Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. Robert Johnson to James Edward Oglethorpe, September 28, 1732, in Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, Allen D. Candler, Kenneth Coleman, et al., eds., 31 vols. to date (Atlanta and Athens, 1904–), 20: 2–3.
2. See Thomas Christie, “The Voyage of the Anne — A Daily Record,” ed. Robert G. McPherson, Georgia Historical Quarterly 44 (1960): 224; Peter Gordon, The Journal of Peter Gordon, 1732–1735, ed. E. Merton Coulter (Athens, 1963), 28.
3. See especially Rodney M. Baine and Mary E. Williams, “Oglethorpe’s Early Military Campaigns,” Yale University Library Gazette 60 (1985): 63–76; Rodney M. Baine, “James Oglethorpe and the Early Promotional Literature for Georgia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d series, 45 (1988): 100–106; and Baine, “The Prison Death of Robert Castell and Its Effect on the Founding of Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 73 (1989): 67–78. See also Baine and Williams, “James Oglethorpe in Europe: Recent Findings in His Military Career,” in Oglethorpe in Perspective: Georgia’s Founder After Two Hundred Years, Phinizy Spalding and Harvey H. Jackson, eds. (Tuscaloosa, 1989), 112–21. For other recent insights into Oglethorpe’s activities see Louis De Vorsey, Jr., “Oglethorpe and the Earliest Maps of Georgia,” Oglethorpe in Perspective, 22–43; and Milton L. Ready, “Philanthropy and the Origins of Georgia,” Forty Years of Diversity: Essays on Colonial Georgia, Jackson and Spalding, eds. (Athens, 1984), 46–59.
4. “A Latin Poem by James Edward Oglethorpe,” contributed by Rudolf Kirk, Georgia Historical Quarterly 32 (1948): 29–31; Phinizy Spalding, “Oglethorpe and Johnson: A Cordial Connection,” Johnson Society Transactions (December 1974): 52–61.
5. See A Catalogue of the Entire and Valuable Library of General Oglethorpe (London, 1785) for verification of his holdings.
6. Oglethorpe’s account of this war gives it the proper menace that most who lived through it felt. For years the dangers posed to South Carolina were downplayed. The possible results of such a war, allying the natives and the blacks against the minority whites, were simply too horrible to articulate, so that direct contemporary references to the Yamasee uprisings are relatively few. Only with the publication of Peter Wood’s Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1610 Through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974) have the hostilities in all their fury been adequately described; see especially pp. 128–30.
7. On land speculation in South Carolina see M. Eugene Sirmans, Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663–1163 (Chapel Hill, 1966), 10–12, 30–39, 50–54, 62–64, 170–82, passim, and Richard P. Sherman, Robert Johnson: Proprietary and Royal Governor of South Carolina (Columbia, S.C., 1966).
8. Phinizy Spalding, Oglethorpe in America (Chicago, 1977), 10–12, 84–87, 90–91, 94–97, passim.
9. See Colonial Records of Georgia, 1:31–54 for the three acts passed by the Georgia Trustees during their tenure.
10. Oglethorpe to the Trustees, June 9, 1733, Phillipps Collection of Egmont Papers, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, 14200:83. After refusing the Carolinians’ demands for slavery and large land grants, Oglethorpe commented that perhaps he “should [have] kicked the proposers into the Bargain.”
11. See particularly Betty Wood, “Thomas Stephens and the Introduction of Black Slavery in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 58 (1974): 24–40, and the same author’s Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730–1775 (Athens, 1984), 44–58.
12. Clearly the best article on the background of the Savannah plan is by John Reps, “C2 + L2 = S2? Another Look at the Origins of Savannah’s Town Plan,” in Forty Years of Diversity, 101–51, but even this proposition is conjectural.
