Georgia Natural Wonder #60 - St. Simons Island. 1,044

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Georgia Natural Wonder #60 - St. Simons Island

The second-largest and most developed of Georgia's barrier islands, St. Simons is approximately twelve miles long and nearly three miles wide at its widest stretch (roughly the size of Manhattan Island in New York). The island is located in Glynn County on Georgia's coast and lies east of Brunswick (the seat of Glynn County), south of Little St. Simons Island and the Hampton River, and north of Jekyll Island. The resort community of Sea Island is separated from St. Simons on the east by the Black Banks River. Known for its Live Oak tree canopies and historic landmarks.



The community and the island are interchangeable, known simply as "St. Simons Island", or locally as "The Island". St. Simons is part of the Brunswick, Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area, and according to the 2010 census, the CDP had a population of 12,743.



Located on the southeast Georgia coast, midway between Savannah and Jacksonville, St. Simons Island is both a seaside resort and residential community. It is the largest of Georgia's renowned Golden Isles (along with Sea Island, Jekyll Island, and privately owned Little St. Simons Island). Visitors are drawn to the Island for its warm climate, beaches, variety of outdoor activities, shops and restaurants, historical sites, and its natural environment.



In addition to its base of permanent residents, the island enjoys an influx of both visitors and part-time residents throughout the year. The 2010 Census notes that 26.8% of total housing units are for "seasonal, recreational, or occasional use". The vast majority of commercial and residential development is located on the southern half of the island. Much of the northern half remains marsh or woodland. A large tract of land in the northeast has been converted to a nature preserve containing trails, historical ruins, and undisturbed maritime forest. The tract, Cannon's Point Preserve, is open to the public on specified days and hours. Cannon's Point Preserve has some of the last intact maritime forest on St. Simons Island and is rich in cultural and natural history. The peninsula has over six miles of salt marsh, tidal creek and river shore line that provide habitat for wildlife such as oysters, birds, fish, and manatee. Shell middens dating back to 2500 BCE are on the site, as are the remains of the large plantation home and slave quarters built by John Couper in the 1800s.





Early History

The earliest record of human habitation on the island dates to the Late Archaic Period, about 5,000 to 3,000 years ago. Remnants of shell rings left behind by Native Americans from this era survive on many of the barrier islands, including St. Simons. Centuries later, during the period known by historians as the chiefdom era, the Guale Indians established a chiefdom centered on St. Catherines Island and used St. Simons as their hunting and fishing grounds. By 1500 the Guale had established a permanent village of about 200 people on St. Simons, which they called Guadalquini.



Beginning in 1568, the Spanish attempted to create missions along the Georgia coast. Catholic missions were the primary means by which Georgia's indigenous Native American chiefdoms were assimilated into the Spanish colonial system along the northern frontier of greater Spanish Florida. In the 1600s St. Simons became home to two Spanish missions: San Buenaventura de Guadalquini, on the southern tip of the island, and Santo Domingo de Asao (or Asajo), on the northern tip. Located on the inland side of the island were the pagan refugee villages of San Simón, the island's namesake, and Ocotonico. In 1684 pirate raids left the missions and villages largely abandoned.

Colonial History

As early as 1670, with Great Britain's establishment of the colony of Carolina and its expansion into Georgia territory, Spanish rule was threatened by the English. The Georgia coast was considered "debatable land" by England and Spain, even though Spain had fully retreated from St. Simons by 1702. Thirty-one years later General James Edward Oglethorpe founded the English settlement of Savannah. In 1736 he established Fort Frederica, named after the heir to the British throne, Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, on the west side of St. Simons Island to protect Savannah and the Carolinas from the Spanish threat.


Freddy Lewis or Louis? With the Angels? Pretty funny poem about his death in tangent link.

Destined to defend the southern frontier from the continued presence of Spanish colonials in the American Southeast, Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island served as the British military headquarters in colonial America. During its heyday, from 1736 to 1758, General James Oglethorpe's town and fort played a pivotal role in the struggle for empire between the competing interests of England and Spain. This clash of cultures pitted British redcoats, the Highland Independent Company of Foot, and coastal rangers and sympathetic Southeastern Indians against the Spanish forces. They were concentrated beyond "the debatable land" southward to St. Augustine, Florida.

A Planned Community

To honor Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, Georgia's Board of Trustees determined upon a name for the new town in the fledgling province on September 26, 1735. Because there was already a Fort Frederick on Port Royal, South Carolina, the name was feminized. The old town at Frederica was laid out in an orderly fashion. It featured two wards divided by a 75-foot-wide main corridor ("Broad Street") and eighty-four regularly spaced lots. A cross street, called Barracks Street, leading to the regimental quarters in the North Ward bisected Broad, creating the two wards. Each was considered a political subdivision or tithing ward.





