St. Simons Island is a barrier island and census-designated place (CDP) located on St. Simons Island in Glynn County, Georgia, United States. The names of the community and the island are interchangeable, known simply as "St. Simons Island" or "SSI", or locally as "The Island". St. Simons is part of the Brunswick metropolitan statistical area, and according to the 2020 U.S. census, the CDP had a population of 14,982. Located on the southeast Georgia coast, midway between Savannah and Jacksonville, St. Simons Island is both a seaside resort and residential community. It is the largest of Georgia's renowned Golden Isles. Visitors are drawn to the Island for its warm climate, beaches, variety of outdoor activities, shops and restaurants, historical sites, and natural environment.
Jekyll Island is located off the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia, in Glynn County. It is one of the Sea Islands and one of the Golden Isles of Georgia barrier islands. The island is owned by the State of Georgia and run by a self-sustaining, self-governing body.
The Golden Isles of Georgia consist of barrier islands, and the mainland port cities of Brunswick and Darien, on the 100-mile-long coast of the U.S. state of Georgia on the Atlantic Ocean. They include St. Simons Island, Sea Island, Jekyll Island, Little St. Simons Island, Sapelo Island, Blackbeard Island, Historic Darien and Historic Brunswick. The islands are part of a long chain of barrier islands known as the "Sea Islands", located along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and northern Florida.
Brigadier-General John Floyd was an American politician, planter and military officer who served in the 1st Brigade of the Georgia Militia during the War of 1812. One of the largest landowners and wealthiest men in Camden County, Georgia, Floyd also served in the Georgia House of Representatives, as well as the United States House of Representatives.
The Judah P. Benjamin Confederate Memorial at Gamble Plantation Historic State Park, also known as the Gamble Mansion or Gamble Plantation, is a Florida State Park, located in Ellenton, Florida, on 37th Avenue East and US 301. It is home to the Florida Division United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).
Waveland State Historic Site, also known as the Joseph Bryan House, in Lexington, Kentucky is the site of a Greek Revival home and 10 acres now maintained and operated as part of the Kentucky state park system. It was the home of the Joseph Bryan family, their descendants and the people they enslaved in the nineteenth century. Bryan's father William had befriended Daniel Boone and they migrated west through the Cumberland Gap.
Kingsley Plantation is the site of a former estate on Fort George Island, in Duval County, Florida, that was named for its developer and most famous owner, Zephaniah Kingsley, who spent 25 years there. It is located at the northern tip of Fort George Island at Fort George Inlet, and is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve managed by the U.S. National Park Service. Kingsley's house is the oldest plantation house still standing in Florida, and the solidly-built village of slave cabins is one of the best preserved in the United States. It is also "the oldest surviving antebellum Spanish Colonial plantation in the United States."
The recorded History of Brunswick, Georgia dates to 1738, when a 1,000-acre (4 km2) plantation was established along the Turtle River. By 1789, the city was recognized by President George Washington as having been one of five original ports of entry for the American colonies. In 1797, Brunswick's prominence was further recognized when it became the county seat of Glynn County, a status it retains to this day. During the later stages of the Civil War, with the approach of the Union Army, much of the city was abandoned and burned. Economic prosperity eventually returned, when a large lumber mill was constructed in the area. By the late 19th-century, despite yellow fever epidemics and occasional hurricanes, business in Brunswick was thriving, due to port business for cotton, lumber, naval stores, and oysters. During this period, Brunswick also enjoyed a tourist trade, stimulated by nearby Jekyll Island, which had become a posh, exclusive getaway for some of the era's most influential people. World War I stimulated ship building activity in Brunswick. But it was not until World War II that the economy boomed, when 16,000 workers were employed to produce ninety-nine Liberty ships and "Knot" ships. During the war, Brunswick's Glynco Naval Air Station was, for a time, the largest blimp base in the world. Since the end of World War II, the city has enjoyed a period of moderate economic activity, centered on its deep natural port, which is the westernmost harbor on the eastern seaboard. In recent years, in recognition of a thriving local enterprise, Brunswick has declared itself to be the "Shrimp Capital of the World".
Tabby is a type of concrete made by burning oyster shells to create lime, then mixing it with water, sand, ash and broken oyster shells. Tabby was used by early Spanish settlers in present-day Florida, then by British colonists primarily in coastal South Carolina and Georgia. It is a man-made analogue of coquina, a naturally-occurring sedimentary rock derived from shells and also used for building.
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.
Antebellum architecture is the neoclassical architectural style characteristic of the 19th-century Southern United States, especially the Deep South, from after the birth of the United States with the American Revolution, to the start of the American Civil War. Antebellum architecture is especially characterized by Georgian, Neo-classical, and Greek Revival style homes and mansions. These plantation houses were built in the southern American states during roughly the thirty years before the American Civil War; approximately between the 1830s to 1860s.
Epworth by the Sea is an 83-acre Christian conference and retreat center in Georgia, United States. It is used for Methodist-based events. It is located on the banks of the Frederica River, north of Gascoigne Bluff on Saint Simons Island, Georgia. The center was named "Epworth by the Sea" in honor of Epworth, the boyhood home of Charles and John Wesley, founders of Methodism. It is owned and operated by the South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church. Epworth is located on part of Hamilton Plantation which was purchased on October 29, 1949. It opened to the public in 1950, under the leadership of Bishop Arthur James Moore. Moore, from Georgia, was an elected bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and also a leader of the Atlanta Area of the Methodist Church. At the start, the center featured only a few rural camp facilities and old plantation buildings. Epworth's stated mission is "to provide a Christian place for worship, study and fellowship."
Plantation complexes were common on agricultural plantations in the Southern United States from the 17th into the 20th century. The complex included everything from the main residence down to the pens for livestock. Until the abolition of slavery, such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of enslaved people.
Igbo Landing is a historic site at Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island, Glynn County, Georgia. It was the setting of a mass suicide in 1803 by captive Igbo people who had taken control of their slave ship and refused to submit to slavery in the United States. The event's moral value as a story of resistance towards slavery has symbolic importance in African American folklore as the flying Africans legend, and in literary history.
The McIntosh Sugarworks, near St. Marys, Georgia, was built in the late 1820s by John Houstoun McIntosh. They are a significant example of tabby concrete architecture and represent an industrial component of southeastern plantation agriculture. The Tabby Ruins, as they are also known, are at 3600 Charlie Smith Sr. Highway at Georgia Spur 40, six miles north of St. Marys. The entrance is approximately across the street from the entrance to the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, on Charlie Smith Highway, at 30.79310°N 81.57712°W.
Jewtown is an unincorporated community on St. Simons Island in Glynn County, Georgia, United States.
James Hamilton Couper was an American planter and slaver who at his peak controlled more than 1,500 slaves.
Slave quarters in the United States, sometimes called slave cabins, were a form of residential vernacular architecture constructed during the era of slavery in the United States. These outbuildings were the homes of the enslaved people attached to an American plantation, farm, or city property. Some former slave quarters were continuously occupied and used as personal residences until as late as the 1960s.
View from the bluff
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