WORMSLOE

Having spent most of our lives in the Middle Atlantic states, and especially in Pennsylvania, Mona and I have come to pretty much accept the fact that the USofA started in our own back yards.  Our extended time here in Savannah is proving to be a changing time for our own understanding of our nation’s beginning. We always knew the history.  But now we KNOW the history.

For example, after visiting a couple of libraries south of Savannah proper we headed for the small Gullah community of PinPoint; the name is apt.  But this place houses a wonderful small Gullah community museum.  Today it was filled with seagrass basket weavers and the cost to get in for someone with our limited interest in weaving was a bit steep. While there, however,  we learned of the oldest plantation remains in Georgia, just north of Pinpoint, on the next Island: The Isle of Hope, with the ominous sounding name of Wormsloe.

We arrived at the gates to the property, now a Georgia State Historic Site, and stopped at the 1917 gatehouse to purchase tickets.  Passes, we learned, that would get us into this evenings ‘lantern tour’ of some of the trails that lead through the property.  A tour that would feature live actors portraying historical and legendary persons of Wormsloe in the 17 and early 1800’s.

The founder of Wormsloe was an English carpenter who came with James Oglethorpe on the first ship to colonize Georgia.  Noble Jones was a poor but very industrious man who set out to be as valuable as he could to his new colony.  He was made surveyor of the community and laid out both Savannah’s first streets, but also Buffton’s (now part of South Carolina) to the north and 100 miles inland up the Savannah River, the first streets of the city of Augusta, Georgia.

He became colony treasurer, a judge, and a constable and then, when he was retired from those positions, received a huge land grant on Hope Island and built not just a home, but a fortress home on the then busy waterway directly in front of his house.

The fear in the first half of the 18^th century was not so much Indians in this area; they were friends till new white settlers took their lands.  Nor was it the French. They had no designs on the Atlantic Coast of America.  The French were establishing their own island colonies in the Caribbean and at New Orleans.  No, it was the Spanish, who from the time of Desoto had claimed all of Georgia and much of the then  combined Carolina Colony for his king in Madrid.

So Noble Jones built a fort at his home and one at the southern tip of the island (now covered with 1860’s Confederate artillery fortification), established a marine force (2 row boats with small mounted cannon and muske-armed men) and patrolled the waterways between the Savannah River Inlet and what is now the Moon River Inlet (named for the song by Henry Mancini and local music great, Johnny Mercer).

Today the ninth generation of the Noble family still owns about 80 acres and the 1828 plantation house which sits just north of the State historic Site.  The remains of the 1744 mansion Noble built are the oldest colonial remains in the state, and have proven to be a treasure trove of colonial life for archeologists and historians alike.

We walked some of the trails around the heavily forested, some would say jungled, property. While much of it is swampy, there is a lot which Noble and his descendants were able to turn over to agriculture.  In  fact, cattle and dairy production was profitable here into the mid 1950’s.

 Today you can walk to the site of Noble Jones first grave, near his home site (his body was moved first to Colonial Cemetery and then the larger one at thunderbolt, Ga, just below Savannah.

The Historical Site has built reconstructions of typical yeoman and slave family homes in the area where they would have been not far south of the main house along the water.

Tonight was the lantern walk, and for an hour two groups of about 20 each followed our guides from one scene from the history of this island and Savannah itself to another as volunteer actors played their roles with all the passion they could muster. The highlight being what it usually is in re-enactments: the attack of several Spanish upon the English guards. Musket fire always wins the crowd.  Except when cannons are around.

Tomorrow we head to church up at the Church of the Palms, UMC, above Sun City in South Carolina.  Its only about 45 minutes away.  There is a congregational luncheon planned and you may know Methodists and food.  J

-Ken