OurCoast.com :: Savannah City Guide

Courtesy of Best Read Guide

Chippewa Square, located on Bull Street between Hull and Perry Streets, is at the very center of Savannah's famed Historic District. Established in 1815, it takes its name from the Battle of Chippewa during the War of 1812, in which American forces under Major General Jacob Jennings Brown defeated the English (irreverently known by the victors as "lobsterbacks" for their bright red tunics).

In the middle of the square is a statue of General James Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe, born in 1696, founded the colony of Georgia in 1733 with the intention of creating a utopian haven for debtors, a place for adventurers to make a fresh start in the New World. When the general landed on what is today River Street, he was met by a small tribe of Yamacraw Indians led by Tomochichi. Oglethorpe and Tomochichi quickly forged a strong friendship and the settlers were made welcome by the Indians.

Oglethorpe's plan for the colony was ambitious and he quickly devised the unique design of neighborhoods centered around squares that remains, two-and-a-half centuries later, remarkably and beautifully intact.

Under his guidance, Savannah cultivated mulberry trees to create raw silk for export to England. Of more far reaching significance was his role in delivering North America to the English. In the Battle of Bloody Marsh on St. Simons Island, about 75 miles south of Savannah, Oglethorpe and his soldiers defeated the Spanish who had come north from Florida. A small battle, it secured the lower Atlantic coast for the English when the Spanish retreated to Florida. The statue in Chippewa Square, sculpted by Daniel Chester French in 1910, faces south, in the Savannah tradition of placing monuments toward their historic enemies.

There were very few restrictions in the colony and Oglethorpe welcomed nearly everybody who came to settle in Savannah. Initially, his only proscriptions were against slavery, Catholics (because of the Spanish threat) and lawyers. Though officially denied permission to offer sanctuary to any Jews, Oglethorpe granted land to Portuguese Sephardic Jews who helped quell an outbreak of fever that ravaged Savannah. When Austrian Salzburger Lutherans arrived, Oglethorpe helped them establish the small community of Ebenezer northwest of Savannah.

The most famous of the early colonists were the Wesley brothers. John and Charles ministered to the faithful of Savannah, but their rigorous doctrines were met with little enthusiasm and they shortly returned to the Old World and founded Methodism.

Oglethorpe spent ten years in developing and establishing "his" colony. In 1743 he returned to England to answer to fiduciary charges brought by one of his men. The trial ended in acquittal and the general remained in the King's service, but he never returned to Savannah or the New World. He died in 1785 after living a remarkable life that included friendships with James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, noted philosophers and writers of the age.

The general�s statue includes a remarkable amount of detail. Oglethorpe is clad in the soldier�s dress of the time, including light body armor and a tricorn hat resting atop curls. The base of the monument was designed by Henry Bacon and is inscribed with excerpts from the original Georgia charter. Each of the lions on the pedestal bears a shield with a seal: one each for the city of Savannah, the colony of Georgia, the state of Georgia and James Oglethorpe's coat of arms.

Many thanks to Ron Freeman, author of Savannah: People, Places & Events, and to Roulhac Toledano, author of The National Trust Guide to Savannah. Their books can be found in stores throughout the Historic District.