Georgia Natural Wonder #24 - Sapelo Island. 872

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #24 - Sapelo Island

There are 15 Georgia Barrier Islands. I have been to 5. Four were reached by car; Cumberland is the only one I had to take a boat. That leaves 10 that I have not seen. We have already outlined Jekyll, Cumberland, and Little Cumberland islands. We will come back and cover St. Simons, Little St. Simons and Sea Island in a future post, those are very developed. However today’s Natural Wonder is just the opposite. We are going to work from South to North.



Sapelo Island, situated about sixty miles south of Savannah, lies in the center of coastal Georgia's well-defined chain of barrier islands. It is a state-protected barrier island located in McIntosh County, Georgia. The 16,500-acre island is Georgia's fourth largest and, excepting the 434-acre African American community of Hog Hammock, is entirely state owned and managed. The island is accessible only by aircraft or boat; the primary ferry comes from the Sapelo Island Visitors Center in McIntosh County, Georgia, a seven-mile, twenty-minute trip. It is the site of Hog Hammock, the last known Gullah community. It is illegal to visit the island without a permit issued by state tourism authorities.



Approximately 97 percent of the island is owned by the state of Georgia and is managed by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources; the remainder is under private ownership. The western perimeter of Sapelo is the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve. There is also the Richard J. Reynolds Wildlife Management Area. The University of Georgia Marine Institute, which is focused on research and education, is located on 1,500 acres on the south end of the island. The Reynolds Mansion, a Georgia State Park, also lies on the south end of the island. Visitors to the island must be a part of an organized tour or guests of residents on the island. The island also has a small private airport run by the state of Georgia.



Hog Hammock

The community of Hog Hammock, also known as Hogg Hummock, includes homes, a general store, bar, public library, and other small businesses including vacation rentals. There are two active church congregations in Hog Hammock: St. Luke Baptist Church, founded in 1885, and First African Baptist Church, established in 1866. The latter congregation has an older building known as First African Baptist Church at Raccoon Bluff, constructed in 1900 in the former Raccoon Bluff community north of Hog Hammock. It is used for special services and programs.



Many of the full-time inhabitants of the Hog Hammock Community are African Americans known as Gullah-Geechees, descendants of enslaved West African people brought to the island in the 1700s and 1800s to work on island plantations.



The current population of full-time Gullah-Geechee residents in the community is estimated to be 47 (2009). The residents must bring all supplies from the mainland or purchase them in the small store on the island. The children of Hog Hammock take the ferry to the mainland and then take a bus to school, as the island school closed in 1978.



Hog Hammock is also home to the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society, Inc., a non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve and revitalize the Hogg Hummock Community. It was founded in 1993 by Hogg Hummock residents and non-resident descendants who wanted to enhance the future of their community by educating all visitors to the island about the history and to increase awareness that Sapelo has existed as an African community for over 200 years. It was incorporated in 1994, has over 600 members, and continues to grow each year. The organization hosts a Cultural Day festival every third Saturday in October.



The entire 427 acres of the community was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996 as Hog Hammock Historic District.
 


In the 1990s, people from the mainland began acquiring parcels of land from the Gullahs to construct vacation homes. In 2012, McIntosh County property tax appraisers notified Hog Hammock residents of huge property tax increases, even though there was no longer a school on the island. One Hog Hammock property owner's annual tax bill soared from $600 to $2,100.



In 2013, a fight over the sudden tax hikes was well underway, with some residents claiming they would be driven from land they had owned for many generations for the benefit of mainlanders who would acquire more of Hog Hammock's homes.



History

The human history of Sapelo dates back at least 4,500 years. Archaeological investigations on the island have determined extensive Native American presence on Sapelo during the Archaic Period of prehistory (2,000-500 B.C.). The name Sapelo is of Indian origin, being adapted to Zapala by Spanish missionaries, who established themselves on the island from about 1573 to 1686. The Franciscan mission of San Josef was situated on the north end of the island at or near the Native American Shell Ring, a prehistoric ceremonial mound that represents one of the most unusual archaeological features on the Georgia coast.



