Archives of The Diocese of Georgia

In fall of 1864, the crushing news of the Fall of Atlanta to the massive assault of General Sherman’s Federal troops was just three weeks old. Sherman’s devastating March to the Sea was underway. The weight of this devastation is revealed in the change of name for our Episcopal church in Americus. In the 1850s, Bishop Stephen Elliott sought to found St. John’s Episcopal Church in Americus with nine communicants. That church start failed.

When the same bishop founded a church in Americus six years later, he selected the name Calvary, reflecting the suffering he had seen up close.

Bishop Stephen Elliott had visited the Army of the West back in 1863, when they were encamped at Shelbyville, Tennessee. He confirmed ten in a liturgy held at the Presbyterian Church. Elliott wrote “The attention of this large body of soldiers was earnest and like men who were thoughtful about their souls. It gave hope for the future of both the army and the church.”

The fortunes of war turned. The fight came to Georgia. Bishop Elliott again visited the troops as close as he could get to the battle lines. In the summer of 1864, his friend and fellow bishop, Leonidas Polk, died by canon shot when he and other generals were scouting Federal troop positions near Marietta. We get a glimpse of this time in Bishop Elliott’s Diocesan Convention Address of 1866, given eleven months after he founded Calvary which he began saying:

“Brethren of the Clergy and Laity: Another eventful period has passed away—“a period of darkness and of gloominess, of clouds and thick darkness”—during which our Lord has moved among us in awful mystery and in seeming wrath. The tumultuous tide of events has rolled very contrary to our wishes and our anticipations; has been freighted with a heavy burden of sorrow, and suffering, and death, and has brought us together this day with trouble all around us, with cruel anxieties pressing upon us, with grave perplexities entangling us, with very little joy or hope save such as may spring from a divine source.”

With heavy loss of life and destruction close at hand, the Episcopal Church in Americus was named Calvary. As Christians, we have no stronger image to summon in times of darkness. For though Jesus could cry out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” We can see the Civil War differently from our first bishop and yet share his conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is found in Christ Jesus.

Bishop Elliott’s choice of Calvary would have felt apt to the congregation. The twenty-one communicates were very aware of the Confederate Hospital in Americus where some served. The most terrible of Prisoner of War camps was just thirteen miles away in Andersonville. Those who knew him said the loss of the Confederacy devastated Bishop Elliott. He died suddenly on December 21, 1866, on returning home from what proved to be his final episcopal visitation.

The pictures above show part of the Battle for Atlanta and Andersonville Prison, just north of Americus.

By March of 1863, the tragic cost of the American Civil War was keenly felt in the north and south alike. In a single day the previous September, 3,650 soldiers died on the battlefield at Antietam. At home the very real threat of starvation loomed large. An 1862 drought compounded the short supplies caused by sending food to Confederate troops.

President Jefferson Davis declared Friday, March 27th, 1863, to be a Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer. Bishop Stephen Elliott Jr. preached on that occasion at Christ Church, Savannah, “War is a great eater, a fierce, terrible, omnivorous eater. It eats out wealth, property, life…,.it devours religion, and tramples under foot its temples and its altars–it rides in desolation upon the storm of passion and the whirlwind of vengeance.

“With God, of course, all things are possible, and He can, if He chooses, produce such a change in the hearts and feelings of our enemies…But as He always acts through natural means…we can scarcely hope for such a divine intervention.”

On September 15, 1865, Bishop Elliott preached again at Christ Church, Savannah, on a day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer appointed by Georgia’s Governor. The City of Atlanta had fallen to a Union onslaught two weeks earlier. It is hard to read these words from his sermon, yet they provide clarity on how our bishop reconciled his faith with enslaving people in seeing divine purpose in the “peculiar institution”:

“It is a conflict involving the future of a race, whose existence or extinction depends upon its result. The white race of the South, even though subjugated might continue to exist, to live on for a time in shame and degradation, and at last to commingle, as the Anglo-Saxons did, with their Norman conquerors. But the black race perishes with its freedom. They will die out before the encroaching white labor of Europe”

He went on to preach, “If God therefore has any meaning in his past dealings with this race, in permitting it to be brought here, to be preserved, to increase, to be civilized, it is not his purpose that they should be given the liberty which their pretended friends are seeking for them. To protect them, he must protect us, and therefore is it, as I have said again and again, that I have full confidence in the successful termination of this conflict.”

While his views on race are painful to read, Bishop Elliott was seen as progressive by some in his own day. He preached that slaveholders would have to account to God for their treatment of enslaved Africans whose souls were in their care. In his last address to convention in 1866, Elliott called for treating formerly enslaved persons “not now as servants,” but as “brethren beloved” saying, “We have always welcomed them to our churches and altars; let us continue the same. We have permitted them to organize churches for themselves — they have been free as all upon this point; let us continue the same.”

Clergy and laity in the north were increasingly strident in pushing for the abolition of slavery, in the decades leading up to the American Civil War. These abolitionist desires led to splits within denominations. The first occurred during the General Conference of the Methodist Church in 1844 that decided a bishop who enslaved persons “should not exercise his office as long as the situation of slaveholding persisted.” This schism resulted in the creation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

As many influential Episcopalians in the north saw slavery as a political or legal question rather than a moral one, no such rancorous debate took place in our church. When southern states seceded from the Union, the situation changed. In 1861, Bishop Stephen Elliott of Georgia joined Bishop Leonidas Polk of Louisiana in writing a letter to southern dioceses calling for a church council. In that letter, the bishops said, “We rejoice to record the fact, that we are today, as Churchmen, as truly brethren as we have ever been; and that no deed has been done, nor word uttered, which leaves a single wound rankling in our hearts.”

