St. Simons Island, GA

A warm day, so we’re off to St. Simons Island, GA, about 12 miles to our east. Heavy rains are threatened for the afternoon with a tornado warning but the temps drop really low from tomorrow on so its today or wait a couple of years to tour this island famous in Colonial American History and United Methodism.

Our first stop is Fort Frederica. Built in the 1730’s by James Oglethorpe to keep the Spanish penned in Florida he actually used its garrison first to attack them at St. Augustine, about 100 miles south.  His attack  failed in all but to spur the Spanish on to respond by attacking Fort Frederica.  And on they came. 3,000 strong against less than 1,000 on St. Simons Island.

The Spanish landed at the old Fort St. Simons on the south shore of the island and began to march north through the marshes toward Fort Frederica.  They were within a mile or so of the town gates when they were discovered and Oglethorpe sent his fearless Scots, Scouts and Indians into the midst of them. Dramatically surprised the well trained in massed-musket-fighting Spanish wheeled and fled.

James Oglethorpe’s men knew a short cut and surprised them farther south in a battle that would be called ‘Bloody Marsh’ because stories spread on both sides that the marsh had ‘run red with blood’.  Few actually died in this battle, but the Spanish were running out of ammunition and they left the field a second time, never to return north again.

England had won the deep south from Spain of all but Florida, and France’s claims on Louisiana territory to the west would wait till the next century for a new nation to take it all.

Today the site of Fort Frederica and the walled Frederica Town are well excavated and presented.  Some of the home sites have been identified and connected to their original owners. The fort itself is well marked, even though parts of it have fallen with edges of the island into 

the river.

We met John in the visitor’s center and had a wonderful conversation with him about a proposed new National Park that would have many units in many states.  It would be called the Gullah Trail and would follow the hundreds of years journey of West African slaves to the Atlantic Coast to work the hard indigo, rice and later cotton plantations, and the journeys some of them took as far north as Nova Scotia, Canada with their loyalist masters after the American Revolution.

Some escaped south into Seminole swamps and marshes in Florida, and some of them went west with the Seminoles to Oklahoma in the time of the ‘Trail(s) of Tears’.  A few of those then migrated into Northern Mexico. About 1500 of the Nova Scotian Gullah even made it back to Africa with the help of the British navy to settle Freetown, Sierra Leone. Canada was just TOO COLD for them!

What was especially cool about John, though, was that he is a full time RVer living in his fifth wheel.  He volunteers at national parks all year long, following the seasons. For those of us who desire that kind of lifestyle, or need the savings, the park service gives you a free place to hook up to full utilities and you work a short schedule each week doing what needs done as a docent or interpreter to the tourists. 

This summer John was at Big Bend National Park in Southern Texas, and last year had been at Grand Canyon, Arizona. Who knows; some day we may want to do that.

Along with James Oglethorpe and his soldiers in 1836 came two brothers who would re-write Protestant church history from this time forth.  Charles Wesley, Anglican Priest to the new church here at Frederica Town,  and secretary to Governor Oglethorpe, and John Wesley, Anglican Missionary Priest to all on the island, including the Guale Indians.

Though both John and Charles, upon their return to England, thought of their time in Georgia as fruitless, it allowed John to discover the warm love for Christ of the Germanic Moravians who had come south from Savannah with Oglethorpe.  Such joy as he had never found in Anglicanism’s academic legalism opened his eyes to what could be done in the love of Christ.

John would find, a few years later, the same joy only stronger in a Moravian small group meeting in Aldersgate Street in London.  Charles would follow suit in his own conversion experience and their shared joy developed what became the Methodist Movement in the Anglican Church, and then the separate Methodist Church in America, and later in England. 

Today the world wide United Methodist Church is the recognized first fruit of the brothers work here on St. Simons, and back in Savannah, in the couple of years they were here in Georgia.

In the 1940’s a group of dedicated Methodists purchased a former rice, cotton, then lumber plantation called ‘Hamilton’ and began building what is today ‘Epworth by the Sea’, a large meeting, fellowship, training, and retreat center which also houses the offices of the South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Here a museum and historic library is made available to any with interest in the study of the Wesley’s and Methodism. We stopped in and met Anne who was very helpful.  But I had a non-Wesley question for her.

“Are there any RV’s allowed to park here at the center?”  No, she said.  RV’s aren’t allowed to overnight on the island.  It’s just not big enough.  Well, I’m glad John, up at Fort Frederica, had a place to settle down, and we did see some trailers on private land, but no motor homes, and no campgrounds.

A visit to the St. Simons library found Mona a new book. Wouldn’t want her to run out!  And I trekked to the lighthouse and south shore park to see Jekyll Island across the river inlet. Now there is an exclusive island!  Take a look at Google Maps.  Its almost ALL golf courses.

  

We ended our visit at St. Simons Coast Guard Station, where the crews of two torpedoed World War 2 tankers were brought to shore in 1942.

This beach is very natural and we found a lot of birds resting, eating, kibitzing before bed time at the surf line.

Our supper, and bedtime, began calling us as we headed back to our home at the Home Depot. Tomorrow its south to St. Augustine Florida.  The temp is 10 degrees warmer there and its going into the 20’s here tomorrow night.

Global warming, ya know?

And there’s FORTS!       And libraries.  J

-Ken

PS:  Photos in full at Ken DeWalt FACEBOOK