Recent work on Sapelo Island suggests that shell rings may be more numerous than previously thought. Excavations of smaller shell rings, like the smallest of the three known at the Sapelo Shell Ring Complex, suggest that at least some middens are the result of buildup beside households and are not the result of intentional mounding for ceremonial purposes.



Regardless of how shell rings formed, it is evident from the remains within the deposits that the rings served both as places of daily life and as sites for sacred ceremonies.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot7zs0n9dIU[/video]

Sapelo Island is speculated to be the site of San Miguel de Gualdape, the short-lived (1526–1527) first European settlement in the present-day United States. If true, it would also be the first place in the present-day U.S. that a Catholic mass was celebrated.



Two-thirds of the 600 Spanish settlers of San Miguel de Guadalupe died before they reached the end of their three-month winter stay, most of disease. Most scholars put this settlement in South Carolina, but not the Wikipedia link above.



Addendum to original post First slave revolt in North America.An unknown number of African slaves were brought along. In October, a group of slaves in the settlement set fire to the home of Gines Doncel, the leader of a mutiny against the colony's leadership. In the ensuing confusion, Doncel and his fellow-mutineers were arrested. African slaves escaped to live with the Indians. This episode is regarded as the first documented instance of black slavery and the first slave rebellion in North America.



During the 17th century Sapelo Island was part of the Guale missionary province of Spanish Florida. After 1680, several missions were merged and relocated to the island under the mission Santa Catalina de Guale.  English colonization of Georgia beginning in 1733 led to an agreement with the Creek Indians by which the colony acquired the land between the Savannah River and the Altamaha River, with the Indians reserving hunting lands on several barrier islands, including Sapelo. In 1757 another treaty with the Creeks resulted in the cession of Sapelo, Ossabaw, and St. Catherines islands to the royal colony. In 1762, Sapelo was sold to Patrick Mackay, an Indian agent. Mackay owned and operated the entire island as a cotton and cattle plantation before the Revolutionary War. In 1784, the Mackay's heirs sold the Island to John Mcqueen. After only five years, Mcqueen sold the entire island and the use of his slaves there to Francois Dumoussay.



He led a consortium of Frenchmen who planned to develop the island for agricultural, live-oak timbering, and livestock operations. The French involvement on Sapelo was characterized by mystery, intrigue, and mayhem. Disagreements over the use of the island and mistrust over expenditures of funds led to the breakup of the six-man French partnership by 1795. One of the men, Chappedelaine, was shot and killed by one of his partners in a duel on the island; another partner, Dumoussay, died of yellow fever a few weeks later.



In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Sapelo was acquired through purchase or inheritance by three men, all of whom left their imprint on the island. They were Thomas Spalding (South End), Edward Swarbreck (Chocolate), and John Montalet (High Point), the latter having married the daughter of one of the departed Frenchmen. By 1843 Spalding had acquired almost the entire island, except a tract of several hundred acres at Raccoon Bluff owned by the Kimberly-Street family.



Only remnants are those of Chocolate Plantation.



Ruins of Chocolate Plantation originally owned by Edward Swarbreck. Can't find anything about the others.





Chocolate Plantation tabby ruins again.



Thomas Spalding, a future Georgia Senator and U.S. Representative, left the most important legacy to Sapelo. He was one of the leading planters on the tidewater, an agricultural innovator, amateur architect, astute businessman, and leading citizen of McIntosh County. He developed his land into a plantation, selling live oak for shipbuilding, introducing irrigation ditches, and cultivating Sea Island Cotton, corn, and sugar cane. Spalding brought 400 slaves to the island from West Africa and the West Indies to work the plantation and build what would become the Spalding Mansion.


Spalding.

