Oglethorpe, like many other noble men before him, thought of America as a place of refuge for the unfortunate. King George II gave him a charter for the land between the Savannah and the Altamaha, and made his heart glad by declaring that all Protestants should be tolerated there.
A select body of emigrants
When the debtors heard the news that Oglethorpe was to plant a colony for them there was great excitement among them. But he carefully selected his settlers, so that no lazy man might be found among them. Arms and tools with which to work on the farms were given to the settlers.
At Charleston
When the time came, thirty families were ready to sail. Oglethorpe carried them direct to Charleston, South Carolina. When they landed, in 1733, the people of Charleston were only too glad to have a colony south of them as a "buffer" against the Spaniards who occupied Florida, and who had already attacked South Carolina.
Savannah laid out
Therefore, the people of Charleston, to give the new colony a good start, presented the settlers with one hundred head of cattle, a drove of hogs, and fifteen or twenty barrels of rice. Rejoicing in their new supplies, the colony sailed to the Savannah River, and not far from its mouth, on a beautiful bluff, Oglethorpe marked out the streets of the new city. The settlers went to work with a will, cutting down trees and making them into cabins. They soon had comfortable homes, although very different from what they had known in England.
Italians
Soon other colonists came to Savannah. Among these was a company of Italians who had come to raise the silkworm and to manufacture silk.
