About Colonial Georgia

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By Becky Quigley
eHow Contributing Writer

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Colonial Georgia was the thirteenth colony founded by English settlers, making it the last of the 13 original colonies. The colony was operated by British trustees for 19 years and then came under control of the British monarchy. Unlike the other colonies, Georgia was founded with the intention of having no slavery, no liquor importation and equal land ownership by settlers.

History of

The colony of Georgia was the last of the original thirteen colonies of what later became the United States. The colony was named after George II, the English king who granted the colony's charter. Georgia was founded by trustees to give the poor in debtors' prisons in England a chance for a new life, though the colony was not colonized by debtors. It was also founded for religious freedom for Protestants.

Time Frame

Georgia was founded in 1733 by James Edward Oglethorpe, who received the colony charter from British Parliament in 1732. He arrived with 116 colonists in what became Savannah in the spring of 1733. Georgia was a colony run by trustees until 1752, when it became a royal colony with a governor appointed by the king of England. After the Revolutionary War, Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the Constitution of the United States in 1788.

Features

Colonial Georgia was the only colony in which slavery was illegal at its founding. It was also the sole colony that banned liquor importation. After 16 years of controversy, slavery was made legal in colonial Georgia in 1749. The exports of colonial Georgia included lumber, indigo, rice and wheat. Colonists attempted to grow a silk trade, but the venture was not successful. Colonial Georgia traded furs with Native Americans.

Size

Colonial Georgia extended from the coast to the Mississippi River in width and was bordered by South Carolina to the north and Spanish Florida to the south. The colony began with only 116 emigrants from Europe and had grown to over 40,000 inhabitants by the Revolutionary War. Approximately half of those inhabitants were slaves.

Geography

The colonizing of land between the Carolina colonies and Spanish Florida was of strategic importance to England. The first war fought in colonial Georgia was the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739. In 1740, Governor Oglethorpe attempted to capture St. Augustine in Florida, and in 1742, the Battle of Bloody Marsh was fought between the English colonists and the Spaniards. After the French and Indian War in 1763, colonial Georgia's land from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River was declared a Native American reservation.