Colonial

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 […]

The Stamp Act was supposed to raise money to pay off the country’s enormous debt following eight years of war, but instead it started a revolution. The French and Indian War, fought on the North American frontier, cost Britain a king’s ransom, and Parliament thought the American colonists should help pay for it. The Stamp […]

Our state still bears his name, but George II never set foot here. He was born in Germany, and when he succeeded his father, George I, in 1727, he became the second of Britain’s Hanoverian German kings. George II signed the charter creating the colony of Georgia in 1732. James Oglethorpe persuaded the king that […]

At a time when slavery thrived in the American colonies, Georgia, you may be surprised, was alone in banning it. But it wasn’t a moral decision. The Georgia Trustees prohibited slavery because it conflicted with their vision of small landowners prospering from their own labor. They also wanted Georgia to serve as a military buffer […]

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 […]

When James Oglethorpe and the English colonists arrived in Georgia in 1733, Tomochichi was here to greet them. It was his artful diplomacy between the English settlers and the native population that ensured Georgia’s peaceful beginnings. Tomochichi was chief of the Yamacraw tribe, which he created from a group of Creek and Yamasee natives. They […]

He watched America being born and was its last king. On this day in 1738 at Windsor Castle, Frederick, the Prince of Wales, and his wife Princess Augusta had their first son, George William Frederick. In 1751, the Prince of Wales died. That put 12-year-old George in line for the throne, which he ascended as […]

“Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” are among the greatest hymns ever written. All are the work of Charles Wesley. He was born in England in 1707 and was educated at Christ Church College at Oxford along with his brother John, where they started the […]

On this day in 1735, a group of Scottish Highlanders sailed from Inverness, Scotland, aboard the Prince of Wales, bound for Georgia. They disembarked on the northern bank of the Altamaha River, where they founded New Inverness – later named Darien – 60 miles south of Savannah. The Scots were among the finest soldiers in […]

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 […]