Georgia

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James Oglethorpe, a former soldier, was elected Member of Parliament for Hazlemere in 1722. One of his earliest parliamentary projects was to find a better solution for debtors incarcerated in dreadful conditions within London's prisons. His idea was the foundation of a new colony, which was well received, and parliament added to its purpose the provision of asylum to persecuted German protestants. £10,000 was approved by parliament and further money was raised by subscription. As a result, George II granted to Oglethorpe and twenty other persons all the territory between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers in America. In his honour the area was called Georgia.

Oglethorpe and his first group of around 150 carefully vetted settlers sailed from London in the Anne in November 1732 arriving in Charleston, South Carolina in January 1733. Surveying the land to the south he established, on what was then known as Yamacraw Bluff, what later became the city of Savannah. The rest of the settlers were moved down in boats from Charleston arriving in the Savannah River on 12 February 1773. The settlement grew rapidly and, by the following year, the area to the south of Savannah was explored and claimed for the British Crown.

Whether to answer criticism at home of some his policies in the colony (a refusal to accept slavery and prohibition of distilled alcohol, both of which cost the British Crown money) or as a result of patriotic fervour, or a chance to tie the growth of the colony to the increasing Spanish threat in the area by building a fort on St Simon's Island, he returned to London in 1734. Having made his case, the Trustees voted him more funds and approved plans to transport more settlers chiefly for military purposes to protect the area against Spanish expansion. Oglethorpe, the Creek leaders who accompanied him to London, and protestants expelled from the area around Salzburg in Austria, arrived on the Prince of Wales in December 1734. Oglethorpe, through the offices of Hugh MacKay had also recruited Highlanders, largely from Inverness and from Sutherland, and they came out on the next voyage of the Prince of Wales, reaching Savannah on 10 January 1736.

They were each given 50 acres and called their settlement New Inverness. This was later changed to Darien to commemorate the disastrous Scottish settlement on the isthmus of Panama. Two forts on St Simon's Island, Fort St Simon and Fort Frederica, about seven miles apart, to protect the town of Frederica, were also built in 1736.

On arrival in Georgia some of the Salzburgers had explained it was against their religious beliefs to fight (they really wanted to join their kinsfolk in Ebenezer, who had emigrated with the Trustees' financial assistance on the Purysburg in early 1734, not take part in a British military adventure) so the bulk of Oglethorpe's initial army was made up of Highlanders and local Creek warriors. They took part in the unsuccessful attack on the Spanish garrison at St Augustine in 1741 and distinguished themselves at the Battle of Bloody Marsh in 1742 which, although a relatively minor battle, put an end to Spanish claims to Georgia.

Curiously, Oglethorpe had a further connection with Scottish Highlanders. He returned to England in 1743 and retired from military service but was recalled in 1745 as a Major-General to put down the Jacobite rebellion. He was court-martialled after Culloden for allegedly not pursuing the vanquished rebels with sufficient vigour but was acquitted.

Georgia was already in economic decline when Oglethorpe returned to England and this accelerated with the end of the War of Austrian Succession with many of the British Troops leaving Georgia. The Trust was unable to secure further funding from parliament and gave up its charter in 1752. As a consequence, Georgia became a Royal Colony.

The town of Darien was burned by the Union Army during the Civil War in 1863. Fort Frederica was incorporated into the National Parks System in 1936.

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