During the 39th Convention of the Diocese of Georgia, held in Macon that same year, Bishop Elliott said of the southern states, “These States are no longer, in any sense, a part of the United States, and consequently the Bishops of these States or Dioceses, for in this connection those words are synonymous, are no longer Bishops of any of the United States. They are now Bishops of the Confederate States.” Expecting the Confederate States to exist in perpetuity, Elliott saw no choice but to create the new denomination and the diocesan convention agreed.

The Diocese of Georgia sent Bishop Elliott, as well as three clergy and three lay delegates to the meeting in Montgomery. Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr. became the first and only Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America (PECCSA). The Pastoral Letter PECCSA issued said, we southern Episcopalians are “a very large proportion of the great slaveholders of the country” and added, “Hitherto have we been hindered by the pressure of abolitionism; now that we have thrown off from us that hateful and infidel pestilence, we should prove to the world that we are faithful to our trust and the Church should lead the hosts of the Lord in this work of justice and of mercy.”

In November 1862, the first General Council of the church met at Saint Paul’s in Augusta. Most of the bishops in the Confederate States gathered there again in June 1864 as Bishop Elliott preached at the funeral for Bishop Leonidas Polk, who served as a general in the war and died in battle.

Meeting in October of 1865, the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States approved adoption of the actions of the PECCSA including making Arkansas into a diocese and consecrating as bishop Richard Hooker Wilmer in Alabama. The second and final General Council of PECCSA met in Augusta the following month and resolved that any bishop and diocese could, in good faith, vote to rejoin the Episcopal Church. They all did so and the PECCSA came to an end.

Pictured above: Bishop Stephen Elliott (above); Saint Paul’s in Augusta (below).

The largest sale of enslaved persons in American history took place in 1859 to satisfy the gambling debts of a significant lay person in the Diocese of Georgia. Known as The Weeping Time, the auction took place on the Ten Broeck Race Course near Savannah on March 2 and 3. Auctioneers sold off 436 men, women, children, and infants during the two-day event.

The Butler Family owned significant property on St. Simons Island and rice growing land on and around Butler Island, south of Darien. Major Pierce Butler (1744-1822) accumulated great wealth that, as he was estranged from his son, went to two grandsons on his death—Pierce and John. The younger Pierce speculated in business experiencing dramatic losses in the Panic of 1857. Compounding these losses were gambling debts. Butler had to transfer his estate to Trustees for a sale to cover $700,000 in debt. This is calculated at more than $22.8 million of losses in today’s dollars. The Trustees sold his Philadelphia Mansion for $30,000. Even with other real estate, they could not satisfy creditors. His greatest wealth was invested in what was considered “human capital.”

Ads in two of Savannah’s newspapers said, “For Sale, Long Cotton and Rice Negros! A gang of 440, Accustomed to the culture of Rice and Provisions, among them are good mechanics and house servants.” The advertisement did note that families would not be divided in the sale. Buyers came to the track during the four days leading up to the sale to inspect the enslaved workers. They came not just from Georgia and neighboring South Carolina, but as far away as Virginia and Louisiana for the promise of a deal. The first day of the auction brought heavy rain that kept some buyers away. The rain mingled with the tears of those sold gave the event its name, The Weeping Time.

Mortimer Thomson covered the auction for the New York Tribune writing, “On the faces of all was an expression of heavy grief; some appeared to be resigned to the hard stroke of Fortune that had torn them from their homes, and were sadly trying to make the best of it; some sat brooding moodily over their sorrows, their chins resting on their hands, their eyes staring vacantly, and their bodies rocking to and fro, with a restless motion that was never stilled….”

The Trustees netted $303,850 in the auction. A mother and her five grown children brought the highest bid, $6,180 with most people selling for prices from $250 to $1,750. Though the tragedy of this sale disturbs us, sentiment at the time favored Butler as one Philadelphia friend, Sidney George Fisher, entered into his diary, “It is highly honorable to [Butler] that he did all he could to prevent the sale, offering to make any personal sacrifice to avoid it.”

Among the 20 enslaved workers kept from sale by Butler were James and Daphne Alexander and their children. The couple’s youngest child, born about six years after the auction, was Anna Ellison Butler Alexander. She is recognized as a saint by the Episcopal Church.

Pictured above: Auction of enslaved persons (above), historical marker for Georgia’s largest auction site (below).

The Rev. Bartholomew, then Rector of Christ Church, Savannah, petitioned the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for a catechist to teach enslaved Africans in the Christian faith. They sent Joseph Ottolenghe (1711-1775) to serve in the role. Zouberbuhler died and left much of his estate, consisting of more than 3,000 acres of land and 52 enslaved persons, to fund the effort. The sale of persons as property then funded the work of the Episcopal mission to the roughly 1,000 enslaved persons working on rice plantations south of Savannah. The catechist who would later be described as “hindered by his own prejudices” soon ceased his teaching duties.

Bishop Stephen Elliott personally trained and then ordained the Rev. William C. Williams to serve as the pastor for what became the Ogeechee Mission. Williams established a school and a chapel on each of the three plantations he then served. Williams reported to diocesan convention on his work in 1846 saying,

“I am engaged by several planters to labour among their negroes. There are not a dozen whites within the limits of the parish, so that my whole time is devoted to the blacks. I have had service twice on Sunday, besides a weekly lecture, alternating between the different plantations. It has also been my practice to read one evening in every week to such as felt disposed to attend. On each of the plantations, schools have been established for the oral instruction of the children…The number of children connected with the schools is about eighty. The children learn and retain much better than is generally supposed, and any one who will devote himself to the work, with the determination not to be discouraged, will in the end find their labour amply rewarded.”

Williams added, “The Liturgy has been introduced as fast as possible. The negroes seem much interested in the responsive parts of the service and I am convinced that the constant use of the Liturgy among them would be of the greatest benefit.”

By 1860 his congregation was the largest in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. This was not the only congregation founded on plantations. In 1851, Bishop Elliott reported to convention on the work of the Rev. James H. George, a Deacon, who took charge of a mission in the Albany area. The deacon divided his time among three stations on neighboring plantations owned by Episcopalians. First St. Paul’s and later St. John’s in Albany were the result of that work.

