The Moravians in Georgia, 1735-1740Fries, Adelaide L. (Adelaide Lisetta)
History
The Moravians in Georgia, 1735-1740
Fries, Adelaide L. (Adelaide Lisetta)
Moravians -- Georgia
In May, 1733, the House of Commons appropriated 10,000 Pounds to the
Trustees of Georgia, “to be applied towards defraying the charges
of carrying over and settling foreign and other Protestants in said
colony,” and over 3,000 Pounds additional having been given privately,
the Trustees, at the suggestion of Herr von Pfeil, consul of Wittenberg
at Regensberg, wrote to Senior Samuel Urlsperger, pastor of the Lutheran
Church of St. Ann in the city of Augsburg, who had been very kind to
the Salzburgers on their arrival there, “and ever afterward watched over
their welfare with the solicitude of an affectionate father.” On receipt
of the invitation from the Trustees, seventy-eight persons decided to go
to Georgia, and left Augsburg on the 21st of October, reaching Rotterdam
the 27th of November, where they were joined by two ministers, Rev. Mr.
Bolzius, deputy superintendent of the Latin Orphan School at Halle,
and Rev. Mr. Gronau, a tutor in the same, who were to accompany them to
their new home. In England they were treated with marked kindness, and
when they sailed, January 19, 1734, it was with the promise of free
transportation to Georgia, and support there until they could reap their
first harvest from the fifty acres which were to be given to each man
among them.
They reached Charlestown, South Carolina, the following March, and
met General Oglethorpe, the Governor of Georgia, who was intending an
immediate return to Europe, but went back to help them select a suitable
place for their settlement, they preferring not to live in Savannah
itself. The site chosen was about twenty-five miles from Savannah, on
a large stream flowing into the Savannah River, and there they laid out
their town, calling it “Ebenezer”, in grateful remembrance of the Divine
help that had brought them thither. Baron von Reck, who had accompanied
them as Commissary of the Trustees, stayed with them until they had made
a good beginning, and then returned to Europe, leaving Ebenezer about
the middle of May.
Unitas Fratrum.
But while the Salzburgers received so much sympathy and kindness in
Germany on account of their distress, other exiled Protestants, whose
story was no less touching, were being treated with scant courtesy and
consideration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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