GCP - The 13th Colony and James Oglethorpe (Lesson)
The 13th Colony and James Oglethorpe
Introduction
The American colonies were a mixture of three types of colonies:
- Charter or corporate colonies granted a corporation to settle a new colony.
- Proprietary gave ownership to a person or a group of investors.
- A royal colony was operated by the English government and administered by a royal governor appointed by the king; no colony in America started this way. They became royal colonies after a time.
Britain claimed Georgia in 1663 and began planning for the colony in 1717. James Edward Oglethorpe, a member of Parliament, became aware that many people in England were being imprisoned due to debt they couldn’t pay because of unemployment and overcrowding. He believed he could establish a colony that would help the poor and unemployed by sending them to America to start new lives there. In 1730, Oglethorpe and a group of 20 men asked King George II for a charter of land in America. They would call it Georgia in honor of the King. On June 7, 1732, the charter was issued for Georgia, making Oglethorpe responsible for establishing the colony.
Colony's Purpose
The colony of Georgia served three main purposes:
See description of diagram
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Read all of Chapter 6: The Founding of Georgia.
Georgia’s charter, issued June 20, 1732, listed 3 ‘formal’ purposes for the colony; yet there were other purposes too that were not stated.
| Stated Purpose | Details |
|---|---|
| Charity | To alleviate unemployment and poverty in England |
| Economics | To increase England's trade & wealth; the colony would provide agricultural products while also serving as valuable market |
| Defense | To serve as a buffer for the South Carolina Colony against attacks by indigenous people |
| Unstated Purpose | Details |
|---|---|
| Religion | To remove Protestants from England who were being persecuted; Catholics were banned from the colony to prevent conflicts between Protestants and Catholics |
| Buffer for South Carolina (other reasons) |
Spanish Florida’s policy was that any runaway enslaved person could be free in Spanish Florida if he/she converted to Catholicism and became a Spanish subject. White South Carolina residents were glad because:
|
See description of chart Links to an external site.
Georgia as a Trustee Colony
The Georgia Colony was unlike any other colony—it wasn’t a proprietary colony and it was not a joint-stock colony. It was the only colony that was governed by trustees.
Trustees are people who are placed in an official position to act in the best interests of other people. They are not to benefit personally from decisions they make. They are supposed to act in the interests of those for who they are responsible.
Additionally, the charter prohibited several activities for trustees to ensure that they would not act out of self-interest.The prohibitions included no salaries, no land ownership in the colony and they could not hold public office in the Georgia Colony.
The charter for the Georgia Colony named James Oglethorpe and 20 other British gentlemen who were also interested in philanthropy (charity.)
The Georgia Colony was a social experiment and the trustees wanted to avoid the conditions that had led to poverty and other problems in England.
They believed that Georgia might become a ‘model society’ if they:
- made and enforced strict rules on land and work in the colony.
- carefully selected colonists.
The most important tasks for James Oglethorpe and the trustees were to:
- raise money to send the colonists to Georgia, pay for their food and the tools once they got there.
- advertise for contributions via sermons, pamphlets, speeches and newspapers.
The trustees chose 35 families to settle the Georgia Colony. They chose farmers, carpenters, bakers, merchants, tailors as well as other trades and skills to ensure that the colony had settlers who could produce goods that would need in a functioning colony.
The chosen colonists received free passage to Georgia plus land, weapons and even tools for farming, seeds for planting, materials to build their homes and enough food to last their families until the first harvest.
Colonists were responsible for clearing the land, building their homes and public buildings as well as farming and following the rules set by the trustees.
Sailing for Georgia!
The charter for the Georgia Colony was issued by King George II (The colony was named after the king!)
James Oglethorpe and 114 settlers sailed for the Georgia Colony aboard the Anne in November 1732.
Fifty-seven days later the ship arrived in Charles Town Harbor in the South Carolina Colony. James Oglethorpe met with the officials in South Carolina who promised to help the Georgia Colonists in any way they could.
Oglethorpe and other settlers traveled to Yamacraw Bluff on the Savannah River and met with John Musgrove, a Carolina trader who owned a trading post with his wife, Mary. Musgrove told Oglethorpe that he needed to get permission from Tomochichi, the Yamacraw chief to settle the area. Tomochichi spoke very little English, so John Musgrove interpreted for Tomochichi and Oglethorpe.
Tomochichi agreed to Oglethorpe’s settlement of the area on Yamacraw Bluff because the area had been cleared of game and the land was not favorable for farming. (The Yamacraws had become increasingly dependent on English trade goods and they traded deerskins and furs.) Tomochichi believed that a nearby English settlement would be beneficial for his tribe.
February 12, 1733, (a day we celebrate as “Georgia Day”) the settlers and Oglethorpe arrived at Yamacraw Bluff. The colony had been legally created in 1732, but people consider February 12 to be the actual day of the founding of the colony.
Georgia's First Settlement
Even with everyone working to build the new settlement that was called Savannah, more labor was needed. So Oglethorpe hired black sawyers from the South Carolina Colony to help.
After all the trees had been cleared, Noble Jones surveyed the area. The city was laid out by a special plan that had been designed in London.
According to the plan, there would be open spaces called “squares” as the main feature. The squares were the neighborhood centers and there were 4 lots set aside for public buildings. There were to be 40 house lots (in 4 groups of 10) and each lot was 60’ X 90’.
The First Year:
By the end of the first year dysentery and other diseases had left 25% of the colonists dead. The drinking water from the river carried diseases and the conditions in the settlement improved after the town well was dug. Savannah began to recover and new colonists arrived.
New colonists came from places like Germany and Switzerland; and Lutheran Salzburgers arrived early on in the colony’s history in addition to the English settlers who came on charity or paid their own way.