St. Bartholomew’s became the name for the church built in the Burroughs Community south of Savannah for those who had been part of the Ogeechee Mission prior to emancipation. The church was a vital center for the community with more than 400 members in the early 1900s. The church is now a parochial mission of St. Paul the Apostle in Savannah and continues two Sunday afternoons a month with a handful of active members with family ties to the earliest parishioners.

Pictured above: Enslaved laborers in the rice field (above) and St. Bartholomews (bottom).

Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr. was a strong proponent of education, including women’s education. Immediately following his first diocesan convention in 1841, the new bishop traveled to Montpelier Springs near the town of Forsyth in middle Georgia to spend four days organizing a school. He left the Rev. Charles Fay as Rector of the church and school. That December, he reported that when he went back to Montpelier Springs to inspect the school and make arrangements for the winter term, “I found everything in the very best condition, full of promise to the Church and to the State.” By the spring of 1842, he could say, “Our Schools have flourished at the Springs beyond our most sanguine expectation.”

Bishop Elliott adopted a plan inconceivable today as the church school was to be founded around the work of enslaved Africans. He wrote that this scheme had worked for many years on the island of Barbados. The Montpelier Institute, with both boys and girls schools on an 800-acre campus was to be a working farm staffed by enslaved persons. Their work was to pay the bulk of the costs of the school. He saw additional advantage for the students in studying on a farm writing, “They will also be trained in the best mode of performing their duties as the owners of slaves and the masters of human beings for whose souls they must give an account.”

Elliott said, “It is neither numbers, nor profit, nor popularity which we seek. Our desire is to give a finished education upon strictly religious principles, and everything else will be sacrificed to that object.”

The girls were taught in Lamar Hall, the boys were a mile distant in Chase Hall, named for Bishop Philander Chase, the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. Elliott recruited faculty from England, with every effort being made as Elliott would say to assure that “whatever is taught, will be thoroughly taught.”

By 1846, Elliott was living on the school grounds and reported that he had accomplished more Bishop’s visits in the previous year than in the years before moving to centrally-located Institute. By that time, more than 80 students were enrolled in the two schools which formed the Montpelier Institute. The rapid expansion of the school including the completion of more buildings amassed debt. Never funded by the Diocese, Elliott used his personal property, including “human capital” of enslaved persons, as a guarantee. In 1850, Elliott lost everything he owned. He sold all of his land and his considerable holdings in enslaved persons to satisfy the school’s creditors.

In 1851, the Diocese raised a salary for him for the first time. He was paid $2,500, which is $85,000 in 2022 dollars. Yet this was a step down for the wealthy bishop and his family. In December 1852 Bishop Elliott, now broke save for his salary as bishop, moved back to Savannah to take up duties as Rector of Christ Church in addition to serving as Bishop.

Pictured above: The Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, (above) and the historic marker for Montpelier Institute (below).

An ox stands before an altar with a burning fire on one side and a plow standing ready for work on the other in the image at the center of the Seal of the Diocese of Georgia. On a banner below the image is the Latin phrase that was the personal motto for the first Bishop of Georgia, Stephen Elliott, Jr., “in utrumque paratus agere et pati,” meaning literally “always ready for either action or sacrifice,” which was translated into the documents of this Diocese as, “Always ready to worship and serve.”

Elliott saw himself as that ox ready to do whatever God demanded of him. The seal shows two dates with 1733 noting the arrival of the first Anglican priest along with Georgia’s first colonists and 1823 as the date the Diocese of Georgia was organized with three parishes. The Diocese would not elect Elliott as our first bishop and gain the seal he created until 1841 when the diocese comprised the requisite six congregations needed to organize formally.

In his 1845 address to convention, Bishop Elliott named six candidates for Holy Orders who he would ordain during the meeting. He added, “The great mistake into which our young Clergymen fall, is in expecting great results to follow immediately from their labours, forgetting that in all Missionary work, the seed must be sown in tears, before they can return with joy, bringing their sheaves with them. No man will do anything for the Church in Georgia who does not come imbued with the motto of its Episcopal seal: ‘In utrumque paratus, agree et pati’—and that long and patiently. Hard work, small reward and the harvest for your successors are all that we can offer. But then what you achieve will be your own work, for you will have no other man’s foundation to build upon.”

Bishop Elliott would repeat the motto in later addresses to convention, always as a rallying cry to the patient, steady work needed to advance the Gospel in Georgia saying that “a harvest will come, though his successor may reap the fruits of it.”

This seal is commonly found on all of the documents of the Diocese of Georgia from the mid 1800s through 1971. It is still found in needlepoint cushions for some of the Bishop’s chairs in our churches and is in stained glass at Christ Church Frederica on Saint Simons Island. Since April 1971, we have had both the seal and a coat of arms as authorized symbols for the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.

Pictured above: Original diocesan seal (above) and the seal in All Saints Chapel in Sewanee (below).

The lawyer who would become the first Bishop of Georgia came to faith through a revival held at St. Helena’s Episcopal Church in Beaufort, South Carolina. Stephen Elliott Jr. was a local attorney when in 1831 he heard the Presbyterian evangelist Daniel Baker was coming to Beaufort and would be preaching in the Episcopal Church Elliott attended.

Baker wrote of the event, “I received a pressing invitation to visit Beaufort. I went; and there being no Presbyterian church in the place, I preached alternately in the Baptist and Episcopal churches. The Episcopal minister, the Rev. Mr. Walker, was very cordial, and offered me the use of his pulpit. Knowing the peculiar views of our Episcopal brethren, I proposed standing below; but he insisted upon it that I should go into his pulpit.”

