Monday, Apr. 22 – Wednesday, May 8, 2019
It was an uneventful trip winding through Georgia’s marshes to get to the Bahia Bleu Marina in Thunderbolt, GA. Along the way were some dolphins, birds, and occasional communities of homes with docks into the waterway, where a minimum wake is required so we had to slow down. It was bit chilly to start but it warmed up to short-sleeve weather as the afternoon wore on. The little town of Thunderbolt, under 3000 people, sits on the Wilmington River just five miles from historic Savannah. (Marina’s name: Bahia = bay in Spanish; Bleu = blue in French)
Our first few days were spent preparing the boat and ourselves for a two-day car ride back home. During this trip, we stayed overnight at a Best Western in Corbin, KY, the home of the first KFC, a little diner that was originally Colonel Harland Sanders’ service station where he’d serve travelers meals in the back room. A short time later, he opened his café across the street and the rest is history!
While driving home on day-1, we heard that a snow storm (at the end of April!) was expected at home the next day, so we re-routed our trip on day-2 to stop and see the Ramsey side of the family and stay overnight – thanks, Tammy & Alan! So, our 2-day trip became a 3-day trip. (Is this a similar pattern to our boat travels?)
While home for a week, we went to appointments, visited a few friends and neighbors, and on the last day, did some outdoor chores since the week’s rain had finally stopped. Both of the kids were able to come home for a night or two - it was great to see them! Bo was thrilled with having the yard to run around in and happy to see his friends at K9 Playtime on some of the rainy days. The return trip took only 2 days of going through every kind of weather except snow: sun, clouds, mist, sprinkles, rain and storms! When we got back to Thunderbolt, we were told that a tornado had missed the marina by only a half-mile and it had tipped over a nearby marina’s travel-lift – the enormous wheeled machine with slings that hoists large boats out of the water. Fortunately it was nice and warm by the time we got back and all was well.
After settling back into boat-life and re-provisioning, we could finally relax and do some sightseeing! We were told the legend of how Thunderbolt got its name... A bolt of lightning hit the top of the bluff here and a fresh water spring was born, therefore the town was named Thunderbolt!
Since we had a rental car, we drove into Savannah and took the hop-on / hop-off trolley around town to see what was there. It is a beautiful town and the trolley conductor was very knowledgeable with information covering the old buildings, homes, churches and parks. Not quite as exciting as St. Augustine, but nice to see and interesting to learn about.
Thus, today’s history lesson…
Savannah is the oldest city in Georgia having been founded in 1733 by General James Oglethorpe of England. He and the first 120 colonists arrived on a bluff along the Savannah River that February. Oglethorpe named the 13th colony "Georgia" after England's King George II, and Savannah became its first city.
The chief of the local Creek Indian village of Yamacraw, Tomochichi, granted permission to Oglethorpe to found his new colony on that Savannah River bluff. Due to the trusted friendship that developed between Oglethorpe and Tomochichi, the town was able to grow without some of the hardships that many of America's early colonies experienced.
The colony of Georgia was to be a military buffer between England’s South Carolina and Spain’s Florida. There were some noteworthy rules set forth in the original charter:
To be forbidden:
- rum
- lawyers (Really – lawyers? How interesting!)
- slavery (We didn’t know that Georgia was originally anti-slavery.)
To be accepted:
- all religions, EXCEPT Roman Catholicism (Spain’s Florida was full of those RCs right next door!)
- all nationalities… In fact, most of the settlers were English tradesmen and artisans, plus religious refugees from Switzerland, France and Germany, as well as a number of protestant and Jewish refugees.
Oglethorpe came with the plan to give 50 acres of land to each freeman who came to settle there. This consisted of a house lot within the city, a five-acre garden outside the city and 45-acres of farmland beyond that. The plan also included a specific design for the city itself.
In fact, Savannah is considered the first planned city in the colonies (in the US). It was designed as wards which were centered on “squares,” or park-like common areas: for every 80 house lots (4 rows of ten on the north and 4 more rows on the south side of the square) plus 4 lots (2 east, 2 west of the square) for public buildings such as churches, community or government buildings. (See photos)
The earliest homes were very basic: a 24 x 16 foot single-story clapboard home with a loft above and a small yard behind. Oglethorpe had designed the first six wards, and then laid out the first four with Noble Jones, Savannah’s first surveyor (also a carpenter and the town’s physician) and Colonel William Bull, its first architect. This basic design was continued for many years as the city grew and eventually 24 “squares” were created, of which 22 still exist today, and they are beautifully maintained.
This plan was designed to support an economy based on family farming. Yet the rise of the large cotton plantations in neighboring South Carolina dependent on slavery was obviously quite profitable for the white population there. Though the settlers thought that their own economic success could be tied to slavery, Oglethorpe would not disobey the royal charter given to him by the King. Eventually, Oglethorpe left the colony in 1743, after which Georgia, the “free colony,” legalized slavery.
https://www.visitsavannah.com/article/history-savannah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Oglethorpe
End of the history lesson…
We also visited Wormsloe Historic Site located on 80 acres about eight miles south of Savannah on Isle of Hope. In 1736, guess who leased the original 500 acres of this estate – none other than Noble Jones! Not only was he a physician, surveyor and carpenter, but he was also the colony’s constable, Indian agent, member of the Royal Council and commanded a company of Marines who were expected to defend Georgia’s coast. (Remember that buffer between England’s Carolina and Spain’s Florida? Noble Jones was in charge of that.) What a busy guy!