The military support town, which covered forty acres, complemented the impressive star-shaped design of the fortress and spur battery of cannon. Attributed to the fortification plans of French military strategist Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban, the citadel was built of tabby, a type of "coastal concrete." In today's archaeological ruins at Frederica—including the King's magazine, house foundations and walls, and the soldiers' barracks—this limey mortar lends a sense of beauty and great antiquity to the site.



A Strategic Location

Despite the smaller forts and batteries located to the south and west, the town's citadel and the heart of the frontier defense system was Fort Frederica. In his Journal, John Percival (the earl of Egmont) remarked that the "bay within was very secure for shipping" and the southern mouth of the Altamaha River "land lock'd from the Winds." Oglethorpe had observed a high bluff in January 1734 while reconnoitering Georgia's coastal Sea Islands in search of a suitable fort site. The bluff's elevation and location provided a commanding view of inland waterways and the salty sea marshes as well as protection from invasion. The fact that the land had previously been cleared for an "Indian old field" made this strategically important location even more attractive.



Fort and First Residents

Accompanied by thirty men, Oglethorpe returned to this setting by February 18, 1736. He traced out a fort with four bastions and "dug enough of the ditch and raised enough of the Rampart for a sample for the Men to work upon." Grass was cut into turf from the Indian old field and used in sodding the fort. By September 1738 Oglethorpe's regiment consisted of six companies, each with about 125 men.



An imposing barracks was constructed to house them.



Forty-four men and seventy-two women and children had settled at Fort Frederica by mid-March 1736. Less than ten years later, the number had grown to 1,000. Most of the early residents were tradesmen and their families who had braved a two-month voyage across the Atlantic. They prospered, supplying the needs of the regiment.



In 1736 the congregation of what would become Christ Church was organized within Fort Frederica as a mission of the Church of England. Charles Wesley led the first services.



Spanish Threat

After an unsuccessful siege of St. Augustine by Georgia soldiers in 1740 during the War of Jenkins' Ear, Spanish forces launched a retaliatory invasion of Fort Frederica in midsummer 1742. The attack on Florida was covered in the McIntosh Islands post, and it was known as the Battle of Fort Mose and the Georgians suffered greatly having 70 killed.



Oglethorpe was outgunned and outmanned but not outmaneuvered. Over a two-week period he and his men engaged the invading Spanish forces. Led by Don Manuel de Montiano, governor of St. Augustine, the Spanish organized an invasion of Georgia in mid-June 1742 with approximately 4,500 to 5,000 soldiers. Of that number, roughly 1900 to 2000 were ground assault troops.Weather hampered their progress by sea, and Oglethorpe learned of their impending arrival; he prepared the defenses of St. Simons Island accordingly. He established a fort on the island, on a high bluff overlooking the Frederica River, to protect Darien and Savannah from a Spanish invasion. His forces included a mixture of rangers, British regulars, southeastern Indians, and local citizens, but his total forces numbered less than 1,000 men. The Spanish landed on the southern tip of the island during the afternoon and evening of July 5 as the garrison at Fort St. Simons resisted the invasion with cannonade, but was not able to prevent the landing.



On July 5, 1742 Montiano landed nearly 1900 men from 36 ships near Gascoigne Bluff, close to the Frederica River. Faced with a superior force, Oglethorpe decided to withdraw from Fort St. Simons before the Spanish could mount an assault. He ordered the small garrison to spike the guns and slight the fort (doing what damage they could), to deny the Spanish full use of the military asset. The Spanish took over the remains of the fort the following day, establishing it as their base on the island and headquarters during the campaign.



After landing troops and supplies, and consolidating their position at Fort St. Simons, the Spanish began to cautiously reconnoiter beyond their perimeter. They found the road between Fort St. Simons and Fort Frederica, but first assumed the narrow track was just a farm road. On July 18, the Spanish undertook a reconnaissance in force along the road with approximately 115 men under the command of Captain Sebastian Sanchez.



Early on the morning of Wednesday, July 7, several Spanish scouts advanced northward toward Fort Frederica to assess the landscape and plan their attack. They met a body of English rangers at approximately nine o'clock, and the two units exchanged shots. Oglethorpe learned of the engagement, mounted a horse, and galloped to the scene, followed by reinforcements. He charged directly into the Spanish line, which scattered when the additional forces arrived.



A mile and a half short of Fort Frederica, their target, the Spaniards were set upon by a force consisting of Georgia Rangers, and the Highland Independent Company, aided by more numerous Chicksaw, Yamacraw and Creek warriors, all under General Oglethorpe's personal direction.