The Editor of the Beaufort Gazette, William John Grayson, published his account of the revival:

“The effect no one can conceive, who was not present. Politics were forgotten; business stood still; the shops and stores were shut; the schools closed; one subject only appeared to occupy all minds, and engross all hearts. The church was filled to overflowing; seats, galleries, aisles, exhibited a dense mass of human beings, from hoary age to childhood. In this multitude of all ages and conditions, there were occasional pauses, when a pin dropping might have been distinctly heard. When the solemn stillness was broken by the voice of the preacher, citing the impenitent to appear before the judgment-seat of heaven; reproving, persuading, imploring, by the most thrilling appeals to every principle of his nature; and when crowds moved forward and fell prostrate at the foot of the altar, and the rich music of hundreds of voices, and the solemn accents of prayer rose over the kneeling multitude, it was not in human hearts to resist the influence that awoke its sympathies, and spoke its purest and most elevated feeling.”

Of the eighty persons who experienced a conversion experience at St. Helena’s during that revival were eight men who became ministers. Among these was Elliott, who would a decade later become the first bishop of Georgia. Born in Beaufort, South Carolina, to one of the Low Country’s most powerful slaveholding families, Elliott attended his father’s alma mater, Harvard, for one year before coming back to study closer to home. He graduated from South Carolina College in 1825 and practiced law until his conversion experience when Elliott began to study for holy orders. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1836, having been ordained a deacon the previous year. He taught religion at South Carolina College from 1835-1841.

Elliott was described in a biography as “A tall, commanding and majestic figure—the very impersonation of the Priests and Prophets of the past” with a “a clear, solemn and finely modulated voice.” He was not quite 35-years old when he was consecrated Bishop of Georgia in 1841. At that time, the diocese was composed of eight clergy serving five churches and two missions.

Pictured above: Daniel Baker (above) and the Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, Jr. (below).

The Creek Nation who welcomed colonists to the high bluff on the Savannah River were a relatively new political development in response to a crisis. That nation arose in an effort to unite indigenous peoples with a variety of languages and traditions after the mound-building societies that preceded them collapsed with the deaths by smallpox brought in the 16th century by Spanish Conquistadors. The new Creek Nation welcomed trade with Europeans. By the 1750s roughly 60,000 deer skins a year left Charleston and Savannah for English factories that used them to fashion breeches, gloves, and book covers. Commerce thrived until a steep decline in the deer population left the Creeks with no trade goods. 

In Georgia, the Creeks to the south and Cherokees to the north were seen not just as trade partners, but targets for missionary efforts including those by Anglicans like the Revs. John Wesley and Bartholomew Zouberbuhler. Later the Indigenous people were viewed as obstacles to be removed. The 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War set the westward boundary of Georgia as the Mississippi River. President George Washington negotiated with the Creeks the Treaty of New York in 1790 that moved the western boundary to the Oconee River just west of Athens. In 1802, politicians brokered a deal to have Georgia cede lands west of the Chattahoochee in exchange for getting what is the familiar map of the state. Georgia’s legislature spent the next 25 years calling on one president after another to make good on a pledge to “extinguish the Indian title to all other lands within the States of Georgia.” 

Pioneering Georgians were mostly Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians with Episcopalians following later. Bibb County was created around Macon in 1822. Three years later, the Rev. Lott Jones made an exploratory tour establishing the first new Episcopal Church in the state since the Revolution. The editor of the Savannah Georgian wrote in December 1825, “Last March two years ago, it was a wilderness…and perhaps nothing characterizes its refinement more conclusively than the fact that it maintains an Episcopal minister.”

In Columbus, land surveyors poured in as the Creeks were forced west. Trinity Church followed eight years later as the town was more established. Within another four years, the parishioners had built “A beautifully appointed church of forty-six pews with carpets, hangings, marble baptismal font, a pair of elegant stoves, hanging lamps and a three thousand dollar organ of fourteen stops.” 

As anticipation built for the cruel removal of the Cherokee Nation along what is now known as The Trail of Tears, Episcopalians planned their next steps. The Episcopal Church sent the Rev. John Hunt as a missionary to Clark County. The Rev. Edward Neufville, Rector of Christ Church, Savannah, and President of the Standing Committee also made a seven-month tour of the newly opening land. He officiated occasionally, as opportunity offered, for “the scattered members of our communion and others who were destitute of regular ministration.” Neufville noted that “Clarkesville and Milledgeville present a field for Missionary labour.” The pattern continued across the state as native peoples were forced out, other denominations arrived with pioneers with Episcopal Churches established years later.

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember the three parishes who kickstarted the Diocese of Georgia.

Though Anglicans founded Georgia, no bishop visited the colony or state for its first 82 years. For much of that time, one had to travel to England for confirmation. Then in 1815, Christ Church in Savannah arranged for the second Bishop of South Carolina, Theodore Dehon, to consecrate their church and confirm 50 persons. His successor, Bishop Nathaniel Bowen, consecrated Saint Paul’s Church in Augusta in 1821, confirming persons there and again a few years later confirmed persons in Savannah.

In February 1823, the three Episcopal congregations in Georgia–Christ Church in Savannah, Saint Paul’s in Augusta, and Christ Church Frederica on St. Simons Island–sent delegates to the first convention of what became the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Georgia. They celebrated the Eucharist together and prayed Morning Prayer daily through the February 24-28 convention. The delegates elected a Standing Committee, deputies to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, and wrote the Constitution and Canons for the Diocese. They also founded “The Protestant Episcopal Society for the General Advancement of Christianity in the State of Georgia,” to reach destitute members in different parts of the state and arrange for the distribution of prayer books and religious tracts.

While a committee crafted the canons, another wrote an Address from the newly formed diocese of the Episcopal Church to send “to all the scattered members of that Church, throughout the State of Georgia.”

