Georgia Colony

Georgia Colony

By:Victoria Person

facts

Major Industry: Agriculture (indigo, rice, sugar)

Major Cities: Savannah

Colony Named for: England's King George II

Became a State: January 2, 1788

development

school

James Oglethorpe

Defending the new colony

The Privy Council approved the establishment charter on June 9, 1732, and for the next two decades the council of trustees governed the province, with the aid of annual subsidies from Parliament. However, after many difficulties and the departure of Oglethorpe, the trustees proved unable to manage the proprietary colony, and on June 23, 1752, they submitted a deed of reconveyance to the crown, one year before the expiration of the charter. On January 7, 1755, Georgia officially ceased to be a proprietary colony and became a crown colony.

Oglethorpe founded or oversaw the founding of several other communities in the new colony of Georgia after his first planned city of Savannah. A group of Germans from Salzburg traveled in Georgia to escape Catholic persecution. Oglethorpe sent them to settle a community called Ebenezer, and the Salzburgers, as they were known, became known as hard-working and self-reliant colonists.

Even though the new Georgia colony was originally meant to be a second chance for debtors in British jails, it quickly became apparent that the location would be ideal to defend all of the British colonies from Spain, which occupied Florida to the south.

The committee members asked King George II of England to grant a charter to create a new colony called Georgia, and once that was accomplished many of them were appointed as Trustees, including Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe and the colonists chosen to settle Georgia sailed for America in late 1732, and arrived at the site where they built Savannah two months later. Oglethorpe embarked on this trip knowing he could not own land, hold office, or receive a salary because of his status as a Trustee, but he still went ahead and worked hard in the new world.

School-age kids in the Southern Colonies were taught at home, for the most part, by their parents or by private tutors. When these kids became teenagers, they would then go off to college or to Europe. As in the other colonies, Southern girls did not go to school.

Oglethorpe and religion

Despite the Utopia the Trustees originally conceived Georgia to be, they did not allow Catholics or Jewish people to settle in Savannah. Catholics weren’t allowed because of the territory disputes between England and Spain, which occupied Florida to the south. Historically, the Spanish were Roman Catholic and Georgia’s founders feared that Catholic settlers might be sympathetic to their religious brethern in any potential disputes. But despite these restrictions, both groups eventually found their way into Georgia.

In 1735, two years after the Colony of Georgia had been established by Royal Charter,[2] Oglethorpe and the Trustees convinced the British House of Commons to pass an act banning slavery in the new colony,[3] legislation which after years of pressure was overturned by a new act in 1750.[4] Afterward, slavery grew in the colony, initially as labor for the coastal rice plantations.