Including certain legacies from private individuals, and donations from patrons of the Colony in Germany, which were received within a short time, it is conjectured that this church property was then worth not much less than twenty thousand dollars. So long as the congregation at Ebenezer preserved its integrity, direct allegiance to the parent Church in Germany was acknowledged, its precepts, orders and deliverances were obeyed, its teachers welcomed and respected, and accounts of all receipts, disbursements, and important transactions regularly rendered. Its pastors continued to be charged with the administration of affairs, both spiritual and temporal, and were the duly constituted custodians of all church funds and property. Upon their arrival in Georgia these Saltzburgers, wearied with persecutions and stripped of the small possessions which were once theirs, were at first quite dependent upon public and private charity for bare subsistence. They were then unable, by voluntary contributions, to sustain their pastors and teachers, and build churches. Foreign aid arrived, however, from time to time, and this was supplemented in a small, yet generous way, by the labor of the parishioners and such sums and articles as could be spared from their slow accumulations. With a view to providing for the future, all means thus derived were carefully invested for the benefit of church and pastor. This system was maintained for more than fifty years, so that in the course of time not only were churches built, but reasonable provision was made for clergyman, teacher, and orphan, aside from the yearly voluntary contributions of the members of the Society. The education of youths was not neglected; and DeBrahm assures us that in his day a library had been accumulated at Ebenezer in which “could be had Books wrote in the Caldaic, Hebrew, Arabec, Siriac, Coptic, Malabar, Greek, Latin, French, German, Dutch and Spanish, beside the English, viz: in thirteen Languages.”[28] In the division of the Province of Georgia into eight Parishes, which occurred on the 15th of March, 1758, “the district of Abercorn and Goshen, and the district of Ebenezer—extending from the northwest boundaries of the parish of Christ Church up the river Savannah as far as the Beaver Dam, and southwest as far as the mouth of Horse-Creek on the river Great Ogechee”—were declared a Parish under the name of “The Parish of St. Matthew.”[29] The parish just below, on the line of the Savannah river, and embracing the town of Savannah, was known as “Christ Church Parish.” The Parish of St. Matthew, and the upper part of St. Philip lying above the Canouchee river, were, by the Constitution of Georgia adopted at Savannah on the 5th of February, 1777, consolidated into a county called Effingham.[30]