COUNTY OF SAVANNAH.
This is a portion of a map in the Urlsperger Tracts, the whole of which is reproduced in Jones’s History of Georgia, i. 148.
As the first fruits of this expanded charity, on Reminiscere Sunday, according to the Lutheran Calendar, in March, 1734, the ship “Purisburg” entered the Savannah River having on board seventy-eight Salzburgers under the conduct of Baron von Reck, and accompanied by their spiritual advisers the Rev. John Martin Bolzius and the Rev. Israel Christian Gronau. They came from the town of Berchtolsgaden and its vicinity, had taken the oath of loyalty to the British Crown, and were conveyed at the charge of the Trust. “Lying in fine and calm weather under the Shore of our beloved Georgia, where we heard the Birds sing melodiously, every Body in the Ship was joyful,”—so wrote the Rev. Mr. Bolzius, the faithful attendant and religious teacher of this Protestant band. He tells us that when the ship arrived at the wharf, “almost all the inhabitants of the Town of Savannah were gather’d together; they fired off some Cannons and cried Huzzah!... Some of us were immediately fetch’d on shore in a Boat, and carried about the City, into the woods, and the new Garden belonging to the Trustees. In the mean time a very good Dinner was prepared for us.” The inhabitants “shewing them a great deal of kindness, and the Country pleasing them,” the new-comers “were full of Joy and praised God for it.”
By the 7th of April all these Salzburgers had been conducted to the spot designated as their future home. Although sterile and unattractive, and situated in the midst of a pine barren, to these peoples, tired of the sea and weary of persecutions, the locality appeared blessed, redolent of sweet hope, teeming with bright promise, and offering charming repose. The little town which they built in what is now Effingham County, they called Ebenezer. Early in the following year this settlement was reinforced by fifty-seven Salzburgers sent over by the Trustees in the ship “Prince of Wales.” Accessions occurred from time to time; and thus was introduced into the colony a population inured to labor, sober, of strong religious convictions, conservative in thought and conduct, obedient to rulers, and characterized by intelligent industry. Disappointed in their anticipations with regard to the fertility of the soil and the convenience of their location, these peoples, with the consent of Oglethorpe, in a few years abandoned their abodes and formed a new settlement on the Savannah River near the confluence of Ebenezer Creek with that stream.
And now the Moravians, accompanied by the Rev. Gottlieb Spangenberg, sought freedom of religious thought and worship in the province of Georgia. To them were assigned lands along the line of the Savannah River between the Salzburgers and the town of Savannah. With the Salzburgers they associated on terms of the closest friendship. In subduing the forests, in erecting comfortable dwellings, and in cultivating the soil, they exhibited a most commendable zeal.
COAST SETTLEMENTS BEFORE 1743.