Right across from the entrance to Ft. Frederica NM is this sign for St Simons Island:
From March 9 - May 12, 1738, Charles Wesley, secretary to James Oglethorpe, was Anglican cleric to the founders of Fort Frederica. His stern discipline earned disfavor among the colonists and Oglethorpe. John Wesley, religious leaders of the colony of Georgia, visited Charles in April 1736, preaching in the storehouse. Charles returned to England. John ministered to the Fredericans in four trips before leaving "with utter despair of doing good there" on January 26, 1737.
After John`s return to England, in May 1738 the brothers had "heart warming experiences" and later founded the Methodist movement.
This area was famous for harboring and nurturing the Wesley brothers, founders of the Methodist movement- they also did a lot of work in upstate South Carolina.
Here is "the rest of the story for the Island:
St. Simons is a census-designated
place (CDP) located on St. Simons Island in Glynn County,
Georgia, United States. Both the community and the island
are commonly considered to be one location, known simply as "St. Simons
Island", or locally as "The Island". St. Simons is part of the Brunswick, Georgia
Metropolitan
Statistical Area, and according to the 2000 census,
the CDP had a population of 13,381.
St. Simons
Island is one of Georgia's
renowned Golden Isles
(along with Sea Island, Jekyll Island,
and privately owned Little St. Simons
Island). It is also the largest of the Golden Isles. After being
cultivated by English colonists for rice and cotton plantations worked by
large populations of African slaves, who created the unique Gullah culture, the island since the early 20th century has
been developed as a resort community. Much of the island remains
marsh or woodland. It has many seasonal residents, as well as a steady base of
year-round residents.[citation needed]
The primary
mode of travel to the island is by automobile via F.J. Torras Causeway.
Also, Malcolm McKinnon
Airport (IATA: SSI) is located on the island.
History
Native American history
Just north of
the village on St. Simons Island is a park of oak trees. On the southern edge
of the oaks, along a narrow lane, is a low earthen mound underneath which 30
Native Americans are buried. The men, women and children interred there lived
in a settlement that existed on the site two centuries before the first
European contact.
The first
inhabitants of St. Simons lived there during fishing season about 2,000 BCE. No
one knows what they first called themselves. The much later historic tribe,
which encountered the Europeans, became known as the Timucuan. The tribe and people persist. Arising
from the prehistoric Mississippian culture
that flourished over much of the Southeast, the eastern Timucuan ranged along
the coastal plain of southeast Georgia and northern Florida. Their complex and
loose confederacy was made up of seven distinct tribal groups that spoke at
least five dialects of the Timucuan language.
The Marsh
St. Simons
Island was the northern boundary of the tribal and Spanish mission province known
as Mocama, which extended southward to the St. Johns River in present-day Florida. Its name
was taken from that of the dialect of the people. The town of Guadalquini
was located on the south end of the island at the site of the present-day
lighthouse. The Spanish applied the town's name to the island as well.
Just north of
Mocama was the territory of the Guale, who occupied the lowland
coastal area between the Altamaha and Ogeechee rivers. The Guale spoke a different
language from the Timucuan but their cultures
were closely related.
The coastal
Indians were a healthy and robust people. They adorned their bodies
with strings of shell beads four to six fingers in breadth. These were worn
around the neck, arms, wrists, and under the knees and ankles. They painted
their breasts, biceps and thighs with bright red body paint, soot and charcoal.
Both men and women wore their hair long. They let both their fingernails and
toenails grow. The men would sharpen their fingernails on one side, to use in
warfare. The Timucuan engaged in periodic warfare with their coastal neighbors
as much for sport as for spoils; violent ball games sometimes substituted for
war. The men wore deerskin breechcloths in all but
the coldest weather; the women wore skirts made of moss.
The Indians'
main source of food was the sea; they fished for sheepshead, sea catfish, drum,
shellfish and the great Atlantic sturgeon, mostly in and near the coastal
marshes. Their diet was supplemented by small game, such as raccoons, opossum
and the white-tailed deer. They also grew varieties of pumpkins (a kind of squash), beans
and corn; the latter was ground into meal for use.