After an intense but brief battle, lasting less than one hour, Oglethorpe's forces succeeded in killing or capturing 36 of the Spaniards, nearly a third of the forces in that group. Among those killed was second-in-command, Captain Nicolas Hernandez. Captain Sebastian Sanchez was captured. Oglethorpe's losses were described as "light".



Oglethorpe posted a detachment to defend his position and returned to Frederica to prevent another Spanish landing on the northern coast and to recruit more men. The British advance party, in pursuit of the defeated Spanish force, engaged in a skirmish, then fell back in face of advancing Spanish reinforcements. When the British reached a bend in the road, Lieutenants Southerland and Macoy ordered the column to stop. They took cover in a semi-circle shaped area around a clearing behind trees and palmettos, waiting for the advancing Spanish having taken cover in the dense forest. They watched as the Spanish broke rank, stacked arms and, taking out their kettles, prepared to cook dinner. The Spanish thought they were protected because they had the marsh on one side of them and the forest on the other. The British forces opened fire from behind the cover of trees and bushes, catching the Spanish off-guard. They fired multiple volleys from behind the protection of dense forest.



The attack killed roughly 200 Spaniards. The ferocity of the fighting at Bloody Marsh was dramatic, and the battle took its name from the tradition that the marsh ran red with the blood of dead Spanish soldiers. The floor of the forest was strewn with the bodies of the dead and dying. A few Spanish officers attempted in vain to reform their ranks, but the Spanish soldiers and their allies fled, panic stricken, in multiple directions as they were hit with volley after volley of musket fire from behind the foliage. Barba himself was captured after being mortally wounded. The Battle of Bloody Marsh blunted the Spanish advance, and ultimately proved decisive. Oglethorpe was credited with the victory, though he arrived at the scene after the fighting had ceased.



Oglethorpe continued to press the Spanish, trying to dislodge them from the island. A few days later, approaching a Spanish settlement on the south side, he learned of a French man who had deserted the British and gone to the Spanish. Worried that the deserter might report how small the British force was, Oglethorpe spread out his drummers, to make them sound as if they were accompanying a larger force. He wrote to the deserter, addressing him as if he were a spy for the British, saying that the man just needed to continue his stories until Britain could send more men. The prisoner who was carrying the letter took it to the Spanish officers, as Oglethorpe had hoped and the Spanish promptly executed the Frenchmen. The timely arrival of British ships reinforced a misconception among the Spanish that British reinforcements were arriving. The Spanish left St. Simons, ending their last invasion of colonial Georgia.The Spanish left the island on July 13.



The consequences of this battle were considerable. The brave stand by Oglethorpe's men restored their confidence because the Spanish no longer seemed indestructible. Conversely, the morale of the Spanish suffered greatly, resulting in retreat and a reluctance to undertake future campaigns into the region. Oglethorpe's daring actions and use of effective tactics reestablished his military leadership. On an imperial level, citizens throughout the colonies and in the homeland rejoiced at the repulse of the Spanish invasion of British North America. This decisive English victory represented the last major Spanish offensive into Georgia. General James Oglethorpe redeemed his reputation from his defeat at St. Augustine, Florida, two years earlier, and the positive psychological effects upon his troops, settlers, other colonists, and the English populace rallied them to the cause to preserve Georgia.



The British regiment disbanded in May 1749. With its departure, many of Frederica's townspeople relocated to the main land. Nine years later, in April 1758, a great fire swept Frederica, reducing much of it to ashes. Fort Frederica went into decline and, except for a short time of prosperity during the 1760s and 1770s under the leadership of merchant James Spalding, never fully recovered. Today the Fort Frederica National Monument and the historic citadel's tabby ruins are maintained by the National Park Service. The ruins stand as a silent reminder of colonial military struggles.





Apart from the colonies in Effingham County which we discussed in the Ebeneezer Creek Wonder, some Salzburgers went to other more exotic areas in Georgia such as what is now St. Simons Island. In part, Georgia was established to protect the other colonies against Spanish invasion from the south, and a year after Savannah was settled, James Oglethorpe sailed south on the inland waterway in search of a place to build a fort. He chose St. Simons Island, approximately seventy-five miles south of Savannah. The trustees seemed to prefer Salzburgers and Scottish Highlanders as settlers, and Oglethorpe returned to America in 1736 along with a carefully selected group of 275 settlers, soldiers, and staff, including John and Charles Wesley. John came to be a missionary to the Indians and a pastor to the colonists, and Charles was to serve as a private secretary to Oglethorpe.


Charles Wesley.

When their ship arrived on February 6, 1736, the Wesley brothers continued to stay on the ship a while and the local Yamacraw chief went on board to present John Wesley with a gift of milk and honey.