13. Harvey H. Jackson, “Parson and Squire: James Oglethorpe and the Role of the Anglican Church in Georgia, 1733–1736,” in Oglethorpe in Perspective, 44–65, provides a clear analysis of Oglethorpe’s notion of where ecclesiastical affairs rested in relation to secular, at least on the American scene.
14. Betty Wood, “James Edward Oglethorpe, Race, and Slavery,” Oglethorpe in Perspective, 70.
15. For development of the idea of Georgia as a purified secular state, see Spalding, “James Edward Oglethorpe’s Quest for an American Zion,” Forty Years of Diversity, 60–79.
16. It was first noted, briefly quoted, and ascribed to Martyn by Mills B. Lane III in the third edition of his Savannah Revisited (Savannah, 1977), 43. It was discussed, quoted in greater length, and similarly attributed by John Reps in “C2 + L2 = S2?” 117, 120, 148–49 n. 21. It was first attributed to Oglethorpe by Rodney M. Baine in “James Oglethorpe and the Early Promotional Literature,” 100–106.
17. The paper shows the “Maid of Dort” watermark, almost identical with Churchill 134, which William Algernon Churchill dates as approximately 1732 in his Watermarks in Paper in Holland, England, France, etc. in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Amsterdam, 1935; repr. Rejswijk, 1965), c, 71.
18. There is no coronet here, and the two helmets above a single garb become in the bookplate two garbs above a single helmet.
19. The collation follows: title page, verso blank; Preface, tén leaves, the first three unpaginated, then seven leaves incorrectly paginated 4 to 16; the text, forty-six leaves, paginated 1 to 92, with the number 90 omitted in paginating, the final page blank. Penciled on page 1 of the text is the number 20, and on page 33, the number 51. A leaf has been tom out after page 4 of the text, but there is no hiatus there.
20. Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont: Diaty of Viscount Percival, ed. R. A. Roberts. Historical Manuscripts Commission 3 vols. (London, 1920–23), 1:286.
21. Associates of Dr. Bray, “Minute Book, 1729[1730]-1732,” Archives of Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, London (microfilm, Library of Congress), 36:23. See also Albert B. Saye, New Viewpoints in Georgia History (Athens, 1943), 16 n. 31. For a discussion of the Bray Associates, see Verner W. Crane, “Dr. Thomas Bray and the Charitable Colony Project,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d series, 19 (1962): 49–63.
22. Bray “Minute Book,” 36.
23. Ibid., 27.
24. Percival, Diary, 1:219.
25. Bray “Minute Book,” 50–51.
26. James Oglethorpe, ed., Select Tracts Relating to Colonies (London, 1732), iv–v; South Carolina Gazette, March 23, 1733; Library of Oglethorpe, items 503, 717, 1160, 2113, and 2350 — editions of 1701, 1687, 1677, 1614, and 1736. Probably only one copy would have satisfied the Reverend Mr. Thomas Pollen, another Corpus Christi man, whose library was apparently sold along with Oglethorpe’s. Another example of Oglethorpe’s veneration for, and identification with, Raleigh seems to occur when he misinterprets Tomochichi’s story of a red-bearded visitor to the Savannah River many years before. Although it must have been Ribault, Oglethorpe wants to believe it is Raleigh, even though the Elizabethan adventurer never stopped on the coast of Spanish Guale. For information on this point see Peter Wood’s essay in Oglethorpe in Perspective, 5–21.
27. Select Tracts, 5–17; The Works of Nicholas Machiavel, trans. Ellis Farneworth (London, 1680); Library of Oglethorpe, item 1864.
28. Select Tracts, 31–40; Library of Oglethorpe, item 791 or 1111.
29. Calendar of State Papers. Colonial Series. America and West Indies, 44 vols, to date (London, 1860–), 39:32 (hereafter designated CSP); Journal of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, 14 vols. (London, 1920–38), 6:316.