They also gathered a wide array of nuts, grapes and berries from the rich land.
During spring
and summer, the Indians gathered in villages and planted crops, hunted, and
fished until harvest. The villages included granaries, a large communal
structure, and shelters for extended families made of saplings and boughs
covered with palmetto fronds. The chief usually had a dwelling larger than other
tribesmen. They used a wide range of bone tools; conch shells were formed into
hoes for agriculture, as well as hammers.
They harvested
corn in the fall, storing the surplus in the large village granaries. Several
times a year they distributed the food held in common in ritualized festivals;
after the fall redistribution ceremony, the Indians dispersed into small groups
and abandoned the larger village pattern until the following spring. They
ranged along the coast, from inland pine and river valley forest on the
mainland to the high hammock forests, tidal flats, beach and dunes of the
barrier islands. The group lodged in temporary shelters of large, oval-shaped
pavilions, moving on when game and fish were no longer plentiful. When food was
scarce, a hunter could hunt or fish in territory belonging to the village of
his wife.
The Indians
were governed by territorial and local chieftains known as "caciques"
(Mocama) and "micos" (Guale) and by lesser-ranking functionaries
within each of the coastal villages. Like nearly all Native Americans, they
developed a matrilineal society, with
hereditary power passed through the mother. The chiefs were required to marry a
commoner, therefore a sister or nephew inherited the title. Governing power was
based on the storage of corn - hence control of the food supply in lean times -
cultivated by labor tribute from the subordinate villages. Along with their
political power, the caciques and micos enjoyed the right to have more than one
wife; monogamy seemed to be the norm for the rest of the population.
Little was
recorded about the Timucuan religion before changes of European encounters. The
accounts of the Guale were recorded by a Dominican missionary priest who heard it third hand. Guale
mythology seems to have embraced the origin and destiny of the soul, and the
communal atonement for sin.
Their major deities were Mateczunga, god of the north, and Quexuga,
god of the south. The Guales believed that all souls originated in the north,
lingered briefly on earth, then departed to the realm of Quexuga.
The Spanish
were fascinated by their ceremony with clearly religious connotations: the
drinking of the "black drink" brewed from the berries of the cassina tree. After drinking this potent
beverage, "their bellies swelled and vomiting followed", which
allowed the participants to be cleansed.[citation needed]
Knowledge of
the Timucuan and Guale way of life prior to European contact is limited by the
archeological record and the subjective observations of the early explorers and
missionaries. From all indications, they were becoming more settled at the time
of European contact.
Fort Frederica
Remains of Fort
Frederica
Fort Frederica,
now Fort
Frederica National Monument, was the military headquarters of the Province of Georgia
during the early colonial period,
and served as a buffer against Spanish incursion from Florida. Nearby is the site of the Battle of Gully
Hole Creek and Battle of Bloody Marsh,
where on July 7, 1742, the British
ambushed Spanish troops marching single file through the marsh and routed them
from the island, which marked the end of the Spanish efforts to invade Georgia
during the War of Jenkins' Ear.[4]
American Revolution
An important
naval battle in the American Revolution
(the Frederica Naval Action)
was won by the American Colonists near St. Simons on April 19, 1778. Colonel Samuel Elbert was in command of Georgia's
Continental Army and Navy. On April 15, 1778 he learned that four ships
(including the Hinchinbrook, the Rebecca, and the Galatea)
from British East Florida were
sailing in St. Simons Sound. Elbert commanded about 360 troops from the Georgia
Continental Battalions at Fort Howe to march to Darien, Georgia. There they boarded three Georgia
Navy galleys: the Washington, commanded by Captain John Hardy ; the
Lee, commanded by Captain John
Cutler Braddock; and the Bulloch, commanded by Captain Archibald
Hatcher. On April 18 they entered Frederica River and anchored about
1.5 miles (2.4 km) from Fort
Frederica. On April 19 the colonial ships attacked the British Royal Navy ships. The Colonial ships were armed
with heavier cannon than the British ships. The galleys also had a shallow draft and could be rowed. The wind died down and
the British ships had difficulty maneuvering in the restricted waters of the
river and sound. Two of the British ships ran aground and the British escaped
to their other ship. The battle showed how effective the galleys could be in
restricted waters over ships designed for the open sea. The Frederica naval
action was a big boost to the morale of the colonists in Georgia.