In the Address that was unanimously endorsed by the convention, they wrote of the Episcopal Church, “In herself she is worthy of your affection and support. Her ministry is apostolic, her constitution is primitive, her services are fervent and animated, yet chastened and reverential; her doctrines are the doctrines of the Bible, the doctrines of the Cross, her only object is the promotion of ‘pure and undefiled religion.’ Such, brethren, is the church in whose establishment we ask your aid.”

The Address went on to say, “We are aware, brethren, that there are difficulties to be encountered. Your number is small, and the individuals composing that number, are perhaps scattered. But be not disheartened. These obstacles are not insurmountable….However small, then, be your number in each vicinity, let that small number be embodied.”

The population of the State in 1823, was approximately 390,­000 and there were 131 Episcopal parishioners or one Episcopalian to nearly 3,000 Georgians. For comparison, the US Census for 2020 names Georgia’s population at 10,711,908 and parochial reports for the Diocese of Georgia and Atlanta for the same year list 59,010 parishioners, so that 1 in every 182 Georgians was an Episcopalian that year.

After the Diocese of Georgia was organized, the South Carolina Bishop presided at Georgia Conventions until a Bishop was elected for Georgia. It would be two years before the Diocese would add its fourth congregation, Christ Church in Macon. At that 1825 meeting, they noted in the minutes a letter from the Honorable C.B. Strong of Macon that said, “You know, by the short tour you have made through the State, the forlorn and scattered situation of the almost lost sheep of our flock—their destitute and bewildered condition; and how little is known of our holy faith and sublime mode of worship….These considerations prompt me to entreat you to use your greatest exertions to induce the Convention, either by application to the General Convention, or in some other way, to procure one Missionary or more, to preach in this State.”

These efforts would be successful as the State of Georgia became a missionary field for the Episcopal Church and would remain so for many years with outside support essential to calling clergy and to enable further expansion into new areas.

Pictured above: Saint Paul’s in Augusta, Christ Church in Savannah, and Christ Church Frederica on St. Simons Island.

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember Selina Hastings Countess of Huntingdon who funded the Bethesda Orphanage in Savannah as she guided an Evangelical movement.

The philanthropy of Countess Selina Hastings (1707–1791) made it possible for the Rev. George Whitefield (1714–1770) to found the Bethesda Orphan House in Savannah even as she was shaping the Methodist movement. Hastings was one of three daughters born to an English noble family. At 21, she married to Theophilus Hastings, the ninth earl of Huntingdon. In the next ten years, she would give birth to seven children, four of whom died quite young, which had an impact on her religious thought.

After her husband died in 1746, Hastings increasingly connected with Methodism through the Rev. John Wesley, who she met after his return from Georgia. In published letters, Wesley credited the Countess with convincing him to preach to miners in the open air, telling him “They have churches, but they never go to them! And ministers, but they seldom or never hear them! Perhaps they might hear you.” He tried her plan and found his preaching transformed.

At the time, the Church of England was not licensing evangelicals to preach and she discovered a loophole that allowed their preaching at private chapels. She would create and fund 64 such chapels, making room for thousands to hear an evangelical presentation of the Gospel.

The Countess of Huntingdon would later move on from Wesley to George Whitefield as John emphasized our need to strive for holiness in this life. She found the goal of perfection was far from the grace she had found in salvation coming through faith alone.

Whitefield had followed John Wesley as the Rector of Christ Church Savannah, serving here from 1738 until 1740. During that time, he would found Bethesda. The Countess’ financial support was vital to the orphanage.

Her views on slavery were inconsistent and her work in Savannah was part of that story. She promoted the freedom of formerly enslaved Africans and supported publication of two slave narratives, written by Ukawsaw Gronniosaw and Olaudah Equiano. Those 1700s memoirs published in England were the first time those in Britain heard of life directly from those who had been enslaved. On Whitefield’s death in 1770, she inherited his estates in Georgia and South Carolina, including the Bethesda Home for Boys and some enslaved persons who worked at the home. She then added to their number, approving the purchase of more enslaved persons to work at Bethesda. She continued to support and oversee the orphanage until the newly formed State of Georgia confiscated the property after the Revolution.

The Countess would become an increasingly influential and controversial figure. As bishops of the Church of England worked to close the loophole for private chapels, she started “the Countess of Huntington’s Connexion” which was her own denomination. When she died in 1791, she left debt rather than an estate as she spent every bit of her considerable fortune to advance the gospel. In an obituary, Horace Walpole named her a “Patriarchess” for her philanthropy especially in the funding and supervision of her chapels that led to an expansion of Methodism.

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember the beginning of Saint Paul’s in Augusta.

James Edward Oglethorpe sent a party up the Savannah River in 1735 to build a fort as a refuge for settlers living near the first set of rapids. Oglethorpe named Fort Augusta for the princess who would become the mother of George III. In time, the trading post prospered. In April of 1750, the people who lived and traded in this area erected a church. Noting that their friendship with the indigenous population was “sometimes precarious,” they built the church under the shelter of the Fort.

The Trustees of the Colony of Georgia meeting in London shortly thereafter sent to Augusta the Rev. Jonathan Copp, a Connecticut native and clergyman of the Church of England. He left London in 1751 with window glass, church furniture, and a deed to 300 acres of land to cultivate for his support. We are told that he arrived full of enthusiasm, “with much the same temperament as St. Mark.”

There is a letter from Lambeth Palace in Saint Paul’s founding documents as the Archbishop of Canterbury was concerned that Mr. Cobb may not get his 20 pounds per year salary as it is based on voluntary contributions. The Archbishop feared that as there were no church wardens in Augusta how could the church function and the priest get paid? They needed strong lay leaders.

The first report from Mr. Copp came six months later when he asked for a transfer to a church in South Carolina. He did say that 80-100 people a week attend divine worship and he had baptized 30 from both Georgia and South Carolina. But he added, “Here we have been under continual fears and apprehensions of being murdered and destroyed by the [native inhabitants] there being no one within 140 miles capable of lending us any assistance in times of danger—so far are we situated in the wild, uncultivated wilderness.” He was not granted the transfer for three years.

