Scotch Highlanders -- there would be the right folk!
No sooner said than gathered. Something under two hundred, courageous and
hardy, were enrolled from the Highlands. The majority were men, but there
were fifty women and children with them. All went to Georgia, where they
settled to the south of Savannah, on the Altamaha, near the island of St.
Simon. Other Highlanders followed. They had a fort and a town which they
named New Inverness, and the region that they peopled they called Darien.
Oglethorpe himself left England late in 1735, with two ships, the Symond
and the London Merchant, and several hundred colonists aboard. Of these
folk doubtless a number were of the type the whole enterprise had been
planned to benefit. Others were Protestants from the Continent. Yet
others -- notably Sir Francis Bathurst and his family -- went at their own
charges. After Oglethorpe himself, most remarkable perhaps of those going
to Georgia were the brothers John and Charles Wesley. Not precisely
colonists are the Wesleys, but prospectors for the souls of the colonists,
and the souls of the Indians -- Yamacraws, Uchees, and Creeks.
They all landed at Savannah, and now planned to make a settlement south of
their capital city, by the mouth of Altamaha. Oglethorpe chose St. Simon's
Island, and here they built, and called their town Frederica.
"Each Freeholder had 60 Feet in Front by 90 Feet in depth upon the high
Street for House and Garden; but those which fronted the River had but 30
in Front, by 60 Feet in depth.
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