Salzburgers in Georgia
Georgia Day is February 12. We all know James Edward Oglethorpe brought a group of English settlers to Savannah in 1733, but have you ever heard of the Salzburgers and the town of Ebenezer? In 1734 the first group of emigrants came to Georgia from the Principality of Salzburg. They were forced to leave their homeland and were seeking freedom, but not just religious freedom; they also wanted freedom of speech, thought, and conscience.
They came at the invitation of the Trustees of the Colony of Georgia, who also made money available to help with the voyage. The Trustees also gave each emigrant fifty acres of land and enough supplies to feed their family until crops grew. The emigrants came on three different ships which sailed from Rotterdam to Savannah:
- Purysburg Departed December 14, 1733 Arrived – March 12, 1734.
- Prince Frederick Departed – October 31, 1734 Arrived – December 28, 1734.
- London Merchant Departed – September 30, 1741
- Arrived – December 2, 1741.
The Salzburgers were good, hardworking people. By the time the last ship arrived in 1741, there were more than one thousand German speaking people living in Georgia. Most of the emigrants settled in the town of Ebenezer upriver from Savannah in Effingham County. There were also Germanic settlers at Bethany, Savannah, Frederica, Goshen, and along the road to Ebenezer.
The Salzburgers were leaders in education and culture in the early Georgia colony. They appreciated the finer things in life: religion, music, art, and science. They had the first schools at Bethany and Ebenezer. They were concerned for the care of orphans and established the first orphanage at Ebenezer. They also opposed slavery and petitioned against it to the Trustees of the Georgia colony. The settlers farmed, but they also manufactured silk.
Ebenezer was occupied by the British during the American Revolution and the inhabitants evacuated to Savannah. After the war the settlement recovered a bit, but did not regain its commercial and manufacturing prominence. Perhaps that is why many of the Salzburgers migrated to Lowndes County one hundred years later in the 1830s. People with names like Dasher, Griner, Burgsteiner, Hiers, Wisenbaker, and Zeigler moved here. How many people do you know with these names? You might even have ancestors who came to Lowndes with these groups many years ago.