On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World

Images

The Tannatt Family by Henry Benbridge, ca. 1774. Predominantly Scots, the members of this extended family were part of the emerging elite in colonial Georgia. The elderly woman to the right is Heriot Cunningham Crooke (Mrs. Clement Crooke) who, after her husband died, moved with her family from St. Kitts to Savannah in 1753. Her four daughters married Georgia merchants of Scots origin. The second person from the left is Lady Houstoun, widow of Sir Patrick Houstoun, a Lowland Scot who arrived at the founding of the colony. To her right is Heriot Tannatt, later the wife of William Thomson, son of a leading London merchant in the Georgia trade. Among the men are a nephew of Governor James Wright and the attorney general for the province. Photo© National Gallery of Canada. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Gift of Jasper H. Nicolls, Ottawa, 1960. Bay Street, Savannah, 1786. Edward White, the customs house officer of the port of Savannah, created this sketch, which lists the names of the occupants of the buildings. Several of the houses follow the design of cottages shown in a view of the town from 1734. Unlike Charles Town, there are no houses on raised foundations and little indication that brick was used.The opening in the middle of the drawing appears to be Bull Street. Many of the two-story buildings served as stores as well as residences. ms 2001, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah. Courtesy of the Georgia Historical Society. James Habersham portrait by Jeremiah Theus, 1772. Habersham (1715–75) came to Georgia as a schoolteacher and missionary with George Whitefield, built and managed the Bethesda Orphanage, and then became the premier merchant in the struggling colony. During the royal period, he created three rice plantations and served on the governor’s council and later as the acting governor. He almost singlehandedly shaped the nature of the government and the economy in the interim period between the trusteeship and the royal regime. From The Letters of Hon. James Habersham, 1756–1775, vol. 6. Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries. Joseph Clay portrait by Jeremiah Theus, 1772. Clay (1741–1804) arrived in Georgia at age nineteen and followed in the footsteps of his uncle James Habersham. First in partnership with his cousin James Habersham Jr., then on his own, he exported rice, imported enslaved Africans,shipped lumber to the West Indies, and showed himself to be a cautious entrepreneur well grounded in the art of transatlantic trade. He was one of the few merchants to embrace the Revolution. Courtesy of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Georgia. View of Tiby Lighthouse at the entrance of Savanna River. Georgia. Dec’r, 1764.The lighthouse on Tybee Island marked the entrance to the Savannah River and the beginning of a seventeen-mile journey to Savannah. Watercolor of a drawing in the Crown Collection of Maps in the British Museum. Courtesy of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries. View of Cockspur Fort at the entrance of Savanna River in Georgia. Decr. 1764. The government built the small fort after a Spanish vessel raided the Georgia coast at the end of the Seven Years’ War. Located at the mouth of the south channel of the Savannah River, it served as an anchorage for incoming vessels awaiting a pilot or for outgoing vessels taking in the last of their cargo from lighters. The fort fell into disuse and was no longer there by 1780. Watercolor of a drawing in the Crown Collection of Maps in the British Museum. Courtesy of the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries. A Trading Boat Which Sails up to Savannah Town, 200 Miles Higher Up Than Ebenezer.On a trip to Georgia with other colonists from Germany in 1736,Philip von Reck produced some fifty watercolor and pencil sketches of what he saw. This boat was hauling supplies up the Savannah River to the frontier trading post of Savannah Town on the Carolina side of the river. It returned with a cargo of deerskins for Charles Town. Oglethorpe founded Augusta a few months later. Boats continued to be the most common way of...