Spalding introduced the cultivation of sugar cane and the manufacture of sugar to Georgia. He built his own sugar mill, commissioned a lighthouse for the island in 1820, reintroduced the use of tabby as a primary building material on the coast, contributed important techniques for the culture of Sea Island cotton, and gradually developed Sapelo into an antebellum plantation empire. Spalding and his children owned 385 slaves on Sapelo in the 1850s. Despite his ownership of slaves, Spalding had considerable misgivings about the institution of slavery, exemplified by his reputation as a liberal and humane master. He utilized the task system of labor, which allowed his workers to have free time for personal pursuits.



Slaves were supervised not by the typical white overseers but by black managers, the most prominent of whom was Bu Allah (or Bilali), a Muslim and Spalding's second-in-command on Sapelo. He authored a 13-page document about Islamic law on the island — possibly the first manuscript of Islamic law ever written in the United States.

Spalding owned a house in Darien too.



Ashantilly was built by 1820  and he inherited the property from his mother, Margery McIntosh.



In 1820, a Winslow Lewis brick lighthouse was built on Sapelo Island.



It was abandoned in the early 1900's and remained dark for over 90 years.



It was restored and relighted in 1998.



Spalding opposed the abolition of slavery and he died in 1851 returning from a convention to assert Georgia's position on the matter. When freed, the former slaves established several settlements on the island; the last remaining is Hog Hammock, with approximately 70 remaining land owners. During the Civil War, the Spalding home was heavily vandalized and lay in ruins. Most of Sapelo was sold by Spalding descendants after the Civil War.


Sketch Spalding house 1858.

By the early 20th Century the International Road Races were attracting notables from the motor world to Savannah, Georgia. One attendee was Howard E. Coffin, founder of the Hudson Motor Car Company. He consolidated the various holdings on Sapelo and bought the entire island, except for the black communities, for $150,000.


Spalding Estate was a fixer upper in 1912.

Coffin owned Sapelo for twenty-two years. Like Spalding, the Coffins embarked on numerous projects. Between 1922 and 1925 he rebuilt the south-end mansion—a tabby-stucco structure originally built by Spalding in 1810—into one of the most palatial homes on the coast.





An island paradise unsurpassed on the coast.



The unusual and lovely Reynolds Mansion features marble sculptures, an ornately decorated Circus Room, murals by Athos Menaboni, a bowling lane, billiards, library and more.





Coffin engaged in large-scale agriculture, saw milling, and seafood harvesting. He also built roads, drilled artesian wells, and added other improvements to the island.


Artesian Well.


Planting of Constitution Oak in 1928 with President Coolidge.

Miles of shell-covered roads were laid, creeks were bridged, old fields were cultivated and large tracts were set aside for cattle grazing. Many distinguished visitors were guests of the Coffins on Sapelo, including U.S. presidents Calvin Coolidge (1928) and Herbert Hoover (1932), and aviator Charles A. Lindbergh (1929).

   
Coffin and Coolidge.                                                          Both men with their wives.


Coolidge having time of his life.

During this period Coffin and his young cousin Alfred W. Jones established the Cloister resort on nearby Sea Island.



In 1934, due to financial reversals brought on by the depression, Coffin sold Sapelo to North Carolina tobacco heir Richard J. Reynolds Jr. Reynolds and his family used his private island paradise as a part-time residence for three decades. During this time, he consolidated the black holdings on the island into one community at Hog Hammock. Many worked as servants in South End House, later renamed the Reynolds Mansion by the State of Georgia.




   
He continued the tradition of agricultural experimentation of the previous owners as his most important contribution was establishing the Sapelo Island Research Foundation and providing facilities and other support for the University of Georgia Marine Institute.

Ecology research

In 1923 Sapelo owner Howard Coffin introduced imported Chachalacas from Mexico to diversify the game bird population for his hunting pals. These chicken-like birds have established a stable, non-native population of 30-40 individuals that at times has spread to neighboring islands.



Sapelo owner R. J. Reynolds, Jr. founded the Sapelo Island Research Foundation in 1949. He later funded the research of Eugene Odum, whose 1958 paper The Ecology of a Salt Marsh won wide acclaim in scientific circles. Odum's paper helped show the fragility of the cycle of nature in the wetlands.