During the voyage across the Atlantic, John Wesley was amazed at the inner calm of the twenty five Moravian Germans on board even in frightening weather, and when they finally disembarked, the brothers initially stayed with the Moravians. It was decided that John Wesley move into a parsonage there while Charles and Reverand Ingram would go on to Fort Frederica.



A problem had arisen on the ship when some of the Salzburgers were reluctant to move onto their new island home after finding out that it was to be a military settlement where they might have to fight, and most of them preferred to join the Salzburger community at Ebenezer. Some of the former mountain folk were also reluctant to continue when they discovered that the remainder of the voyage was to be made in small boats. Believing it unwise to take anyone to the outpost who was unwilling, Oglethorpe then recruited from within the group, and part of the Salzburgers remained at Savannah while the others agreed to continue to St. Simons Island, where Fort Frederica was soon built.



By March, 1736, forty-four men and seventy-two women and children began life in the new town, each with a lot for a house. There was also a large public garden, a common meadow for cattle and two wells. There was a doctor, carpenter, baker, shoemaker, bricklayer, locksmith and others with necessary skills. Within a short time from 1736 until 1758, Frederica was developed as an industrious, self-contained society. The island Salzburgers mingled with the Scottish settlers and made their living by planting, fishing and selling their products.



Despite his good intentions, Charles Wesley angered some of the settlers so much with his strict sermons that when some local women started spreading gossip about him, he ended up sleeping on the ground. His experience was so miserable that he left the Island for Savannah after two months of constant illness and disagreements with both Oglethorpe and the settlers. Charles later returned to England, never to return.



In Savannah, even after preaching all day, John Wesley would attend the Moravians' Sunday evening German services. After his brother left, he visited the Fort and was dismayed at the settlers' dire "spiritual condition". He twice returned later, but the settlers rejected him in the same way they had his brother, and on one occasion one of the female trouble-makers tried to shoot him. When he snatched her gun, she went after him with a scissors, and when she failed to strike him, he grabbed her and she bit him. The Wesleys probably regarded their time in Georgia as a spiritual failure. John later wrote in his Journal, "I came to convert the Indians, but, oh, who will convert me?"



Greatly impressed by the pious Moravians he had met on his journey, however, John Wesley started the first known gathering of children together on Sundays for religious education in Savannah. He would later translate thirty-three German hymns into English, including 'Befiehl du deine Wege': "Give to the winds thy fears" by Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676). After his return to England, he continued to visit with Moravians regularly.


Doing what he came to do, preach to Indians.

Despite the brothers' difficulties, however, they managed to establish a congregation on the island which was served by Benjamin Ingham and later the famous preacher George Whitefield in 1737. Today it is known as Christ Church, Frederica (Episcopal). George Whitefield, the Wesleys' successor, had better luck with the colonists and apparently survived bite-free. When Oglethorpe's regiment was disbanded in 1749, most of the Salzburgers left St. Simons Island. By the early 1800s, "German village" was absorbed into a plantation called "The Village." Today, as in the rest of the early Georgia settlements, all that is left is an historic marker.



Here in 1736, Oglethorpe settled a group of German Lutherans, known as Salzburgers, and their settlement was called the German Village. These Salzburgers made their living by planting, fishing, and selling their products to the Frederica settlers. When Oglethorpe`s regiment was disbanded in 1749 the Salzburgers left St. Simons Island.During the Plantation Era, the Wylly family lived here, their plantation being called "The Village."


Wylly grave

Ironically enough, although they were from two different countries, the Wylly Family and the Salzburg immigrants had something else in common besides a choice piece of St. Simons real estate. It was the feeling that comes from being exiled. In the Wylly Family’s case, some of them were exiled in the late 1700s from Savannah, Georgia, for their political beliefs. They initially went to Nassau in the Bahamas and became part of the political scene there. Alexander Campbell Wylly was a son of Alexander and Susannah Wylly. They were loyalists during the Revolutionary War and fled to the Bahamas during the early part of the Revolution. He married Margaret Armstrong (1769-1850) there at Abaco on Jan. 10, 1787. She was the daughter of William and Ann Armstrong, a loyalist family who had fled to the Bahamas from North Carolina. Alexander and Margaret had at least 11 children:



Then in later years, they traveled back to the Peach State and claimed the Salzburg exiles old settlement for their own. Several books and magazine articles mention the Wylly Family’s period in exile and their subsequent relocation to St. Simons Island.Captain Alexander Campbell Wylly, a former British officer, at one time owned Saint Clair Plantation on Saint Simons Island, GA.



After Georgia established itself as a British colony, most of the Salzburgers living on the island moved into the mainland. Then Alexander bought the site of the colonial Salzburger settlement (German Village) and in 1812 built a fine home on the property. There he lived in affluence, having one of the best plantations on the island and owning many slaves. The area was absorbed into his plantation (over a thousand acres) called "The Village".