I guess this is more history… though a family story as well…
1739 – 1745, Noble Jones, G1 (Generation 1): After clearing 14 acres of dense forest, he spent six years building his home and named his estate “Wormslow,” which was most likely in reference to the area his family was from: Wormslow Hundred, Herefordshire, a county that bordered Wales. There were eight-foot high walls surrounding the house and its courtyard, all built with tabby (a mixture of lime, sand, oyster shells and water) including bastions on each corner … so they could defend themselves against those Spaniards! The 1.5 story, five-room home was twice the size of the standard Savannah home and considered quite an impressive structure. Though he grew a variety of crops, the land was not very fertile. (That was kind of okay because he was busy with lots of other stuff too.)
1756: Noble Jones received a royal grant giving him ownership of the 500 acre estate. He was a staunch Royalist until his death in…
1775: The estate went to his daughter, Mary Jones Bulloch (G2), upon his death.
1795: The estate was inherited by Nobel Wimberly Jones (G2) from his sister, Mary, upon her death. Unlike his father, NW Jones was a staunch patriot, a leading Georgia statesman, and friends with “important people” including Ben Franklin and several signers of the Declaration of Independence. He spent little time at the estate.
1805: NW’s son, George Jones (G3) inherited the estate. When George returned to the estate many years later (during which time it had not been attended to), he found the original home badly deteriorated. In 1828 he built a more elaborate two-story frame house measuring 20 x 40 feet. That home, since then expanded, remodeled and renovated, is still standing and has been occupied by seven generations of Noble Jones’s descendants. The currently family living on the Wormsloe estate does not open their private home and grounds to the public. (I don’t blame them!)
1838: George Frederick Tilghman Jones (G4) inherited the estate from his father. He changed the spelling from Wormslow with a “w” at the end to Wormsloe with an “e” at the end. Apparently he liked to change names because he also changed his own name to George Wymberly Jones De Renne, an inaccurate attempt at taking his grandmother's maiden name. He and the next two generations were instrumental in collecting a library full of invaluable materials relating to the state's past. They also produced printed copy of primary sources and other historical works relating to Georgia as a colony and state.
1880: GWJ De Renne died leaving the estsate in a type of limbo, until it was settled in…
1893: Wimberly Jones De Renne (G5), GWJ’s only surviving child took possession.
WJ De Renne commemorated the birth of his son in 1891, Wymberly Wormsloe De Renne (G6) by planting 400 live oak trees along the 1.5 mile roadway that leads into the property. Then in 1913, he had a masonry arch constructed at the entrance to the estate to commemorate his son’s coming of age at 22 years old. There are two dates on the arch, 1733 to represent the year Noble Jones arrived in Georgia, and 1913, when WW De Renne attained 22 years of age. (See photos)
1916: Wymberly Wormsloe DeRenne (G6, great-great-great-grandson of the original Noble Jones) inherited the estate upon his father’s passing, and added three formal gardens to the grounds among other upgrades. … And the heirs continue through the present day.
References:
Wormsloe State Historic Site Visitor Pass pamphlet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormsloe_Historic_Site
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/search/advanced/Wormsloe%20plantation
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Jones-73084
http://porterbriggs.com/the-wormsloe-plantation/
Our second history lesson is complete :-)
Other information we learned:
1. Spanish moss is not Spanish and not moss. It is what is commonly known as an air plant (epiphyte), which is in the family of bromeliad, the pineapple family!
2. The flag of SC has a white crescent moon and sabal palmetto tree (the state tree) on a blue background. It is an unusual yet quite pleasant-looking flag. The crescent represents the silver emblem worn on South Carolina troops’ caps during the revolutionary war, with blue being the uniform color. In 1776, sabal palmetto trees were used to quickly create forts to successfully defend Sullivan's Island against British warships. Their cannonballs simply sank into the soft yet tough palmetto wood causing little damage.
3. Are Live Oak trees evergreens (trees that do not lose their leaves) or deciduous (trees that lose all of their leaves for part of the year)? Live (long–I as in pine, not short-I as in pin) oaks replace their leaves over a short period of several weeks in the spring so they are rarely without leaves. This fact may be why they were given the name “live” oak since they never go dormant losing all of their leaves. So are they evergreens or deciduous? We’ve heard “nearly evergreen” though of course that is not official.
4. Savannah claims to have the second largest St Patrick’s Day celebration in the US (after New York City… hey – what about Chicago?). All tours, by bus, trolley and horse carriage, are canceled that day due to the (possibly drunken) crowds in the streets.
Time to move on to Beaufort…