INTRODUCTION

Volumes XXIX, XXX, and XXXI consist of the Letter Books of the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia in America. These letters, mainly to officials and people in Georgia, make clear that the Trustees first and foremost wanted to know everything that happened in the colony. They asked about people (individually and collectively), land (how much had been surveyed, granted, cultivated, and abandoned), officials (loyalty to the Trustees was the main criteria for approval or promotion), silk worms and production, the Trustees’ Garden at Savannah, agriculture, colony accounts, descriptions of conditions in Georgia, and anything else they knew was happening in Georgia.

Originally the Trustees asked James Oglethorpe to give them the information they wanted. But they soon found that Oglethorpe would not take the time to answer their numerous queries. William Stephens proved to be the answer to the Trustees’ desire. In 1737 Stephens was appointed “Secretary for the Affairs of the Trust within the Province of Georgia,” and began to keep a journal for the Trustees on October 20, 1737, the day he arrived in Charles Town on his way to Georgia to take up his duties there. He kept his journal and corresponded with the Trustees until 1749, but no journal beyond 1745 is known to exist today. His last letter, dated July 1, 1750, informed the Trustees of his infirmities and inability to serve them further. He died at his plantation of Bewlie in August 1753 and was buried there.

The Trustees’ correspondence makes it clear that they wanted very much to impose their image of what Georgia should be upon the colony. As late as 1745 they were still urging that silk production was the best way for colonists to make a living. By this time most colonists undoubtedly realized that silk was not the way to support themselves in Georgia. But the Trustees changed their ideas slowly!

We know a great deal more about Trustee Georgia because of the Trustees’ insistence that they be told everything and because of Stephens’ attempts to satisfy them. We should thank the Trustees for their curiosity.

The letters of these volumes were written by Benjamin Martyn, the Secretary to the Trustees, and Harman Verelst, Accountant to the Trustees, apparently the only office force the Trustees ever had. Initially, general matters were handled by Martyn and fiscal ones by Verelst. However Verelst came to handle more and more--almost all Trustee business at times. It is not known if Martyn was out of the office during these periods, or busy otherwise.

Martyn wrote clearer and better composed letters. His knowledge of other languages besides English was better than Verelst’s, and his spelling--not nearly so standardized in the eighteenth century as in the twentieth--was much better and easier to understand. Verelst was frequently concerned with the minutia of accounting and how officials in Georgia did not do what they had been instructed to do. Thomas Causton, as the early record keeper and storekeeper in Georgia, must have been frustrated frequently by Verelst’s letters.

Little is known about Martyn and Verelst. There is a brief sketch of Martyn in the Dictionary of National Biography, XII, 1199- 1200. Trevor R. Reese wrote “Benjamin Martyn, Secretary to the Trustees of Georgia,” Ga. Hist. Quarterly, XXXVIII, 142-147, and “Harman Verelst, Accountant to the Trustees,” ibid., XXXIX, 348-352.

Vol. XXX (August, 1738 through June 1, 1745) makes it clear that Secretary and President William Stephens had replaced Thomas Causton as the most important official in Georgia. Oglethorpe, still important in Trustees thinking and actions, was now mainly concerned with military affairs and was removed from any civil authority in the colony by the Trustees. Yet Oglethorpe continued to act in whatever he thought desirable until he left Georgia for the last time on July 23, 1743. As long as Oglethorpe was in Georgia the Trustees continued to ask his advice about much in Georgia and to tell him their plans and desires for the colony.

Although the Trustees did not from their letters seem to realize it, in reality by 1745 (the end of this volume) they had lost a great deal of control in Georgia. The colonists were deciding more things for themselves and ignoring London more and more.

Editorial Guidelines

The volume divisions created by Allen D. Candler and Lucian Lamar Knight, the original compilers of this series, have been retained. This will facilitate references in works already published which used these volumes in manuscript.

Original spellings are retained unless the meaning is not clear. (Note. The Old English thorn “th” was usually written and printed as “y” in the early eighteenth century. This has been kept throughout this text. Thus “ye” is “the,” “yt” is “that,” and “ym” is “them.”) All raised letters have been lowered, abbreviations that are not clear have been expanded, and slips of the pen have been corrected silently. A single word may be explained in brackets immediately after its appearance in the text. More lengthy explanations will be given in footnotes. Punctuation, often absent in eighteenth century manuscripts, has been supplied for the sake of clarity, though many sentences are long by modern standards. No attempt at uniform spelling, even of proper names, has been attempted; rather the original text has been followed. For proper names, a single most common spelling has been used in the index.

In the manuscript there is no consistency in the system of money notation. Thus £1.7.10 might be written that way, £1:7:10, or 1..7..10. Colons, fairly frequent, have been left as written, but the .. has been changed to a single period. When the pound sign is given after the figure it is often written as a lower case 1 with a line through it (ł). These have been changed to £ for the sake of clarity.

Many, probably a majority, of the enclosures referred to in these letters are not filed with the letters. Some of them have been located, but many have not.

When letters, petitions, etc. from Georgia are acknowledged in the Trustee letters, an effort has been made to locate these. Most of them are in their correct chronological place in the letters from Georgia published in Vols. XX-XXVI of this series, and no editorial notation is made. If the letters have been located elsewhere or not located, this fact is noted in the footnotes.

Each document is given a short introduction which consists of the name of the writer and recipient, date written, place written, Public Record Office location, topic or topics treated, and method of transmission (vessel, captain, etc) where given.