In 12 months the settlers had built 50 homes and several public buildings. But James Oglethorpe continued to live in a tent until all the colonists could be housed.
| Type of Passage to the Georgia Colony | Land Grants |
|---|---|
| Male on charity | Town lot + 50 acres (45 acres in the country and 5 acres close to town) |
| Male who paid passage | 50 acres |
| Male who paid passage for servants | 50 acres per servant, up to 500 acres |
See description of chart Links to an external site.
If the land was not good for raising crops, the trustees didn’t issue new land grants.
Complaints from the Colonists
But the Georgia Colony was not the paradise that the colonists had expected. There were a lot of rain and storms, insects and unbearable heat and humidity. They complained about the restrictions on land ownership and inheritance, the ban on slavery and the restrictions on rum and hard liquor.
Colonists were forbidden from selling or leasing their land. If colonists left the Georgia Colony, the land reverted to the trustees.
The trustees had enacted the restrictions to prevent the establishment of an elite upper class through limited land ownership. But the most unpopular restriction was the rule on inheritance.
The inheritance laws were the most maligned by the colonists. The trustees wanted to make sure that each land grant had a male who was trained to protect the land with firearms. So the land was only passed to male heirs when a colonist died. If a man died without a male heir, the land reverted to the trustees who then granted the land to another family.
The colonists did not like the ban on slavery in the Georgia Colony. They believed that they were at a disadvantage compared to farmers in other colonies since they could never compete with large planters who had many more acres and many enslaved laborers. Some of the trustees believed in the ban on slavery (They believed that slavery made white settlers lazy.) and some trustees believed that slavery was needed to make the colony competitive and it was unfair to the colonists not to allow slavery in Georgia.
The prohibition on rum and hard liquors inhibited the colonists’ trading with the indigenous people.They were able to drink English beer and wine and many colonists ignored the ban on run and hard liquors and drank them anyway.
Forts
James Oglethorpe took Tomochichi and a group of Creek Indians to England to update the trustees. The Native Americans pledged their friendship to the trustees and they met the king and queen before returning home.
While in England Oglethorpe and the other trustees asked Parliament for financial support for Georgia and they didn’t focus on charity this time. They focused on the military needs of the colony by stressing the military buffer against the French and Spaniards and their Indian allies.
Parliament provided money for forts on the Southern border.The trustees sent 150 Scottish Highlanders to Darien, just north of the mouth of the Altamaha River.
In February Oglethorpe laid out the town and the fort of Frederica while the Scots were building the fort at Darien.
Oglethorpe and Tomochichi sailed as far south as the St. Johns River in northern Florida to search for sites for more English forts which angered the Spaniards since they still claimed the land where the English planned their forts.
Oglethorpe and the governor of Spanish Florida, Francisco del Moral Sanchez, agreed to a temporary treaty.
Indian Relations
The British government sent instructions for maintaining friendship with the indigenous people since they knew that the colony would need their Indian allies in case of a war with the Spaniards.
However, friendship with the Native Americans was threatened because of colonial traders from the area who cheated the Native Americans.
The trustees had another issue with the colonial traders who were supplying rum to the indigenous people. Oglethorpe had to regulate trade with the Indians; anyone who desired to trade with the indigenous people had to have a license, pay a fee and agree to follow the rules.
To ensure fair treatment of the Native Americans, officials set the exchange rate for animal skins and other trade items.
Trade with the Indians took place primarily in the backcountry (the unsettled inland area 50+ miles from the coast.)
Spanish/English Relations
The relationship between the Spaniards and the English deteriorated and Oglethorpe feared an invasion by the Spaniards. By November 1736 Oglethorpe left for England and requested more money for the colony. He warned English officials that a Spanish invasion was likely and without British soldiers to defend the colony, it would likely fall to the Spaniards.
In the fall of 1737 King George II gave Oglethorpe the rank of colonel and authorized him to raise a regiment of 600 soldiers and put him in command of British forces in the Georgia and South Carolina Colonies.
In early 1739 England declared war on Spain and the war (as it did with all of the colonies) spilled over into the North American colonies.Oglethorpe prepared to invade Spanish Florida rather than be invaded by the Spaniards.
In the spring of 1740 Oglethorpe and his men tried to take control of St. Augustine and they were forced to retreat to Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island in the Georgia Colony.
In late 1742 Spanish ships loaded with thousands of soldiers appeared off the coast of St. Simons Island and badly outnumbered the English troops there.
On July 7 the Spaniards advanced on Fort Frederica from the south. Oglethorpe’s men fired on them from the woods and took them by surprise. The Spaniards turned back and the English soldiers reported to Oglethorpe who assembled troops to chase the Spaniards. They found the Spaniards at the edge of the marsh and engaged the Spaniards in a short, violent battle. The Battle of Bloody Marsh was a success for the English troops on St. Simons Island.
The Spaniards retreated to St. Augustine and James Oglethorpe was promoted to general.
Oglethorpe went back to England, met Elizabeth Wright and married her. He served in Parliament for 10 more years.
In that time the trustees abandoned the policies that governed the colony and the colony was in economic decline because many colonists went back home to England and production and exports in the colony declined. Crop failures and discontent added to the decline of the colony.
The trustees loosened the restrictions on land ownership and inheritance in the colony. By 1750 there were no prohibitions on slavery. The trustees also allowed the colonists to elect delegates to advise the trustees on colonial business.
In 1752 the trustees turned over control of the colony to the British Crown.
Review
Review what you've learned by completing the activity below.
Moving forward, James Oglethorpe and his men faced many challenges and hardship in Georgia. Now that they received King George’s approval they began their journey to establish Georgia and set its place in history.
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