Three more clergymen would come and go by the time the Revolutionary War ended. When the dust cleared from that conflict, there was no minister, and no church, as Saint Paul’s was burned, the parish records, and silver communion set lost. It would be five years before the church lands were sold and a new Saint Paul’s Church built. Saint Paul’s was planted in Augusta 72 years before there was a Diocese of Georgia and 90 years before there was an Episcopal Bishop of Georgia.

Pictured above: The drawing of the original Saint Paul’s; Saint Paul’s after the Great Augusta fire.

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember the Rev. Bartholomew Zouberbuhler.

Three of the greatest change agents in the history of the Church spent time in the Colony of Georgia. All three belonged to the Anglican Church in the 18th century. John Wesley and George Whitefield both served as rectors of Christ Church in Savannah, while Charles Wesley working as a non-stipendiary priest established worship on St. Simons. Whitfield changed the face of American Christianity in preaching “the great awakening,” John Wesley changed the face of American Christianity and the world with the Evangelical commitment to share the Gospel with people of other classes and colors, and Charles Wesley added greatly to our hymnody. Yet not one of these three was particularly effective in their ministry in Georgia. Bishop Henry Louttit observed, “It was Bartholomew Zouberbuhler, born of German-speaking parents, who was the first great pastor in the Anglican tradition in Georgia.”

Zouberbuhler was appointed on All Saints’ Day, 1745, by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), to be pastor of Christ Church in Savannah. Bartholomew was the son of a native Swiss pastor who had originally served congregations of Swiss Protestants in the colony of South Carolina and then had become pastor of an Anglican parish there. Bartholomew, believing himself called to the ministry, made the long trip across the ocean to be ordained by the Bishop of London.

The trustees of the Colony of Georgia charged Pastor Zouberbuhler with ministering to the French and German inhabitants of Georgia in their own languages, as John Wesley had done, according to the ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer. In 1748, Savannah boasted 613 inhabitants, of whom 225 were members of Christ Church and 388 were dissenters of all sorts (Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Lutheran, etc.). Under Zouberbuhler’s leadership, Christ Church moved into its first building in 1750. The congregation met in the courthouse before then.

Zouberbuhler served not just in Savannah, but also led worship in outlying villages as well as at Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island. He suffered from bad health and several times during his years of ministry petitioned to be replaced as the pastor for the colony. In the records of the SPG in London are letters from the vestry of Christ Church urging that he continue to serve as the congregation loved him and grew under his leadership. The roots of what would later become Episcopal worship really began to be firmly established during his tenure.

Zouberbuhler’s concern was not only for Christians of other languages and church traditions who had settled in Georgia, but for all the inhabitants, including enslaved persons from Africa. At Christ Church in 1750, he baptized the first enslaved African to be baptized in the colony. When Zouberbuhler died, he left a sizable portion of his estate as a trust to be used to employ qualified teachers “to teach Anglican Christianity to Negroes.” He is buried in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery.

In 1999, Bishop Henry Louttit, Jr. named him a Saint of Georgia with a feast day falling on any liturgy in the week of October 22. This article was adapted from Bishop Henry Louttit’s biography of Zouberbuhler in Saints of Georgia.

Pictured above: The 1734 engraving above shows how Savannah remained a small settlement at the time Zouberbuhler became the ninth Rector of Christ Church, 12 years after the congregation’s founding in 1733; and Zouberbuhler’s grave in Bonaventure Cemetery is the second from the right. There are no pictures of the pastor.

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember John Wesley and his exit from Georgia.

Though his legacy as the founder of the Methodist movement has born so much good fruit for almost three centuries, John Wesley’s ministry in Georgia went catastrophically wrong. Wesley arrived to a Savannah that was still a village of just two hundred houses. In less than two years, a 44-person grand jury, making up a significant percentage of the population, would approve a 10-count indictment against their idealistic minister.

John had been felled by a rigid faith and a broken heart. One colonist described John’s spiritual leadership as “religious Tyranny.” To make matters worse, John had fallen for Sophia Hopkey who he tutored in French on the ship from England and continued to see regularly. She even nursed the pastor through a fever. But John became convinced that marriage would get in the way of his ministry and he told the apparently equally infatuated 18-year old that he could not marry until he accomplished his mission to the Indians. Wesley’s words did not strike the young woman as the words of a soul mate. Sophia married William Williamson. John’s diary on the day he heard the news says only, “Could not pray. Tried to pray—lost—sunk.”

The pastor excommunicated Sophy a few months later citing “falseness and inconsistency of life,” creating a stir in the gossipy colony. Nine more charges flowed from his rigid religiosity.

Wesley wrote, “I shook off the dust of my feet, and left Georgia, having preached the Gospel there with much weakness indeed and many infirmities, not as I ought but as I was able.” He added, “This have I learned in the ends of the earth, that I am fallen short of the glory of God, that my whole heart is altogether corrupt and abominable.”

We know that in the fall of 1738, less than a year after he left Georgia in disgrace, John Wesley found his life transformed by grace. He heard someone read Martin Luther’s introduction to Paul’s letter to the Romans at a meeting he had attended unwillingly. He would write that as he heard the words “describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ…I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Wesley who had afflicted others with a rigid approach to religion was surprised by the grace of a God who knew John’s heart was altogether corrupt and abominable and yet loved the imperfect parson anyway. John would go on to travel a quarter of a million miles on horseback, delivering more than 40,000 sermons, and founding the Methodist Movement boasting 541 preachers and 135,000 members in his lifetime. There are 80 million Methodists around the world today who have found their hearts warmed by the grace John Wesley experienced.

Pictured above: Frank Logue’s photo of the monument of John Wesley in Reynold Square in Savannah; John Wesley preaching on his father’s grave on June 6, 1742

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember Coosaponakessa of the Wind Clan.