30. See The Country Journal, or Craftsman, (February 5, 1732), p. 2; London Evening Post, (February 5, 1732), p. 1.
31. CSP, 38:217–19.
32. In Herman Moll’s New and Exact Map of the Dominions of the King of Great Britain, on the Continent of North America, there is an inset map of the southern region showing “GEORGIA” between the Savannah and the Altamaha rivers. Though the first state of the large map was engraved in 1715, the state with the inset, sold by Bowles, was dated conjecturally as 1731 by Research Catalog of Maps of America to 1860 in the William L. Clements Library, Douglas W. Marshall, ed. (Boston, 1972), 2:96. The National Union Catalog, however, places the Bowles imprint in 1732, surely the earliest possible date for the use of the new name by a cartographer. Webb Garrison has commented upon this mistaken date in his Oglethorpe’s Folly: The Birth of Georgia (Lakemont, 1982), 229–30 n. 9. Similarly misleading is the date of Mark Catesby’s reference to “that Province honour’d with the name of Georgia,” in the preface to his Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1729), l:x. Though dated 1731 on the title page, the first volume consists of the preface and five fascicles, the first issued in 1729, the last on November 23, 1732 — the earliest possible date for the preface. See George F. Frick, “Mark Catesby,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 54 (1960): 170.
33. Belcher to Coram, December 9, 1731, Belcher Papers, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 6th series (Boston, 1886–99), 6:86–87.
34. Bray “Minute Book,” 55.
35. Like his contemporaries, Oglethorpe frequently used the word “colony” to denote a single settlement and “colonies,” a group of settlements, like Savannah, Augusta, Frederica, and Darien. His use of “Colonys” in his title suggests only a series of settlements.
36. CSP, 37:384.
37. Percival, Diary, 1:193, 226–27.
38. Berkeley and Percival: The Correspondence of George Berkeley and Sir John Percival, ed. Benjamin Rand (Cambridge, 1914), 277.
39. Percival, Diary, 1:265.
40. Colonial Records of Georgia, 20:1–2.
41. Ibid., 2:43–45.
42. Percival, Diary, 1:293.
43. Belcher to Coram, April 24, 1732, and December 9, 1731, in Belcher Papers, 6:112, 87.
44. Percival, Diary, 1:289. The minutes of neither the Common Council nor the Trustees record this action, but it is confirmed in the Journal of the Earl of Egmont, ed. Robert G. McPherson (Atlanta, 1962), 5. Note that Percival reproduced Oglethorpe’s “Design” rather than Martyn’s “Designs.”
45. Colonial Records of Georgia, 2:3.
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE DESIGN OF THE TRUSTEES FOR ESTABLISHING COLONYS IN AMERICA
1. The Phocaeans founded Massilia (Marseilles) as a trading station but settled at Elea, in Italy.
2. Homer’s Odyssey, Alexander Pope translation, 6.9–16. Apparently Oglethorpe, whose Library shows no copy of this translation, left his amanuensis to locate the passage: the scribe left almost two pages for it but used less than a page.
3. In these two paragraphs Oglethorpe probably follows either Raleigh’s History, 5.1.2, or Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War, 6.3.1, of which the Library of Oglethorpe shows the 1696 edition, item 1201; the Hobbes translation of 1676, item 209; and the 1721 translation of William Smith, item 1309.
4. Oglethorpe neglects to add that because of differences about command the ships were not dispatched. See Raleigh’s History, 5.1.3, or Herodotus, Histories, 7.158–63.
5. In this paragraph Oglethorpe echoes the suggestions of Charles Davenant in his “Discourse on the Plantation Trade.” See The Political and Commercial Works of Charles Davenant (London, 1771; repr. Farnborough, Eng., 1967), 2:4–8. The city “called the Italian” was Italica.
6. Oglethorpe follows Appian’s Roman History, 6.7.38.
7. Oglethorpe employs the political arithmetic that he apparently learned from William Petty, Sir Josiah Child, and Charles Davenant. He had already used it in his Sailor’s Advocate.
