George Whitefield was a preacher of such talent that Chesterfield said he had never listened to so eloquent a man. Benjamin Franklin regarded him as a model of logic and power. This good Oxford graduate was actuated, like Oglethorpe, by the broadest benevolence when he established an orphan home at Bethesda; but his zeal outran his slender resources. He incurred heavy debts, mismanaged his laudable enterprise until his spirit gave way under the discouraging situation. He died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, while he was soliciting aid for his cherished project. Whitefield desired to broaden the lines of his Bethesda work, and to found a college for the Province of Georgia. Had the colony given its revenues to such a plan as the people of Massachusetts gave to the support of Harvard, Georgia might have founded a great educational institution fifty years before Jefferson started his work at Monticello, and a full century before Governor Milledge established Franklin College in this State. After twenty years, Georgia ceased to be a province under the trustees, and became a colony under the King. As originally projected, the enterprise was expensive. The great Oglethorpe returned to England and spent his old age in peace. The trustees surrendered their charter, but the old country had been good to the people. Ties with the motherland were hard to break. This accounted for the fact that Georgia, the youngest of the thirteen, was the last to sever her relations with England and join in the Revolutionary movement. Her most prominent men, James Habersham and Noble Jones, through their influence with the Royalists and the popular Governor, Sir James Wright, held the people down at least to a show of allegiance to the British Crown. “It excites small wonder,” writes Col. Charles C. Jones, “that many of the wealthiest and most influential citizens of Georgia should have tenaciously clung to the fortunes of the Crown, and sincerely deprecated all ideas of separation. Of all the American colonies, this province had subsisted most generously upon royal bounty, and had been the recipient of favors far beyond those extended to sister States.” But if the old families were still faithful to England, there was one spot where Republicanism was aflame. The parish of St. John had been settled by New England people who had moved first to South Carolina and then to Dorchester and Sunbury in Georgia. They were Puritans with no sympathy for the Established Church or for the divine right of kings. They loved liberty, and hated royalty. They were brave, resolute and anxious to form a league against English oppression. Led by Dr. Lyman Hall, a sturdy rice planter and prominent physician of Sunbury, they responded with alacrity to the call from Boston. He went to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, May 13, 1775, and was admitted to a seat as a delegate, not from the colony, but from the parish of St. John. Until Georgia was fully represented Dr. Hall declined to vote