#7: The Wormsloe Plantation’s Avenue of Live Oaks
“The more I consider the condition of the white man, the more fixed becomes my opinion that, instead of gaining, they have lost much by subjecting themselves to what they call the laws and regulations of civilized societies.” —Tomochichi
The Wormsloe Plantation’s Avenue of Live Oaks
The Wormsloe Plantation Site originated as the fortified colonial estate of Nobel Jones, who traveled with James Oglethorpe on the ship Anne to set in motion the formation of the English Colony known as Georgia beginning at Savannah in 1733.
The original idea behind the Georgia Colony was to combine the need to protect vulnerable parts of the British Empire — namely, to protect the Carolina’s from the Spanish who long before in 1519, through the efforts of Ponce de Leon, had laid claim to Florida for Spain — alongside a philanthropic mission to assist British downtrodden by resettling the inhabitants of English debtors’ prisons across the Atlantic Ocean in the new world.
Control of the Georgian Colony was handed to a group of Trustees, but only for twenty-one years. From 1733 to 1742, the Georgia Trustees transported about 1800 colonialists for free to Savannah to fulfill this noble philanthropic purpose. The simple idea was that hard work would redeem the ‘miserable wretches’ stuck in prison while offering the newly established English colony with steady yeoman farmers and thereby with reliable colonial soldiers to ward off the Spanish located immediately to the south.
Remember that slavery was forbidden in Savannah at its beginning — although it did not take long before the slave system, so prevalent in the Carolina’s to the north and similarly in the Caribbean islands located south, was enthusiastically adopted soon after the Trustees lost control of governing the colony.
As a result, Wormsloe Plantation was soon to be manned by slave labor. And, to be sure, securing Georgia as a buffer to the Spanish Empire had already obstructed the flight of runaway slaves from the Carolina’s to the south. That said, slavery was a well-established practice among Native American tribes in the area. Tomochichi, the Yamacraw Indian Chief who assisted Oglethorpe in initially settling Savannah on the bluffs above the Savannah River, was an active and unscrupulous slave trader.
Nobel Jones’ Wormsloe Plantation initially and effectively served as an important part of Savannah’s outer defense; and when war broke out with the Spanish, Jones served in the military alongside General Oglethorpe to protect the Georgia Colony. Indeed, Wormsloe was Nobel’s reward for serving the Crown.
Nobel’s son, Nobel Wimbley Jones, was one of Georgia’s ‘Liberty Boys’ who helped plan and execute Georgia’s role in the American Revolution; he also helped form the Georgia Medical Society in 1804.
A war between the English, led by Oglethorpe against Governor Manuel de Montiano led Spanish forces, began in 1740. About three years earlier, Oglethorpe had negotiated a deal with the Creek Nation for it to remain neutral in any future Spanish-English clash. Wars between the English and the Creek Nation had long been ongoing since 1715, well before the founding of the Georgian colony in Savannah.
It was in the 1890s that the road leading to Wormsloe was planted with 400 stately oak trees creating the stunning and elegant mile-long Avenue of Live Oaks shown in this painting.
Luba’s Wormsloe painting in progress.