8. Oglethorpe quotes from Appian’s Roman History, 1.1.7 and 2.19.140, possibly translating into English his 1670 edition, in Greek and Latin (Library, item 912). The reference to Brutus’s oration also derives from Appian, 2.19.140.
9. In his letter of May 1731 to George Berkeley, Oglethorpe wrote, “The merely releasing them they thought an imperfect charity, since those only who had friends to put them in a way of subsistence could reap a real benefit from it, since others whose credit, health, and perhaps morals, were impaired by a prison could have no advantage from the Act, but the privilege of starving at large” (Rand, Berkeley and Percival, 276–77). The final phrase reappears in Benjamin Martyn’s Reasons, 25.
10. Following this paragraph is the penciled direction “go to pag 29.” Oglethorpe refers to the death by starvation and fever that he and his committee found at the Marshalsea Prison in 1730.
11. This paragraph, on page 29 of the manuscript, is marked for removal by a penciled marginal line and the direction “Leeve out heer and incert in p. 3.”
12. Sir Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of . . . War (London, 1650), D4v–D[5]r.
13. Captain Coram was to become the father of the Foundling Hospital; on April 2, 1730, Oglethorpe was appointed to the committee concerned with the care of bastard children (Journals of the House of Commons [London, n.d.], 21:524). But this concern for vagrant children characterized all the Bray Associates. On May 11, 1732, some of them framed a parliamentary motion “for addressing his majesty to give a sum not exceeding 10,000l. for binding vagrants and beggars out apprentices at 10l. per head, and to allow masters 20l. for every four apprentices he should take, and to settle them in Carolina” (Percival, Diary, 1:273). The petition was, however, modified and delayed; and it finally died (Percival, Diary, 1:274, 276, JHC, 21:921, 925). Sir Josiah Child had suggested such a measure in his New Discourse, 67.
14. The Port Royal River is now called the Broad River.
15. There follows a caret, and in the margin is penciled the direction “incert Page 11.” The sentence there underlined for transferral, we have incorporated but have not italicized here.
16. At the end of this paragraph is penciled the direction “incert Page 15 to Pag. 19.” This paragraph and the following, which begins “Beyond South Edistow,” are set off by inked marginal rules.
17. By the time Oglethorpe wrote his New and Accurate Account he had acquired a copy of John Archdale’s New Description of that Fertile and Pleasant Province of Carolina (London, 1717). Here, however, he quotes Archdale secondhand, from John Oldmixon, The British Empire in America (London, 1708), 1:276–77.
18. Oldmixon, British Empire, 1:378. The italicized paragraphs were penciled for removal, by marginal lines, then crossed out. The introductory paragraph is also adapted from Oldmixon.
19. Of this sentence, penciled in the margin, we cannot be absolutely certain of the last two words.
20. Savannah Town, across the river from the site of the future Augusta, had been deserted for some time.
21. Fort King George, near present Darien, was established by South Carolina in 1721 but burned in late 1725 and was abandoned in 1728. Placed at the forks of the Altamaha on John Herbert’s map of 1725, the fort was actually built on the northernmost stream of the river’s mouth, close to the site of an earlier Spanish mission. At the forks of the Altamaha a small trader’s fort had succeeded the ephemeral Spanish outpost of Tama.
22. Mark Catesby’s Natural History (1729–47), in which Oglethorpe is listed as a subscriber. Doubtless Oglethorpe acquired a good deal of information about the region from sources like Catesby; Paul Amatis; Sir Alexander Cuming, who returned to London from there in 1730 with a party of Cherokees; Governor Robert Johnson, a long-time resident who was in England during most of 1730; Jean Pierre Purry, whom Oglethorpe met in England in 1731; and the seven Cherokees also. He knew their host, Thomas Arne, the father of the famous composer Thomas Augustine Arne.
