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53 chapter three Georgia Joining a Colony of Rebels I have never formally studied anything. Nor do I have complete and proper training in anything, because I have never ever been able to stick with any one thing. For a while I was a chemist, and for a while I was a surgeon, an apothecary, a barber, a doctor, a button maker, a shoemaker, a tailor, a pewterer, a hermit, a pilgrim, and a servant or slave to a master builder for five years. And I am not yet 18 [that is, 28] years old.1 —Jean-François Reynier to Count Zinzendorf, Charleston, South Carolina, 1739 On 15 September 1735, about five months after the Moravians arrived in Georgia, Jean-François Reynier reached Savannah after his long journey from the north and knocked on the door of their house in Anson Ward. He had hoped to find Count Zinzendorf himself inside, but instead he found August Gottlieb Spangenberg and others robing a body and preparing it for a simple burial. Reynier asked to join the group and offered to cast pewter spoons in order to be useful. Cautiously, Spangenberg urged Reynier to first sell his spoons to pay off his debt to his former master in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile Reynier could participate in some of their services. Although Spangenberg denied it later, at the time he and the other Moravians welcomed Reynier because of his ability as a craftsman. While Moravians had many skilled craftsmen working in their large communities in Herrnhut and Wetteravia (and later in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and elsewhere), in the early period of their outpost settlements and missions like Savannah, a few skilled specialists were not enough. After six weeks, Reynier paid off his debt and joined the community. His abilities as a jack-of-all-trades expanded further when he made spoons and shoes for the entire party of Moravians. He also mended their clothes and made new ones, although he had never been trained as a tailor.2 54 Part One By the time Jean-François Reynier reached Savannah, he was a confident, talented, and seasoned twenty-three-year-old immigrant, but he still had a lot to learn about colonial life. Unlike Pennsylvania, he was now in a hot, humid climate, in a place near war and rebellion and where large numbers of slaves and Indians lived so close that he and his new friends could begin preaching to them. It was a peculiar place in the Atlantic World. Here Reynier experienced encounters among Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans firsthand, in colonial projects promoting conquest, slavery, and trade. And he also participated in an aspect of empire that involved lofty experiments, religious refugees, controversial missions, scheming, and scamming. When he departed, Reynier understood much more about important elements that made up the Atlantic World, but he was more frustrated than ever at his inability to change that world or himself. The inner demons he had discovered in Pennsylvania would not go away, and he still struggled to relate to those around him and stay out of trouble. In Georgia, Reynier joined a two-year-old frontier colony of rebels who had carved a settlement out of the wilderness and built dozens of houses beyond a bluff on the Savannah River. The streets formed right angles, like in Philadelphia , but large open spaces or “squares” highlighted this primitive urban landscape (and still do). The Lower Creeks viewed the new colony as a direct threattotheirexistence,buttheyalsosawpolitical,diplomatic,andeconomic opportunity in this European intrusion and sent a delegation to London to try to exploit it. South Carolina’s slaves viewed Georgia as a free territory on their border, where no planters or colonial apparatus could directly threaten them, but the colony and its military forces seemed so committed to helping their slaveholding neighbors that slaves were not safe fleeing across the river to Georgia. Instead, they had to pass through the new colony quickly and continue southward to Spanish Florida to acquire freedom. In Georgia, Reynier fit into a colorful array of refugees, seekers, dreamers , and schemers who made up part of the underside of the British colonial empire. A few miles upriver from Savannah, a group of Lutherans recently expelled from the Archbishopric of Salzburg built a self-sufficient colony at Ebenezer that became well known in evangelical, pietist circles throughout the Atlantic World. In Savannah itself, Reynier discovered a forty-two-person Sephardic and Ashkenazic community that rented a house on Market...

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