Georgia Day honors state’s founding

Today is Georgia Day, which celebrates the founding of our state as a colony in 1733 with the arrival of the first colonists at what became Savannah. The story of the hardy band of 114 men, women and children who arrived then has been told often.

A lecture I gave last year at the Georgia Archives Lunch and Learn about their origins and their arrival is posted on the Georgia Archives YouTube channel via their website GeorgiaArchives. org. Scroll through the Lunch and Learn videos to “Georgia’s Early Settlers and Vetting by the Trustees.”

My lecture includes a lot of new research into where in greater London the early settlers came from. They were urban folk brought to the new world to a barren bluff on the Savannah River to create a town and a colony and given farm lots. Luckily, enough survived the first year along with the newer shiploads of settlers, that the colony flourished.

Several books recount the ups and downs of the colony, including a new one by Clay Ouzts titled “Samuel Elbert and the Age of Revolution in Georgia” (Mercer University Press, 2022). The first few chapters recount the early colony since Elbert’s mother was one of the original colonists. All in all, Georgia, the last of the original 13 English colonies, is also one of the best documented, since the founding and settling was well covered in the newspapers of the day.

Founding of Georgia materials for teachers

The Georgia Historical Society in Savannah (georgiahistory.com) has a wealth of material online for teachers to use when teaching Georgia history. On their website, click “Learn” and then “For Educators” to get started. There are a lot of other areas on the website to explore about Georgia.

Georgia founding materials via UGA

The founding of Georgia is also well covered by the University of Georgia. Original documents from the founding days have been digitized and are online via the Digital Library of Georgia at dlg.usg.edu. To see original documents from Sir John Percival, the earl of Egmont and the first president of the common council, search for “Egmont.”

The UGA Press has recently reprinted in their Georgia Open History Library many of the Colonial Records of Georgia series where one can follow the founding via the Trustees minutes and other documents.