Call of past strong at Ebenezer

By Don Lowery
Savannah Morning News

Ebenezer never recovered from British occupation during the American Revolution but a museum at the town site offers history buffs a wealth of information about the once thriving community.

A person who relishes history can be transfixed by the serenity of this place. Milton Rahn, whose ancestors were among the exiles from Salzburg, Austria who founded Ebenezer 260 years ago, said the quiet setting of the historic site along the Savannah River in a remote section o Effingham County can be mesmerizing.

"You can imagine being in the 1700s when the young state representatives met here to try to form a government," said Rahn. "You can imagine all the travelers on the stagecoach route from Savannah to Augusta stopping off at Ebenezer in those colonial times."

Ebenezer was founded by exiles from Salzburg who were expelled from their homeland by the archbishop for refusing to embrace Roman Catholicism. Followers of the teachings of Martin Luther, they organized at Augsburg, Germany in 1733 and set sail for America in search of religious freedom. On March 12, 1734, Gen. James Oglethorpe - who had founded Savannah a year earlier - met the boatload of immigrants at the mouth of the Savannah River and led them to a spot 30 miles up the Savannah River and several more miles inland along Ebenezer Creek. Two years later, they relocated to a spot further up the river called Red Bluff, which is the current site.

Today, little remains of the once thriving town of Ebenezer, also called New Ebenezer. But a steady stream of visitors continue to come here to walk through an 18th century Salzburger house, examine artifacts and historical records at the Georgia Salzburger Society museum and tour Jerusalem Lutheran Church - the oldest church in America with an active congregation. Museum visitors will find an array of artifacts from the mid-1700s through the Civil War period, many of which were loaned or donated to the museum by Salzburger descendants, Rahn said.

"We have a lot of family mementos that have been loaned to the museum," Rahn said. "There are all kinds of Revolutionary War artifacts and others from the Civil War, includes watches, jewelry, costumes, baby christening clothing, wedding dresses - things that people have preserved and donated to the museum."

"It has a decidedly German and Austrian flavor," he continued. "There are paintings and photographs that remind us of the Salzburger's Germanic-Austrian past."

The museum has a wealth of historical data about Ebenezer when it flourished as an industrious silk and lumber-producing colony of about 2,000 people from the mid-1750s until 1779 when it was captured by the British during the American Revolution. Most of the homes were destroyed at that time.

But perhaps the biggest attraction today at Ebenezer is Jerusalem Church, which was built bv the Salzburgers from 1767 to 1769 and is the oldest structure in Georgia. Jerusalem Church's walls are made of 21-inch thick bricks formed from clay deposits near the church site. The fingerprints of those involved in the church's construction can still be seen on some of the old bricks.

The church also boasts the two oldest bells in Georgia. The bronze bells came to the church from England, one in 1740 and the other in 1752. Other features of the 80 foot-by-40 foot church include an interior balcony that once was used for seating slaves and a steeple adorned by Martin Luther's symbol of the swan.