The Thirteen Colonies were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. Grievances against the imperial government led the 13 colonies to begin uniting in 1774, and expelling British officials by 1775. Assembled at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, after armed conflict had broken out in April, they appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army to fight the American Revolutionary War. In 1776, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence as the United States of America and, asserting its sovereignty, the United States allied with Britain's enemy, France. Defeating British armies with its French ally, the former Thirteen Colonies had its sovereignty recognized by Britain in the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
Darien is a city in and the county seat of McIntosh County, Georgia, United States. It lies on Georgia's coast at the mouth of the Altamaha River, approximately 50 miles south of Savannah, and is part of the Brunswick, Georgia metropolitan statistical area. It is the second-oldest planned city in Georgia and was originally called New Inverness. The population of Darien was 1,460 at the 2020 census, down from 1,975 in 2010.
The Southern Colonies within British America consisted of the Province of Maryland, the Colony of Virginia, the Province of Carolina, and the Province of Georgia. In 1763, the newly created colonies of East Florida and West Florida would be added to the Southern Colonies by Great Britain until the Spanish Empire took back Florida. These colonies were the historical core of what would become the Southern United States, or "Dixie". They were located south of the Middle Colonies, albeit Virginia and Maryland were also called the Chesapeake Colonies.
The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was one of the original Thirteen Colonies established on the east coast of America, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. It was founded by Roger Williams. It was an English colony from 1636 until 1707, and then a colony of Great Britain until the American Revolution in 1776, when it became the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
The Province of South Carolina, originally known as Clarendon Province, was a province of the Kingdom of Great Britain that existed in North America from 1712 to 1776. It was one of the five Southern colonies and one of the thirteen American colonies of the British Empire. The monarch of Great Britain was represented by the Governor of South Carolina, until the colonies declared independence on July 4, 1776.
The Battle of Bloody Marsh took place on 7 July 1742 between Spanish and British forces on St. Simons Island, part of the Province of Georgia, resulting in a victory for the British. Part of the War of Jenkins' Ear, the battle was for the British fortifications of Fort Frederica and Fort St. Simons, with the strategic goal the sea routes and inland waters they controlled. With the victory, the Province of Georgia established undisputed claim to the island. The British also won the Battle of Gully Hole Creek, which took place on the island the same day.
Fort King George State Historic Site is a fort located in the U.S. state of Georgia in McIntosh County, adjacent to Darien. The fort was built in 1721 along what is now known as the Darien River and served as the southernmost outpost of the British Empire in the Americas until 1727. The fort was constructed in what was then considered part of the colony of South Carolina, but was territory later settled as Georgia. It was part of a defensive line intended to encourage settlement along the colony's southern frontier, from the Savannah River to the Altamaha River. Great Britain, France, and Spain were competing to control the American Southeast, especially the Savannah-Altamaha River region.
The city of Savannah, Georgia, the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, Georgia, was established in 1733, and was the first colonial and state capital of Georgia. It is known as Georgia's first planned city and attracts millions of visitors, who enjoy the city's architecture and historic structures such as the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, the First African Baptist Church, Congregation Mickve Israel, and the Central of Georgia Railway roundhouse complex. Today, Savannah's downtown area is one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the United States .[A]
Mary Musgrove was a leading figure in early Georgia history. She was the daughter of Edward Griffin, an English-born trader from Charles Town in the Province of Carolina, and a Muscogee Creek mother. Fluent in local Creek languages as well as English, Mary became an important intermediary between Muscogee Creek Natives and the early colonists. Musgrove carved out a life that merged both cultures, making a significant contribution to the development of colonial Georgia.
Samuel Nunes (1668–1744) was a Portuguese physician and among the earliest Jews to settle in North America.
The Wormsloe Historic Site, originally known as Wormsloe Plantation, is a state historic site near Savannah, Georgia, in the southeastern United States. The site consists of 822 acres (3.33 km2) protecting part of what was once the Wormsloe Plantation, a large estate established by one of Georgia's colonial founders, Noble Jones. The site includes a picturesque 1.5 miles (2.4 km) oak avenue, the ruins of Jones' fortified house built of tabby, a museum, and a demonstration area interpreting colonial daily life.
Trustee Georgia is the name of the period covering the first twenty years of Georgia history, from 1732–1752, because during that time the English Province of Georgia was governed by a board of trustees. England's King George II, for whom the colony was named, signed a charter establishing the colony and creating its governing board on July 7, 1732. His action culminated a lengthy process. Tomochichi was a Native American that resides along the Savannah River that allowed Oglethorpe to settle on the Yamacraw Bluff.
Lachlan McIntosh was a Scottish American military and political leader during the American Revolution and the early United States. In a 1777 duel, he fatally shot Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence ten months earlier.
The politics of Georgia change frequently and often follow the rest of the United States in major historical landmarks. The state has a long history, starting in the 18th century as a British colony. The cultural makeup of the early colony led to a ban on slavery being overturned soon after its implementation, setting the stage for the many plantations in the state. Rival governments were formed during the Revolutionary War, with the Patriot government surviving and forming a unified state government after the war. Georgian politics then followed the Democratic-Republican Party before the American Civil War and the Democrats afterward. In fact, the state never voted Republican until 1964, making it the last continental state to do so. Since then, Democrats have won the state just four times, for native son Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, Southerner Bill Clinton in 1992, and for Joe Biden in 2020.
The Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America, or simply the Georgia Trustees, was a body organized by James Edward Oglethorpe and associates following parliamentary investigations into prison conditions in Britain. After being granted a royal charter in 1732, Oglethorpe led the first group of colonists to the new colony, arriving there in February, 1733. The trustees governed Georgia, one of the Thirteen Colonies, from its founding until 1752, a period known as Trustee Georgia.
The Oglethorpe Plan is an urban planning idea that was most notably used in Savannah, Georgia, one of the Thirteen Colonies, in the 18th century. The plan uses a distinctive street network with repeating squares of residential blocks, commercial blocks, and small green parks to create integrated, walkable neighborhoods.
Lieutenant-General James Edward Oglethorpe was a British Army officer, Tory politician and colonial administrator best known for founding the Province of Georgia in British North America. As a social reformer, he hoped to resettle Britain's "worthy poor" in the New World, initially focusing on those in debtors' prisons.
The Georgia Experiment was the colonial-era policy prohibiting the ownership of slaves in the Georgia Colony. At the urging of Georgia's proprietor, General James Oglethorpe, and his fellow colonial trustees, the British Parliament formally codified prohibition in 1735, three years after the colony's founding. The ban remained in effect until 1751, when the diminution of the Spanish threat and economic pressure from Georgia's emergent planter class forced Parliament to reverse itself.
Fort St. Andrews was a British colonial coastal fortification built on Cumberland Island, Georgia, in 1736. The fort was built by the British as part of a buffer against Spanish Florida and the colonies to the north. The fort was abandoned and later destroyed by the Spanish in mid-1742.
The James Oglethorpe Monument is a public monument in Chippewa Square, Savannah, Georgia, United States. It honors James Oglethorpe, the founder of the Province of Georgia, who established the city of Savannah in 1733. Efforts to erect the monument began in 1901 and were led by members of several patriotic groups in the city. They were key in securing the necessary U.S. government funds for the monument, which consists of a bronze statue of Oglethorpe designed by Daniel Chester French, atop a large granite pedestal designed by Henry Bacon. It was dedicated in 1910, in a ceremony that attracted several thousand spectators and was attended by several notable government officials.