Coosaponakeesa of the Wind Clan was essential to the success of the Colony of Georgia. Born in 1700 in the Lower Creek Nation’s Capitol of Coweta, she was the daughter of Edward Griffin, an English trader, and a Creek woman usually referred to as Brim, which was also the name of her relative who ruled the Creek Nation. By the time of her death in 1765, she was the largest landowner and the wealthiest person in the colony.

At the age of 10, she was sent to Charles Town, South Carolina. She would spend five years living with an English family and attending school where she learned English language and customs. There she was baptized in the Church of England, taking the name Mary Griffin.

The English Colonel John Musgrove brought his son, John, with him when he traveled to Coweta to negotiate a treaty establishing a border between the Carolinas and the Creeks. The young John fell in love with Coosaponakeesa. The two married and would have four sons in the years that followed. They lived among the Creeks until 1725, when they returned to Charles Town. When the Creek Nation invited the British to build a trading post in Creek territory, they wanted a member of their nation to run the store. John and Mary Musgrove were perfect for the work as the matrilineal Creeks recognized her as one of their own, while the British trusted John. Her relative Tomo-chi-chi gave Mary the present site of Savannah. The stage was then set for James Edward Oglethorpe to “discover” the high bluff on the Savannah River suitable for a new settlement. Mary Musgrove became not just Oglethorpe’s translator, but also assisted the colony’s founder in understanding Creek customs. Her relative Tomo-chi-chi also became an important friend to Oglethorpe.

After John’s death from fever in 1735, she ran the trading post, Cowpens, alone until 1737 when she married Jacob Matthews. Throughout this time from 1733 to 1743, she remained Oglethorpe’s chief interpreter. When war broke out in Georgia and Florida between Britain and Spain, the Creeks sided with the British and the Cowpens Trading Post prospered. The Creek Nation granted Coosaponakeesa the barrier islands of St. Catherine’s, Sapelo, and Ossabaw as well as more than a thousand acres along the Savannah River. The British did not recognize her ownership. This lack of respect insulted the Creeks, led then by Coosaponakeesa’s cousin Malatchi Brim as Chief Mico.

Jacob Matthews died in 1745. With her third marriage in 1747, Mary became the wife of the Rector of Christ Church in Savannah, the Rev. Thomas Bosomworth. The two became a power couple with strong connections in both Creek and British society. They pressed their land claim in a ten-year battle, traveling to England at one point to meet with the British Board of Trade. In 1759, a compromise resolved the issue. The Board of Trade auctioned off Sapelo and Ossabaw Islands, giving the proceeds to Mary. The land sold for £2,100, which would be worth more than half a million dollars today. She was also permitted to keep St. Catherine’s Island “in consideration of services rendered by her to the province of Georgia.” Mary moved to the island in 1760 and lived her remaining five years there.

Coosaponakeesa leveraged her connections and ingenuity to become the most influential person in the Colony. She is also likely the most unique clergy spouse in our history.

Pictured above: Coosaponakeesa of the Wind Clan; Coosaponakeesa with her third husband, the Rector of Christ Church in Savannah.

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember James Oglethorpe.

Growing up in the house next door to King George’s Whitehall Palace, James Edward Oglethorpe was the youngest of ten children born to a prominent English family. Inheriting a family estate at 26, the up-and-coming Oglethorpe ran for the House of Commons. Reports say soon after the election, Oglethorpe was already drunk when he wandered into a tavern at six o’clock in the morning. He got into a heated exchange over politics with a lamplighter and killed the man in the fight that followed. A powerful friend intervened to get Oglethorpe freed from jail.

The pugilistic politician emerged as a powerful reformer after landing a seat on the committee working with problems in debtor prisons. There he met the charismatic Sir Thomas Bray, a priest of the Church of England with a heart for the underprivileged. In five years, Oglethorpe would serve on numerous committees working to relieve problems that plagued England’s poor. He managed to secure the release of 10,000 imprisoned for their debts. Concerned that the debtors were free, but without work, Oglethorpe began raising interest in a debtor colony even as he collected funds to found it. In June of 1732, King George II signed the Charter of the Colony of Georgia.

The Anne set sail with the first colonists in late 1732, arriving in Charlestown, South Carolina, in early 1733. With a small scouting party, Oglethorpe found a trading post run by Mary and John Musgrove at the Yamacraw village on a high bluff of the Savannah River. The local chief, Tomo-chi-chi, agreed to the settlement plan and by all accounts, he and Ogelthorpe became good friends. The two later traveled together to England. Though he only ever held the title of a trustee of the colony, Oglethorpe’s role amounted to being its founding governor, a role he maintained for Georgia’s first decade. His ambitious city plan remains the design of Savannah. A devoted Anglican, he placed Christ Church on a prominent square. He also made provision for Jews, Lutheran Salzburgers, and other persecuted religious minorities to settle.

Oglethorpe was a civilian with limited military experience at the time of the colony’s founding. During a return trip to England in 1737, he was appointed to the rank of Colonel and sent back with a regiment of soldiers. In 1743, Oglethorpe was advanced to the rank of General. He successfully pushed back the Spanish in the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

Living into the motto of Georgia’s Trustees—Non sibi sed aliis (Not for self, but for others)—Oglethorpe remained a tireless idealist. He wholly opposed slavery in Georgia and kept an enlightened approach in relations with the indigenous population. (The painting above shows Tomochichi and other Yamacraw visitors, being presented to the Georgia Trustees in London by James Edward Oglethorpe in 1734.)

Back in England in 1744, he married Elizabeth Wright, a Baroness. He remained in England while continuing to serve on the Board of Trustees of Georgia. Over his strong opposition, the Trustees relaxed prohibitions against owning large tracts of land, enslaving persons, and other rules intended to reflect his Christian idealism. By 1750 he was no longer involved with what was then a royal colony. The founder lived to see the colonies gain independence. He met the U.S. ambassador, John Adams, on the future president’s first trip to England. Oglethorpe died later the same month on June 30, 1785.

