#108: Sorry Charlie’s: The Gibbons Range Building on Ellis Square

“As Georgia’s governor (1757-1760), Ellis came to be known as the Colony’s

“Second Founder” (after James Oglethorpe) by recasting it into one of the more economically sound, less politically fractionalized North American colonies.”

—Edward J. Cashin

Sorry Charlie’s: The Gibbons Range Building on Ellis Square

One visit to Sorry Charlie’s Oyster Bar on Ellis Square in downtown Savannah assures another will follow soon after. Many of my frequent out-of-town guests love oysters and thereby are passionate for Sorry Charlie’s — as a result, I frequent this establishment known for its neon fish sign attached to its building.

The neon sign itself has been designated a historical artifact by the Savannah Historic Foundation. The building was purchased in 1809 by Thomas Gibbons (1757-1826), a successful rice planter, lawyer, judge, real estate speculator, steamboat entrepreneur, and three-term Mayor of Savannah. Gibbon’s son, William, remodeled the structure as if to live forever, and this building remains steadfast to that goal.

Thomas Gibbons was born at Mulberry Hill, his family’s plantation located just outside the city of Savannah. His father owned several thousand acres of prime land between the Ogeechee River and Savannah River, where they grew rice, harvested and milled lumber, and owned over one-hundred slaves. His family remained loyalists during the American Revolution.

Like many other Tories landing on the losing side of the revolution, Thomas Gibbons had his property confiscated, and citizenship revoked. By 1787, Gibbons’ full American rights and privileges were restored; soon, his wealth and social position were thoroughly restored. As mayor, Gibbons headed the delegation that welcomed General George Washington’s ceremonial tour of the South in May 1791.

In 1801, Gibbons purchased a summer home in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and entered the steam ferry business. To captain his second ship, the Bellona, he hired and then mentored Cornelius Vanderbilt for the remainder of his life. Nicknamed The Commodore, Vanderbilt became an extraordinarily wealthy shipping and railroad magnate. A monopoly steamboat company run by a former New Jersey Governor tried to destroy Gibbons’ steamboat enterprise. But Gibbons sued and won a landmark interstate commerce decision (Gibbons v Ogden) in the U.S. Supreme Court just before his death in 1824. Daniel Webster represented Gibbons in that case.

The Gibbons Range Building perfectly fits the namesake of the square it neighbors. Ellis Square was never a square with the same characteristics as most other Savannah Squares. Historically, large commercial buildings primarily occupied the square. It long was the heart of Savannah’s business and shopping district and is still known today as City Market. Until an 1808 law made their importation illegal, African slaves were unloaded in Savannah’s port nearby and sold into bondage on this square.

As his biographer Edward Cashin noted above: After its inhabitants rejected Oglethorpe’s original plan of a slave-free English mercantile colony, owned and worked mainly by small yeoman farmers, and directed by Trustees back in England, Governor Henry Ellis completely recast the Georgia Colony. Under Ellis’s leadership, Georgians came to govern themselves and have done so ever since.

Henry Ellis lived an adventurous life. He was an expert seafarer who explored Canada’s arctic waters for the Northwest Passage; he engaged in the slave trade between Africa, the Caribbean, and the American colonies; and then became Governor of Georgia and later Canada’s Nova Scotia. In only three years, his success in Georgia was proven by the tripling of its population and the Colony’s peaceful relationships with the Creek and Cherokee natives by settling land disputes with Mary Musgrove Coosaponakeesa.