Plantation Era

By the start of the American Revolution (1775-83), Fort Frederica was obsolete, and St. Simons was left largely uninhabited as most of its residents joined the patriot army. The state of Georgia had twice attempted, without success, to invade the British colony of East Florida. In April of 1778, four British ships were sailing in St. Simons Sound. Samuel Elbert detailed around 360 men of the Georgia Continental battalions of Fort Howe to march to Darien; from here they were to embark upon three galleys, Washington, Bulloch, and Lee. The first was led by Captain John Hardee, the second by Captain Archibald Hatcher, and the third by Captain John Cutler Braddock. Thus began the Battle of Frederica River. Strategy and ebb tide aided the Colonist as two British ships ran aground and were abandoned with no loss of life to the Americans.



Although the battle was comparatively minor, it had a galvanizing effect on the people of Georgia, for it disabled two ships that had been capturing American merchant ships off the South Carolina and Georgia coasts. More importantly, it helped to delay by over eight months a British attempt to capture Fort Morris and the town of Sunbury. Report of Elbert on battle.



Besides hosting the Georgia naval victory on the Fort Frederica River, providing guns from its famous fort for use at Fort Morris in Sunbury, and serving as an arena for pillaging by privateers and British soldiers, the island played almost no role in the war. Following the war, many of the townspeople, their businesses destroyed, turned to agriculture. The island was transformed into fourteen cotton plantations after acres of live oak trees were cleared for farm land and used for building American warships, including the famous USS Constitution, or "Old Ironsides." Although rice was the predominant crop along the neighboring Altamaha River, St. Simons was known for its production of long-staple cotton, which soon came to be known as Sea Island cotton.


Old Ironsides was leading edge of military in its day.

Between the 1780s and the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-65), St. Simons's plantation culture flourished. The saline atmosphere and the availability of cheap slave labor proved an ideal combination for the cultivation of Sea Island cotton.


Slave house Retreat Plantation.

In 1803 a group of Ebo slaves drowned themselves. The sacred site is known today as Ebos Landing. The historical roots of the flying Africans legend can be traced back to the spring of 1803, when a group of Igbo slaves arrived in Savannah after enduring the nightmare of the Middle Passage. The Igbo (from what is now the nation of Nigeria, in central West Africa) were renowned throughout the American South for being fiercely independent and unwilling to tolerate the humiliations of chattel slavery. The Igbo who became known as the flying Africans were purchased at the slave market in Savannah by agents working on behalf of John Couper and Thomas Spalding. Loaded aboard a small vessel, the Igbo were confined below deck for the trip down the coast to St. Simons. During the course of the journey, however, the Igbo rose up in rebellion against the white agents, who jumped overboard and were drowned.



What happened next is a striking example of the ways in which African American slaves and white slave masters interpreted "history" in starkly different terms. One of the only contemporary written accounts of the event was by Roswell King, a white overseer on the nearby plantation of Pierce Butler. King recounted that as soon as the Igbo landed on St. Simons Island, they "took to the swamp"—committing suicide by walking into Dunbar Creek. From King's perspective the salient feature of the story was the loss of a substantial financial investment for Couper and Spalding.



African American oral tradition, on the other hand, has preserved a very different account of the events that transpired that day. They rose up in the sky and turned themselves into buzzards and flew right back to Africa. By transforming the painful memories of slavery and racism into the emancipating power of flight, the story of the flying Africans continues to play an important role in maintaining a cultural connection to Africa and empowering generations of black Americans.



Sadly, no historical marker commemorates the site of Ebos Landing, which is adjacent to a sewage treatment plant built in the 1940s. The African American community, however, continues to mark the sacred site in their own, more private ways. Some local fishermen on St. Simons, for example, will not cast fishing lines or crab nets in the fecund waters of Dunbar Creek for fear of disturbing the ghosts of the Igbo. Despite the fact that the state has not yet recognized Ebos Landing as a landmark, the many stories ranging from folktales to Nobel Prize–winning novels surely constitute a kind of literary memorial worthy of the remarkable story of the flying Africans.



One of the largest owners of land and slaves on St. Simons was Pierce Butler, master of Hampton Point Plantation, located on the northern end of the island. By 1793 Butler owned more than 500 slaves, who cultivated 800 acres of cotton on St. Simons and 300 acres of rice on Butler's Island in the Altamaha River delta.


Slave cabins Hamilton plantation

Butler's grandson, Pierce Mease Butler, who at the age of sixteen inherited a share of his grandfather's estate in 1826, was responsible for the largest sale of human beings in the history of the United States: in 1859, to restore his squandered fortune, he sold 429 slaves in Savannah for more than $300,000. The British actress and writer Fanny Kemble, whose tumultuous marriage to Pierce ended in divorce in 1849, published an eyewitness account of the evils of slavery on St. Simons in her book Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 (1863).