Reynolds' Sapelo Research Foundation also helped fund the University of Georgia's research on the island. Reynolds' widow, Annemarie Reynolds, sold Sapelo to the state of Georgia for $1 million, a fraction of its worth, in two separate transactions in 1969 and 1976. The latter sale resulted in the creation of the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve, a state-federal partnership between the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.



Thanks in part to the philanthropy of the Reynolds family, Sapelo is now open to the public by appointment.Approximately 115 people now reside on Sapelo, either permanently or temporarily, with the majority of them at Hog Hammock. That community still consists primarily of descendants of Thomas Spalding's slaves, and their diminishing numbers are a source of concern.

Natural history

Sapelo Island is located within the Georgia Bight, a tidally-influenced coastline that experiences two tidal cycles each day. Average difference between low and high tides at Sapelo Island is ~7 feet. Consequently, Sapelo island is an example of a tidally-influenced barrier island system. Over the last 2.5 million years (Neogene and Quaternary Periods), sea-level fall occurred in response to growth of the Northern Hemisphere ice cap. The resulting regression generated shoreline complexes that preceded the modern Holocene shoreline, with the most recent known as the late Pleistocene Silver Bluff Formation.



The Silver Bluff deposits underlie Holocene Sapelo Island sediments, and are visible along the southwestern bank of Blackbeard Creek as the Raccoon Bluff. During the last glacial maximum approximately 18,000 years ago (latest Pleistocene), maximum regression forced the Sapelo Island shoreline eastward approximately 100 km from its present day location. During the subsequent transgression, a Holocene shoreline formed the present Sapelo Island shoreline complex, including Cabretta and Nannygoat beaches.


Nannygoat Beach.

Tourism

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources offers tours several days a week. These can be booked through the Sapelo Island Visitors Center.



Additionally, many island residents offer private tours, which can often be customized to fit the interests of individual tourists. A state campground is also available to groups of 15 to 25 people on Cabretta Island, adjacent to Sapelo Island.



In popular culture

Cornelia Walker Bailey, Sapelo Island resident and descendant of Bilali Muhammed, is the most prominent spokesperson for the community. She championed the preservation of Sapelo's rich West African heritage, from spiritual beliefs and folkways to the Geechee dialect once spoken by the island's African American residents. In 2000 Bailey published a "cultural memoir" of her life and the struggle to preserve these traditions, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man.



R. J. Reynolds' grandson Patrick Reynolds and author Tom Shachtman co-authored The Gilded Leaf: Triumph, Tragedy and Tobacco - Three Generations of the R. J. Reynolds Fortune and Family, which offers an unvarnished view of R. J. Reynolds, Jr. during the time he owned Sapelo.



Author Tom Poland wrote a novel titled Forbidden Island ... An Island Called Sapelo.



Singer Larry Jon Wilson has recorded a song titled "Sapelo", which is about the island on the album Testifying - The Country Soul Revue.



Author and island resident Michele Nicole Johnson published the photograph book, Sapelo Island's Hog Hammock, in 2009.



Author T. C. Boyle set his 1990 novel East is East on a fictional island in Georgia, much of which resembles Sapelo Island, such as the presence of Hog Hammock and proximity to Darien.



An episode of Season 6 of the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs featured the termite research program at the University of Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island.



University of Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island.




Any of you know the story behind this Turkey Statute?

An episode of ESPN's Outside the Lines was filmed on Sapelo Island and the Hog Hammock community in 2013, documenting the childhood of Allen Bailey and telling the community's story and current property tax issues.



Wow, will have to visit this island one day. Such a great state, don’t want to shoot all my barrier Islands in one shot so I am going to show contrast of mountains to the sea with these next several post. And don't think I don't see Gray's Reef out there. Going to try to do that one as a stand alone Natural Wonder later this week. Our GNW Gals are on Sapelo Island!