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember the Rev. Thomas Bray and his work in Newgate Prison.

Weekly Beef and Beer Dinners hosted in Newgate Prison by the Rev. Thomas Bray are where the priest planted seeds for what grew into the Colony of Georgia. Bray (1656-1730), who was then the Rector of St. Botolph-Without-the-Walls in London, was deeply concerned about those jailed for their inability to pay off their debts. Through this work, the charismatic priest gathered a group of friends including a young politician, James Edward Oglethorpe. Bray dreamed of a colony where those trapped in debt could gain the opportunity for a fresh start. While the dedicated reformer died before Georgia was founded, the charter for the colony captured his utopian ideal with prohibitions against selling rum, having enslaved people work the land, and owning more than 150 acres per family. The charter also had a prohibition against lawyers and expressed tolerance for Jews as well as some persecuted Christian groups (such as the Salzburgers) to settle. This Christian idealism was the driving force for the founders of the colony. (Louise Shipps painted the icon above. The original painting of Sir Thomas Bray is in the conference room at Diocesan House.)

Bray was the rare senior clergyman in the Church of England who had spent time in the American colonies. Years before his prison reform efforts, the Bishop of London sent Bray to Maryland as his representative. Though his visit was less than three months, the tour revealed an intellectual poverty that Bray spent the rest of his life addressing. Once he was back home in England, Bray founded the Society for the Proclamation of the Gospel (SPG) to raise the needed funds to provide clergy stipends for the colonies. SPG would in time provide priests for Christ Church in Savannah, and Saint Paul’s in Augusta. Bray also founded the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) to publish books and create lending libraries in the colonies. They founded fifty libraries in Church of England congregations in America. Both SPG and SPCK remain active to this day. Thomas Bray died February 15, 1730, which is marked as a feast day of the Episcopal Church in Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

While the seed Bray planted in a young Oglethorpe did bear much fruit, the colony did not alleviate the plight of prisoners. King George II, for whom the colony was named, approved of Georgia as a buffer between his colonists in the Carolinas and Spanish lands in Florida. The Crown also consented to release of thousands of debtors, but turned them out on the streets of London and other cities without prospect of employment. Ads run in London’s newspaper offered free passage to the new colony, together with land, tools, and all the food needed for the first year. But prospective colonists were picked based on the vocational skills needed rather than their status as debtors. None of the freed prisoners made the trip to found Georgia.

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. Looking back on our Centennial Celebration on April 22, 1923, the tone was laudatory. The fourth Bishop of Georgia, the Rt. Rev. Frederick Focke Reese (pictured here in the bishop’s chair that was in the sanctuary at Christ Church, Savannah) preached a sermon that praised his predecessors with words that made them seem so heroic as to not be real:

Speaking of Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr. he said, “Of distinguished lineage, with a handsome and impressive appearance, with a mind richly endowed and stored with large learning, a disposition benign and gracious, a temper patient and well poised, he was naturally a leader among his fellows, and he gave himself and all that he had without stint to the Church.”

He described Bishop John W. Beckwith saying, “He was a fatherly Bishop and meekly ruled as remembering mercy. Endowed by nature with a marvelous voice that ranged throughout the whole realm of human emotions, Bishop Beckwith’s reading was so impressive that, as I have heard people say, they crowded to hear him read the service which was to them as a benediction.”

And finally, he said of Bishop C.K. Nelson, “He came to us in the full vigor of his manhood. With robust physical health and mental vigor, a stalwart and handsome presence and a zeal and industry in service that knew no limit, he gave himself to the Church in the Diocese in missionary labors.”

Starting next Wednesday, April 27, we will offer an article each week sharing our history through the people and events that have shaped the Episcopal Church in Georgia. All history is, of course, interpretive as one selects what to tell and how. In this series, Bishop Frank Logue, will share the good and the bad, with both sometimes seen in the same person or event.

When possible, these articles will rely on quotations from contemporary accounts or the person’s own words to assist in sharing history the way those who lived it told their story. Along the way, we reveal some abiding characteristics of our Diocese, in resilience and adaptability, together with where we have changed, in seeing the image of God in all people.

On February 24-28 in 1823, Saint Paul’s in Augusta hosted the First Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Georgia. Clergy and lay persons from Christ Church in Savannah and Christ Church Frederica on St. Simons Island joined the delegates from Augusta in forming this Diocese. We would not be able to call our first bishop until we had the six congregations required by the Canons of the Episcopal Church. That election happened in 1841, with the Bishop of South Carolina making visitations in the intervening years.

“Our history contains remarkable stories of the resilience and ingenuity of the people and congregations of this Diocese. The gift of hindsight also reveals when we missed the ways the Holy Spirit was leading us to bring the Gospel to bear against injustice as well as when we got it right,” Bishop Logue said. “The 200th anniversary of our founding offers the opportunity to look back and discover both how we have transformed over time and what remains the same for Episcopalians in Georgia,” he added.

In preparation for a Bicentennial celebration in February 2023, From the Field will have articles sharing our history appearing each week starting after Easter.

Pictured: The Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, Jr. the first Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia.

“Thus in Colonial days these three churches—Christ Church, Savannah, Christ Church, Frederica, and St. Paul’s Church, Augusta—were founded. They had been supplied with clergy, who, sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, owed their allegiance to the Crown of England. Therefore when, on July 21, 1782, British rule came to a close in Georgia, the Church, without clergy and without support, was almost annihilated. Yet the seed sown was not dead, only buried; but it was some time before a fully organized Church was developed.”

How Our Church Came to Georgia, by the Rev. Dr. Jimmy Lawrence, Morehouse Publishing.