Another large owner of land and slaves on St. Simons was Major William Page, a friend and employee of Pierce Butler Sr. Before purchasing Retreat Plantation on the southwestern tip of the island in 1804, Page managed the Hampton plantation and Butler's Island. Upon Page's death in 1827, Thomas Butler King inherited the land together with his wife, Page's daughter, Anna Matilda Page King. King expanded his father-in-law's planting empire on St. Simons as well as on the mainland, and by 1835 Retreat Plantation alone was home to as many as 355 slaves.


The Retreat Plantation house on St. Simons Island is no longer standing. It was located on the southwestern tip of the island.

Thomas Butler King is remembered primarily as a planter/politician from coastal Georgia who labored with mixed success to improve the nation's nascent transportation and communication networks.


Retreat Plantation slave hospital and greenhouse.

King was born in Palmer, Massachusetts, the son of Daniel and Hannah Lord King. He attended Westfield Academy in Massachusetts and studied law under his brother Henry in Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 1823 he followed another brother, Stephen Clay King, to southeast Georgia and took up the practice of law. In 1824 he married Anna Matilda Page, the daughter of a wealthy cotton planter who owned Retreat Plantation on St. Simons Island. After the deaths of Anna's parents, the Kings made Retreat their primary home. They had ten children who survived to adulthood. King made substantial improvements to the Retreat property and in the 1820s managed to accumulate other neighboring lands and plantations. He subsequently lost these properties to his creditors, however, when the long-staple cotton economy fell on lean times in the 1830s and his own investments in various internal improvement schemes came to nothing.



King was never particularly content with planting, preferring politics and public life. Elected to the Georgia legislature in 1832 as a senator from Glynn County, King served almost continuously until his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1838. As a state senator, King spent most of his energy promoting internal improvements, his lifelong passion. He supported state credit for private companies generally and improvements for the port at Brunswick specifically, then deemed as viable a candidate as Savannah for becoming Georgia's primary seaport. Once elected to the U.S. Congress, King allied himself with the Whig Party, continued the promotion of internal improvements (including a railway across the isthmus of Panama), and became a vocal champion of America's infant navy.



Bitterly disappointed at not being appointed secretary of the navy under U.S. president Zachary Taylor, King accepted an appointment as Taylor's special agent to California. King stayed on in California as collector of the Port of San Francisco under U.S. president Millard Fillmore, failing twice in bids to represent the new state as a U.S. senator. King's travels from East Coast to West Coast and his long-time affection for internal improvements made him a natural proponent of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. Throughout the 1850s he worked tirelessly as its lobbyist and representative.


Retreat Plantation 1930’s

Finally, King returned to Georgia in 1859 to bury both his oldest son, Thomas Butler King Jr., and his wife, Anna. In 1861 he accepted the post of Georgia's representative to the courts of Europe and again left his plantation in the hands of his overseer and his fractured family. King returned to Georgia in 1862 and died in Waresboro (in Ware County) on May 10, 1864.


Grave read Devoted husband and father - Kind Master.

Neptune Small was a slave from Glynn County, in coastal Georgia, who accompanied members of the Thomas Butler King family to fight in the Civil War (1861-65). Small was born into slavery on September 15, 1831, on Retreat Plantation, the home of the King family of St. Simons Island. He was chosen to look after the older King sons and bonded quickly with the third son, Henry Lord Page King (known as Lord), who was only five months older. Together they learned to read and write under the tutelage of Anna Matilda Page King, Thomas Butler King's wife.


Neptune Small and Lord King - Small's wife.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Henry Lord Page King and his brothers enlisted in the Confederate army, and Small accompanied King as his manservant. For almost two years Small cared for King as they marched across the country and fought the battles of the Peninsula (Virginia), Richmond (Virginia), Sharpsburg (Maryland), and Harpers Ferry (West Virginia). On December 13, 1862, during the battle of Fredericksburg (Virginia), King volunteered to carry a dispatch from Major General Lafayette McLaws to Brigadier General Thomas R. R. Cobb. He was shot while returning to his regiment after delivering the dispatch. Small waited for King until dark, but when he did not return, Small began searching the battlefield, where he found King's body. The next morning Small enlisted the help of some officers to make a pine box to carry King's body to Richmond. There, he purchased a coffin and then accompanied the body to Savannah. It is believed that King's brothers and sisters joined Small in Savannah to bury their brother in a temporary grave—it was not safe to return the body to their home on St. Simons Island, as the Union forces were using it for their island headquarters.


Small carried King home.

