During our trips the last few years, we’ve learned that population growth happens along its waterways. In coastal Georgia, one of these areas was along the Altamaha River that starts in middle Georgia and flows to the Atlantic Ocean close to the Florida state line. Before we look at the reconstructed Fort King George itself, let’s learn about the history of this area, how people lived, and how the area around the city of Darien has prospered over the years.
Who all came here?
Col. James Oglethorpe’s Highlanders (from Scotland) first came in 1736, and then the industrious people of the 19th and 20th centuries worked the sawmills.
Guale Indians
These earliest inhabitants of coastal Georgia were of the Muskogean stock and were related to the Creeks. Their villages were along the tidal creeks, rivers, and offshore islands. The Spanish called them and the land they occupied GUALE (pronounced “wally”).
A brochure from the museum gave us more information about the Guales and the Spanish:
“The Spaniards’ goal was to Christianize the Guale and other tribes. The Guale had to adhere to European customs and were pushed into the Spanish system of forced wage labor. These conditions led to a Guale revolt in 1597, in which Friar Pedro de Corpa was killed. This brought an end to the Santo Domingo de Talaje mission until it was rebuilt in 1604. The Spaniards left [this area] for good when a tribe called the Westo, allies to the British, revolted in 1661.”
Nine years later (1670), the British founded the colony of Carolina starting with the city of Charles Town (modern day Charleston). The borders between British Carolina and Spanish Florida were hotly disputed. (North Carolina was separated from the rest of Carolina as its own royal colony in 1729.)
timeline
In 1562, the Indians first came into contact with the French.
This change didn’t always happen peacefully or easily. During the late 1600s and early 1700s, Guale society was shattered by extensive epidemics of new infectious diseases and attacks by other tribes. Some of the surviving remnants migrated to the mission areas of Spanish Florida, while others remained near the Georgia coast.
According to Wikipedia, “The Guale rebelled [against the Spanish] again in 1645, nearly shaking off the missions. They kept up a clandestine trade with French privateers, which provided them with alternate sources of goods.”
Building this fort was a significant event in this region’s history during the 1700s. It permanently established English-speaking people here. By defeating the French and Spanish attempts at expansion, the area eventually become the colony of Georgia. Building the fort became a stepping stone to eventual colonization. Later on the millions of feet of lumber that would eventually be processed here helped out Great Britain and those who were already living here.
From 1721-1722, the Fort King George was constructed. Then British troops of the 41st Independent Company came from South Carolina to garrison the fort for the next 6 years. This company was made up of old and sick men from the British army. After crossing the ocean, they had to live in Charleston for 1 year to become healthy enough to come south to the fort.
After the fort burned down in 1725, the garrison had to wait weeks for clothing and the supplies to rebuild the barracks. One tidbit of information we learned was that the soldiers stationed here did nothing to improve their own conditions, like planting crops for their own food. So it makes sense that while they may not have been responsible for the fire, they hadn’t made any great effort to put it out. They really were just putting in their time in this harsh environment.
When the fort burned down a second time in 1727, it was decommissioned. The real value of the fort was that it successfully secured the British claim to the land.
In 1733, General James Oglethorpe began to settle the colony of Georgia, starting with the city of Savannah to the north.
The Scots of Darien were responsible for defeating the Spanish at the Battle of Bloody Marsh on St. Simons Island that started on July 7, 1742.
The battle was for the British fortifications of Fort Frederica and Fort St. Simons, with the strategic goal of controlling the sea routes and inland waters the forts controlled.
Here’s one episode of the battle from Wikipedia that I though you’d enjoy because of James Oglethorpe’s cleverness.
“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 Frenchman. The timely arrival of British ships reinforced a misconception among the Spanish that British reinforcements were arriving. The Spanish left St. Simons on 25 July, ending their last invasion of colonial Georgia.”
If you’ve ever been on St. Simons, you have an idea of how horrible this battle must have been in the island’s marshy terrain during these 18 days of fighting in the summer’s heat and humidity.
establishing a town
The Highlanders from Scotland were an industrious people. They knew that to have a permanent settlement they had to have lumber for building. As we’ve learned elsewhere on our trips, sawmills were one of the first industries in a new community. So in the 1750s, the first sawmilling activities began around the area of Fort King George.
Later on, tidal-powered mills were built and lumber shipped to nearby towns, such as Savannah. These tidal-powered mills were new to us. Makes sense that they could be used here since the towns were so close to the ocean and its tides.
We’ll see more of this sawmill later in this post.
Altamaha River and the sawmills
In the late 1800s, the local Altamaha River became a major trade artery for steamboats to transport raw goods such as lumber and cotton.
With so much raw lumber being sent downstream, 2 mills were erected; one mill was built on the upper bluff by the town and the other mill was built on the lower bluff by where the old fort had been (we’ll see that location in the next post). These mills could process the lumber before it was shipped. Raw timber was “rafted” into Darien on the Altamaha River from the inland Georgia and left as finely milled lumber.
These rafts were huge logs tied together to make a disposable vessel. Raftsmen were farmers who had a zest for living (and who like to take chances). They knew all of the twists and turns of the Altamaha River, keeping in mind the sandbars and the deep areas they had to navigate.
life goes on
1870s: The lumber and sawmilling industry quickly revive the town of Darien as mills flourish.
1905: As regional timber becomes scarce, the large steam-powered sawmills that handled the large amount of raw timber were dismantled. In its place, a circular sawmill was built to process smaller timber.
Now that we’ve had this initial look at the “why” of the fort, the peoples who wanted this land, and how people flourished over the years, let’s take a deeper look at this information in the next post (since every museum has more than one look at the area its covering).