Lumber for ships
Saint Simons'
next military contribution was due to the Naval Act of 1794, when timber harvested from two
thousand Southern live oak
trees from Gascoigne Bluff was
used to build the USS Constitution
and five other frigates (see Six
original United States frigates). The USS Constitution is known as
"Old Ironsides" for the way the cannonballs bounced off the hard live oak planking.
Wesley brothers
During the 18th
century, St. Simons served as a sometime home to John Wesley, the minister of the colony. He later
returned to England, where he founded the Methodist Church. Wesley performed missionary
work at St. Simons while he was still in the Anglican Church, but he was despondent about
failing to bring about conversions. (He wrote that the local inhabitants had
more tortures from their environment than he could describe for Hell).
In the 1730s John Wesley's brother Charles Wesley also did missionary work on St.
Simons.
On April 5,
1987, fifty-five members from St. Simons United Methodist Church were
commissioned, with Bishop Frank Robertson as first pastor, to begin a new
church on the north end of St. Simons Island. This was where John and Charles
Wesley had preached and ministered to the people at Fort Frederica. The new church was named Wesley
United Methodist Church at Frederica.
Christ Church
In 1808 the State
of Georgia gave 100 acres (0.40 km2) of land on St. Simons to be used for
a church and its support. Called Christ Church, Frederica, the structure
was finished in 1820. During the Civil War,
invading Union troops commandeered the small building to stable horses and
nearly destroyed it. The church was restored in 1889. This historic building is
still in use as of 2012
Cotton production
During the plantation era, Saint Simons became a center of cotton production known for its long fiber Sea Island Cotton. Nearly the entire island was
cleared of trees to make way for several cotton plantations. One of the last slave ships to bring slaves from Africa docked at St. Simons
Island, but the slaves marched off the boat into the water, dragged down by
their chains, and drowned themselves rather than becoming slaves. An original slave cabin still stands at the intersection
of Demere Rd. and Frederica Rd. at the roundabout.
St. Simons Island lighthouse
St. Simons Island
Light is a lighthouse near the
entrance to St. Simons Sound
in United States Coast
Guard District Number 7. It is 104 feet (32 m) tall and uses a
third-order fresnel lens which
rotates to flash a beam of light every 60 seconds. The light keeper's residence
is a two-story Victorian brick
structure. In 1975, the Coastal Georgia Historical Society took possession of
the keepers' house and turned it into a museum.
The original
octagonal lighthouse was built in 1811. Confederate
forces destroyed it in 1861 during the Civil War to
prevent its use by dominant Union forces. A replacement was completed in 1872,
during the Reconstruction
era. Electrified in 1934 and automated in 1954, it is still operated
by the Coast Guard Auxiliary.
The current
structure is both an active lighthouse for Navigational aid purposes and a museum. On lease
from the United States Coast
Guard to the Coastal Georgia Historical Society, in 1984, the
title was passed in 2004. It is open to the public.
In 2010, the
St. Simons Island lighthouse underwent a major renovation. It was closed to the
public for several months while all interior and exterior paint was sandblasted
off, and then repainted. Eight iron handrail posts at the top of the tower were
replaced, recast from one of the originals. All ironwork was sandblasted and
repaired as needed. Great lengths were taken to protect the valuable Fresnel
lens during the restoration. It was bubble wrapped, shrink wrapped, and then
finally enclosed in a plywood box. A temporary spotlight attached to top
railing of the lighthouse continued to guide ships into the Sound while the
main light was out of operation.
No comments:
Post a Comment