Although U.S. president Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 made him a free man, Small returned to the front to serve R. Cuyler "Tip" King, the youngest son, until Confederate forces surrendered in 1865.After the war Small traveled to Savannah to accompany Lord King's body to the family plot at Christ Church Cemetery on St. Simons.



The King family gave Small a piece of property on their plantation, where he built his home and lived for many years with his wife, Ila, and their children. His dying wish was that his property be used to create a beautiful park overlooking the ocean, which is now known as "Neptune Park". A giant oak marks the spot of his former home and the streets around it are named for the "King" children.


Neptune Park overlooks the ocean pier.


Marker in grass right by pier.

As a free man, in what may have been a humorous reference to his stature, he chose the last name "Small" and returned to Retreat Plantation, where he continued working for the King family.



In addition to helping them rebuild, tending to the gardens, and keeping up the graveyard at Christ Church, Small also helped to plant the rows of oak trees that still line the entranceway to Retreat.



Small lived more than forty years as a free man. He died at the age of seventy-five on August 10, 1907, and is buried in a cemetery for Retreat Plantation slaves and their descendants. A tabby marker and bronze plaque mark his grave.


Neptune Small Grave Marker

The center of life during the island's plantation era was Christ Church, Frederica. Organized in 1807 by a group of island planters, the Episcopal church is the second oldest in the Diocese of Georgia. Embargoes imposed by the War of 1812 (1812-15) prevented the parishioners from building a church structure, so they worshiped in the home of John Beck, which stood on the site of Oglethorpe's only St. Simons residence, Orange Hall.



The first Christ Church building, finished on the present site in 1820, was ruined by occupying Union troops during the Civil War. In 1884 the Reverend Anson Dodge Jr. rebuilt the church as a memorial to his first wife, Ellen. The cruciform building with a trussed gothic roof and stained-glass windows remains active today as Christ Church.



Civil War and Beyond

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 put a sudden end to St. Simons's lucrative plantation era. In January of that year, Confederate troops were stationed at the south end of the island to guard the entrance to Brunswick Harbor. Slaves from Retreat Plantation, owned by Thomas Butler King, built earthworks and batteries. Plantation residents were scattered—the men joined the Confederate army and their families moved to the mainland. Cannon fire was heard on the island in December 1861, and Confederate troops retreated in February 1862, after dynamiting the lighthouse to keep its beacon from aiding Union troops. Soon thereafter, Union troops occupied the island, which was used as a camp for freed slaves. By August 1862 more than 500 former slaves lived on St. Simons, including Susie King Taylor, who organized a school for freed slave children. But in November the ex-slaves were taken to Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Fernandina, Florida, leaving the island abandoned.


Susie King Taylor

After the Civil War the island never returned to its status as an agricultural community. The plantations lay dormant because there were no slaves to work the fields. After Union general William T. Sherman's January 1865 Special Field Order No. 15 —a demand that former plantations be divided and distributed to former slaves—was overturned by U.S. president Andrew Johnson less than a year later, freedmen and women were forced to work as sharecroppers on the small farms that dotted the land previously occupied by the sprawling plantations.


1800's Post Office St. Simons and downtown by pier around 1900.

By 1870 real economic recovery began with the reestablishment of the timber industry. Norman Dodge and Titus G. Meigs of New York set up lumber mill operations at Gascoigne Bluff, formerly Hamilton Plantation. The lumber mills provided welcome employment for both blacks and whites and also provided mail and passenger boats to the mainland.


Timber from St. Simons Lumber Mills on St. Simons Island was shipped to market from this dock in Brunswick. After coming to a halt during the Civil War, the timber industry on the island was revived during the 1870s.

Such water traffic, together with the construction of a new lighthouse in 1872, designed by architect Charles B. Cluskey, marked the beginning of St. Simons's tourism industry.


The first building at Georgia Health Sciences University in Augusta and the Old Governors Mansion in Milledgeville were built by Cluskey. Both structures are excellent examples of the Greek revival style.

The keeper of the lighthouse created a small amusement park, which drew many visitors, as did the seemingly miraculous light that traveled from the top of the lighthouse tower to the bottom.



The island became a summer retreat for families from the mainland, particularly from Baxley, Brunswick, and Waycross.The island's resort industry was thriving by the 1880s. Beachfront structures, such as a new pier and grand hotel, were built on the southeastern end of the island and could be accessed by ferry. Around this time wealthy northerners began vacationing on the island.


Visitors to St. Simons Island gather on its pier in the late nineteenth century.


Visitors today at the beach.

The tourism industry, still a primary economic activity on the island today.



Twentieth Century

The opening in 1924 of the Brunswick–St. Simons Highway, today known as the Torras Causeway, was a milestone in the development of resorts in the area. St. Simons's beaches were now easily accessible to locals and tourists alike. More than 5,000 automobiles took the short drive from Brunswick to St. Simons via the causeway on its opening day, paving the way for convenient residential and resort development.