23. Of our reading “Jetting” we cannot be certain. Beginning with “Excepting” the latter part of the sentence is penciled between lines, then in the margin.
24. Oglethorpe refers to Paul Amatis, who had already visited South Carolina and who returned with him and the first Georgia settlers.
25. Thomas Boreman’s Compendious Account of the Whole Art of Breeding, Nursing, and the Right Ordering of the Silk-worm (London, 1732), dedicated to Percival and the Georgia Trustees. For details on this promotional pamphlet, see Rodney M. Baine, “James Oglethorpe and the Early Promotional Literature,” 106.
26. Martyn borrowed here for his Some Account, 3, and his Reasons, 28.
27. From here and the previous paragraph, Martyn quoted and paraphrased in Some Account, 1, and Reasons, 26.
28. Here the scribe left almost two pages blank, evidently for the insertion of a passage from Machiavelli’s History of Florence, probably for one of the sections from book 2 that Oglethorpe later incorporated in his Select Tracts.
29. This sentence is inked at the bottom of an otherwise blank page, with no indication of where it should be placed.
30. The latter part of this paragraph and the following sentence are quoted and paraphrased in Martyn’s Some Account, 2.
31. A quite similar statement appeared in The Daily Post on February 6, 1732.
32. The latter part of this paragraph Martyn quoted and paraphrased in Some Account, 4.
33. Of this sentence, penciled in the margin, the reading is partly conjectural. Presumably the Trustees would accept some proposals and would inquire into the characters of those who submitted them.
34. Boreman’s pamphlet on sericulture. In the margin the amanuensis inked the query “?where.”
35. In 1722 John Montagu, second duke of Montagu, was granted the islands of St. Vincent and St. Lucia, but his attempted landing was repulsed by the Spaniards.
36. The letter to Berkeley promises to provide the poor families “passage, clothes, arms, working tools, &c., and provisions for one year” (Rand, Berkeley and Percival, 277).
37. The letter to Berkeley reads, “In return of the money laid out upon them, of their being rescued from poverty, and instead of rent for their lands each man is to give one day’s labour in six, which day’s labour is to be employed on lands to be reserved for the use of the charity. Out of the produce of those public lands the aged and the sick are to be subsisted, and the people to be supported in case of the casualties of famine, pestilence, or war; and if there shall be any remainder it is to be applied by the Society to the sending over more poor families” (Ibid., 278).
38. Oglethorpe’s feudal ideal of moral and legal responsibility was present in the initial ideal as he expounded it to Percival on February 13, 1730. The settlers, he explained, would “be subject to subordinate rulers, who should inspect their behaviour and labour under one chief head” (Percival, Diary, 1:45).
39. There follows a long quotation from Vitruvius, De Architectura, evidently in Robert Castell’s advertised but unpublished translation, 1.4.1–2, 7–9, 11–12; 1.5.1; 1.6.1, 3. The long dashes indicate omissions.
40. Oglethorpe quotes Raleigh’s History, 3.7.1. The quotation actually begins with the ampersand.
41. Compare the letter to Berkeley in Rand, Berkeley and Percival, 277.
42. In his letter to Benjamin Martyn on February 12, 1733, Governor Johnson admitted, “I did propose the Subsisting them with Provisions for a twelve month, but the Charge has been so great already with the Purisburgers . . . that the Assembly thought the Expense too large” (Colonial Records of Georgia, 20:11).
43. Compare Martyn’s Short Account, 2–3.
44. Raleigh’s Discourse, D[5]v–D[6]r.
45. Sir Josiah Child, “A Discourse Concerning Plantations,” in A New Discourse of Trade (London, 1693), 174.
46. Martyn quotes this paragraph and the preceding one in Reasons, 28.
47. This sentence, with an added clause, appears in Martyn’s Reasons, 28.
48. Martyn quotes this paragraph in Some Account, 4, and paraphrases from the previous four paragraphs in Some Account, 3–4.