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CHAPTER SIX Savannah Georgia Gentleman When James Habersham left Silk Hope and moved to Savannah in the early 1760s, he returned to the town where he had resided on arriving in 1738 and where he had established his mercantile business in 1743. The move was also symbolic, moving from an alien world of plantation agriculture back home to the commercial universe he knew so well. Though he was a successful planter, he remained a merchant, and he would spend the rest of his life helping his sons launch their own enterprises in overseas trade. In a letter to William Knox, Habersham explained his decision to return to Savannah. First, he said, “I find the Rice Field pernicious to my Health.” Increasingly, he suffered in the hot, humid Georgia summers, succumbing, in particular, to the miasmic rice fields. Accordingly, he entrusted the management of his plantation to his overseer and reduced his oversight to a minimum, indicating “that I scarcely go through it once in a Season.” Habersham’s second reason for moving back to Savannah was family concerns . The last few years at Silk Hope had witnessed a radical change in his family. To one correspondent, Habersham wrote, “my wife and several of my Children have dyed . . . , and my remaining 3 Children being settled, two here and one in London, I left the Country, and now reside almost wholly in this Town.” He wanted to be close to his sons so he could assist them in establishing themselves professionally. Moreover, Savannah was the seat of government, and as president of the Council, Habersham had a “Load of public Concerns” to shoulder.1 Shortly after moving back to Savannah, Habersham reflected on his life in Georgia, revealing much about how he viewed himself and his various private and public roles. He saw himself primarily as a businessman rather than as a planter. In a letter to a London correspondent who had asked him to expatiate on Georgia gardens and crops, Habersham demurred, saying that he had little “knowledge of, or particular Passion for the cultivating of Plants.” At the same time, he acknowledged his admiration for those who dedicated themselves to improving agriculture in the province. He believed that their efforts were both profitable to themselves and beneficial to society . “I revere and esteem Men who act out of the narrow Sphere of Self,” he wrote, “and communicate their Knowledge for usefull Improvements for the Public good.” He explained his lack of agricultural expertise by pointing out that he had been from youth to “near 50 years of age unavoidably immersed in commercial Business, which never allowed me Time to think much of other matters.”2 When Habersham first moved to Silk Hope in the 1750s, he set about developing a country estate with many of the amenities found in English country homes. He explained: “I built a comfortable House, and being desirous of making it agreeable to myself and Family, I laid out a spot of ground of about 7 or 8 Acres at some Expense, under the direction of an English Gardener.”3 He lived on his country estate for only about ten years. Now, instead of being a country gentleman, Habersham reported that he was a “perfect Citizen of Savannah,” living in his “neat and comfortable Habitation” on Bull Street in Johnson Square.4 Habersham returned to a place he had helped transform from a slowmoving village to a busy port. As he walked along Savannah’s riverfront in the 1770s, he observed the changes that had elevated the town from the shabby, decaying community Governor John Reynolds had described on his arrival in 1755. Reynolds had estimated Georgia’s population then as “not above three thousand Men, Women, and Children, in an extent of Country of a Hundred Miles by Two Hundred.” Savannah consisted of an estimated 150 houses, “most of them Old . . . and many of them Decayed.” He learned firsthand the degree of rot in buildings constructed of untreated lumber subjected to climatic extremes when “the largest House in the Town fell down whilst I was sitting in Council in it.”5 As Habersham surveyed Savannah in 1775, he saw vitality instead of decay, brick instead of lumber. He saw “numerous wharves” with facilities for loading, unloading, and storing cargo, and he must have remembered with great satisfaction that his private wharf had been the first designed specifically for overseas trade. The wharves’ quality would have caught Habersham’s eye as he...

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