In 1926 automotive pioneer Howard Coffin of Detroit, Michigan, bought large tracts of land on St. Simons, including the former Retreat Plantation, and constructed a golf course, yacht club, paved roads, and a residential subdivision. Although the causeway had brought large numbers of summer people to the island, St. Simons remained a small community with only a few hundred permanent residents until the 1940s.



The outbreak of World War II (1941-45) brought more visitors and residents to St. Simons. Troops stationed at Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah; and nearby Camp Stewart took weekend vacations on the island, and a new naval air base and radar school became home to even more officers and soldiers. The increased wartime population brought the island its first public school. With a major shipyard for the production of Liberty ships in nearby Brunswick, the waters of St. Simons became active with German U-boats.



In April 1942, just off the coast, the Texas Company oil tanker S. S. Oklahoma and the S. S. Esso Baton Rouge were torpedoed by the Germans, bringing the war very close to home for island residents. What a tangent that was U Boat commander interviewed.


Torpedo damage to Baton Rouge and wreck of Oklahoma.

The village on St. Simons Island, pictured here in 1950's, grew during World War II, with the establishment of a naval air base and radar school on the island. In addition to a growing permanent population, St. Simons also attracted increasing numbers of vacationers from the mainland during the war.



Due in large part to the military's improvement of the island's infrastructure during the war, development on the island boomed in the 1950s and 1960s. More permanent homes and subdivisions were built, and the island was no longer just a summer resort but also a thriving community. In 1950 the Methodist conference and retreat center Epworth by the Sea opened on Gascoigne Bluff.



In 1961 novelist Eugenia Price visited St. Simons and began work on her first works of fiction, known as the St. Simons Trilogy. Inspired by real events on the island, Price's trilogy renewed interest in the history of Georgia's coast, and the novelist herself relocated to the island in 1965 and lived there for thirty-one years.


Buried at Christ Church.

Also buried at Christ Church - Furman Bisher



St. Simons is also home to contemporary Georgia writer Tina McElroy Ansa.



Since 1980 St. Simons's population has doubled. The island's continued status as a vacation destination and its ongoing development boom have put historic landmarks and natural areas at risk. While such landmarks as the Fort Frederica ruins and the Battle of Bloody Marsh site are preserved and maintained by the National Park Service, and while the historic lighthouse is maintained by the Coastal Georgia Historical Society, historic Ebos Landing has been taken over by a sewage treatment plant.



Several coastal organizations have formed in recent years to save natural areas on the island. The St. Simons Land Trust, for example, has received donations of large tracts of land and plans to protect property in the island's three traditional African American neighborhoods. Despite its rapid growth and development, St. Simons remains one of the most beautiful and important islands on the Georgia coast.



Top Row Dawg addendum's

It seems like New Georgia Encyclopedia stops in the 1990's always, so I am going to just stream of conscious about what should be mentioned about a present day trip to St. Simons.


Top Row –pop – son Frat Beach!


The Tree Spirits of St. Simons.

Barbara Jeans, Crab Trap, Bennie's Red Barn, Iguanas, Mullet Bay, Gnat's Landing are always on my restaurant rotation.



Younger generation Brogan's, old farts catch The Pine Box Dwellers performing live at Palm Coast Coffee, Cafe & Pub



A couple late night spots back up Mallory or a late night walk on the pier with the all night crabbers and fishermen.





Southern Soul - nuff said!



The Old Coast Guard Museum Maritime Museum, is now converted to ......



The World War II Home Front Museum as it recounts how the coastal region was transformed when the United States went to war. The Coastal Georgia Historical Society raised more than $3.5 million to open the museum in the buildings used during the war as a coast guard station that oversaw offshore patrols for enemy submarines. The museum on St. Simons Island opened to the public Dec. 8. Some exhibits show a German U-boat attack in 1942 that torpedoed two merchant ships and killed 22 sailors. Others show how civilians in coastal Glynn County built cargo ships to supply troops overseas, while the military trained naval officers to direct air battles using radar.

What the hell? All this and nothing about the freaking beach? The main Natural Wonder of St. Simons is the Atlantic Ocean.





My favorite beach is the one at Myrtle Street.



Best thing about biking St. Simons.....



no hills.



A freaking Beach that allows Dogs!



East Beach goes way out at low tide.



Birds everywhere.





And the marsh, the other major Natural Wonder of St. Simons.



No other place for Georgia Florida Weekend.



Top Row Dawg Addendum, as if 122 images are not enough.



Frat Beach Frolics.





Two more signature images St. Simons Island.





Today's GNW Gals at Frat Beach!