OurCoast.com :: Savannah City Guide

Savannah was very wealthy when architect William Jay arrived from England in 1818. Jay introduced the Regency style to Savannah, beginning with the Richardson-Owens-Thomas House. He also designed the Scarborough House, in which President James Monroe attended a party in 1819 during his visit to Savannah, and the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, among other buildings and houses which were, unfortunately, later destroyed.

1819 was a year in which Savannah made worldwide news as home port of the steamship S.S. Savannah, the first steam-powered vessel to cross the Atlantic Ocean. She left Savannah on May 22, 1819, and arrived in Liverpool twenty-nine days later. From there she went to Scotland and over Stockholm to St. Petersburg. In 1821 the S.S. Savannah came into a gale on the shores of Long island and capsized.

As glorious as life was back then, Savannah was not shielded from catastrophe. Two devastating fires in 1796 and 1820 each left about half of the city in ashes, including homes, businesses and the city market. 1820 was also the year of the yellow fever epidemic in which over a tenth of Savannah's population perished. From her early days Savannah had suffered yellow fever epidemics, and 1820 was not the last year of this disease, which recurred in stages until the end of the century. Savannah survived through these and other disasters, including hurricanes, always bouncing back to glorious life afterwards.

In March, 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette, who had fought alongside Washington years earlier, visited friends in Savannah to help dedicate a monument to Nathanael Greene. From the balcony of the Richardson-Owens-Thomas House he watched a parade, one of many festivities held in his honor.

In the nineteenth century slavery was definitely both in vogue and indispensable for cotton production. Cotton trade was made even more lucrative with the advent in the 1830's of the Central of Georgia Railroad, linking inland plantations to the port. At the same time the Central Railroad Banking Company was established. A monument to the founder and first president of the railroad was erected in 1883, symbolically displacing Tomochichi's grave in Wright Square.

--Sojourn in Savannah

"I beg to present you as a Christmas Gift, the City of Savannah..."
A brief history of Savannah, Georgia 1850-1865

pre-1732 | 1733-1776 | 1776-1800 | 1800-1850 | 1850-1865 | 1865-1900 | 1900-1955