorpe and about 114 colonists landed on Yamacraw Bluff above the Savannah River and began building the town of Savannah. Georgia was the last of the thirteen British colonies on the North American mainland. It was unusual from the start: run by a board of trustees as a philanthropic and military project, it was laid out to a careful plan and, for its first years, banned slavery.

Background

James Oglethorpe (1696–1785) was a soldier and member of Parliament who in 1729 led a parliamentary inquiry into the brutal conditions of London’s debtors’ prisons. With other reformers he proposed a new colony where the poor could make a fresh start as small farmers.

The British government also had strategic reasons. The land between South Carolina and Spanish Florida was contested, and a settled colony could act as a buffer protecting Carolina’s plantations from Spanish attack. On 9 June 1732 George II granted a charter to the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia in America, named after the king. The Trustees could not own land or profit from the colony, and their motto, “Non sibi sed aliis”, meant “Not for themselves, but for others”.

The first settlement

Oglethorpe sailed from England in November 1732 on the ship Anne with about 114 settlers, chosen as working families rather than released debtors. After stopping at Charleston, they reached Yamacraw Bluff and landed on 12 February 1733.

Oglethorpe quickly reached an understanding with Tomochichi, leader of the Yamacraw, a small community of Creek and Yamasee origin living nearby. Mary Musgrove, a trader of Creek and English descent, served as interpreter. In May 1733 Oglethorpe also negotiated a treaty with wider Lower Creek leaders that allowed settlement along the coast. In 1734 Tomochichi travelled with him to London, where he met George II and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

A planned town

Savannah was laid out to a geometric design. The town was divided into wards, each built around an open square, with lots for houses on two sides and plots for churches and public buildings on the others. Settlers received a town lot, a garden plot and farmland outside the town, in total about 50 acres per family. The plan, extended as the city grew, remains the core of Savannah’s historic district. Oglethorpe himself lived in a tent for the first year, sharing the settlers’ hardships.

Rules and settlers

The Trustees governed Georgia from London under unusual restrictions. In 1735 they banned slavery and the import of spirits such as rum, and land could not be freely sold or passed to daughters. Their aims were to keep the colony a society of hardworking white smallholders who could also serve as soldiers, and to avoid the slave revolts feared in South Carolina.

Georgia attracted varied settlers. A group of about 40 Jewish colonists arrived in July 1733, Protestant refugees from Salzburg founded Ebenezer in 1734, and Scottish Highlanders settled at Darien in 1736. The brothers John and Charles Wesley served briefly as Anglican ministers in 1736–1737, and the preacher George Whitefield, a leader of the First Great Awakening, founded the Bethesda orphanage near Savannah in 1740.

War and change

Georgia’s role as a buffer was soon tested. During the War of Jenkins’ Ear, Oglethorpe led a failed siege of St Augustine in Florida in 1740. In 1742 his forces repelled a Spanish invasion of St Simons Island, including at the Battle of Bloody Marsh.

Many settlers opposed the Trustees’ rules, arguing that they could not compete with slave-holding Carolina. Faced with economic stagnation and illegal use of enslaved workers, the Trustees lifted the slavery ban with effect from 1751. They surrendered their charter in 1752, and Georgia became a royal colony with its first royal governor arriving in 1754. Rice plantations worked by enslaved Africans then spread rapidly along the coast, bringing Georgia into line with the older plantation colonies of the South that had grown up since the founding of Jamestown.

Timeline

• 1732, 9 June: George II grants the charter for Georgia to the Trustees.
• 1732, November: Oglethorpe sails from England on the Anne.
• 1733, 12 February: The colonists land at Yamacraw Bluff and found Savannah.
• 1733, July: Jewish settlers arrive in Savannah.
• 1734: Tomochichi visits London with Oglethorpe; Salzburgers found Ebenezer.
• 1735: The Trustees ban slavery and spirits in Georgia.
• 1742, July: Oglethorpe’s forces defeat the Spanish at Bloody Marsh on St Simons Island.
• 1751: The ban on slavery is lifted.
• 1752: The Trustees surrender the charter; Georgia becomes a royal colony.

Why it matters

Georgia was an experiment in planned colonisation, combining philanthropy, imperial defence and social engineering. Its Savannah street plan is still admired by urban planners, while the rapid collapse of its ban on slavery shows how strongly the plantation economy shaped the American South.