History of Savannah, Georgia
[1] It is known as Georgia's first planned city and attracts millions of visitors, who enjoy the city's architecture and historic structures such as the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low (founder of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America), the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences (one of the South's first public museums), the First African Baptist Church (one of the oldest black Baptist congregations in the United States), Congregation Mickve Israel (the third-oldest synagogue in America), and the Central of Georgia Railway roundhouse complex (the oldest standing antebellum rail facility in America).
[1][2] Today, Savannah's downtown area is one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the United States (designated in 1966).
In November 1732 the merchantman Anne, carrying 114 colonists (including General James Oglethorpe), set sail to the Americas.
[5] Prior to arriving in America, Oglethorpe developed an elaborate plan for the growth of towns and regions within the framework of a sustainable agrarian economy and the challenges presented by an often hostile frontier.
[7] After Georgia became a royal colony (1754), there were so many dissenters (Protestants of minority, non-Anglican denominations) that the establishment of the Church of England was successfully resisted until 1752.
Additional fortune came to the city in 1763 following the Treaty of Paris, which opened the interior of North America to economic interests in the American colonies.
Between 1764 and 1773 Savannah exported hides from 500,000 deer (2 million pounds), which established the city as a significant commercial port on the South Atlantic coast.
On January 27, 1785, members of the State Assembly gathered in Savannah to found the nation's first state-chartered, public university—the University of Georgia (in Athens).
[16] I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.
In November 1864, two months after capturing the city of Atlanta, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his army of 62,000 men began the march south to Savannah.
As the 19th century progressed, Savannah's population increased slightly and its wealth exponentially, but its ranking among the largest U.S. cities steadily dropped.
Whitney developed the gin at Mulberry Grove Plantation outside Savannah while he was a tutor to the children of Revolutionary War General Nathanael Greene.
Sea Island or long-staple cotton had been very profitable in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War, but the production of this variety was relegated to the narrow coastal zone and would not grow in the upland interior of the South.
Planters on both the Georgia and South Carolina sides of the river shipped their cotton downriver to market and export at Savannah.
Additionally, Savannah retained a consistent number of free African Americans throughout the antebellum years (725 in 1860), and they were engaged in a variety of entrepreneurial activities.
Union Camp, a division of the American Pulp and Paper Company, was established around the turn of the 20th century, locating its mill upriver from the historic core of the city.
Items such as pitch and turpentine, recovered from South Atlantic yellow pine, were essential in the manufacture and upkeep of wooden ships.
By this time Savannah, with vast yellow pine forests extending far into Georgia's coastal plain, became the chief exporter of naval stores in the world.
The naval stores industry also fell into decline by World War II as iron had largely replaced wood in the manufacture of ships.
In the 1930s and 1940s, some of the distinguished buildings in the historic district were demolished, and the trend appeared to be poised to accelerate in the 1950s when city plans were drafted to make downtown Savannah competitive with commercial development in the emerging suburbs.
The city's popularity as a tourist destination, modest in the 1970s, grew in the 1980s and was solidified by the best-selling 1994 book and 1997 motion picture Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, both set in Savannah.
Savannah has also become a popular destination for people to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, including the second-largest parade in the United States.
This is aided by a very lenient public drinking policy which allows open alcoholic beverages every day of the year in the Landmark Historic District.
