“P.S. Miss, keep this in remembrance of me  when you look at it, think of them that wrote it who perhaps may be many a mile off.”

    —Noble Jones 

The Wormsloe Fountain on Columbia Square 

Immediately upon the founding of the Georgia Colony at Savannah in 1734, James Oglethorpe was busy preparing the city against attack from the Spanish settlements located in Florida to the south. 

Nobel Jones arrived on the ship Anne with Oglethorpe and the other 114 colonialists to help establish the colony. Sailing alongside Jones was his wife Sarah and their two children, as well as indentured servants for whom he had paid passage. Jones was among Oglethorpe’s most reliable officers. 

A jack of all trades, Nobel Jones was the initial colonial surveyor responsible for laying out the city of Savannah as carefully planned by Oglethorpe. Jones would also work in the colony as a doctor, a carpenter, and a constable. He also served on the Royal Council for nearly two decades. 

In the quote above, Jones expressed his love for Sarah through the gift of a poem he’d penned. 

Jones also arranged the defense of the city’s southern flank. He leased 500 acres — the most allowed under the original rules of the colony — on the Isle of Hope ten-miles south of the city to guard the inland waterway known as the Skidaway Narrows. Because moving overland posed a near-impossible obstacle for an army at that time, the building of a fort at this location protected Georgians against any Spanish force that almost certainly would require arrival by boat. 

The naming of the Isle of Hope expressed the colonialists’ hopes for the future. Later, it became a popular place to escape the dangers of diseases like malaria and dysentery that were common in the city. ‘Taking in the salts,’ or smelling-in a fresh salty breeze, was considered a healthy practice. 

There on the Isle of Hope, Jones built his house and a small fort protected by 18 men; this location would eventually grow into the plantation he named ‘Wormsloe.’ The surviving ruins of the structures are among the few remaining original fortified houses that were once quite common along the coast of Georgia. Later, the plantation would become infamous for its mile-long stretch known as the ‘Avenue of Live Oaks’ that I most certainly have enjoyed painting several times. 

Nobel Jones would spend a good deal of his life in Savannah fighting the Spanish alongside General James Oglethorpe. While most battles between the two colonial powers occurred in New Granada and the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea without the participation of these two men, the Spanish invaded by landing on St. Simons Island off the Georgia coast in 1742. There, Oglethorpe and Jones defeated them at Bloody Marsh and Gully Hole Creek, finally forcing the Spanish to withdrawal back to Florida.  

When the Trustees of the Georgia Colony later relinquished control over the management of the colony, Nobel Jones was granted ownership of Wormsloe Plantation by the King of England. 

The beautiful fountain painted here originated at the Wormsloe Plantation. It was moved in the 1970s to its present location on Columbia Square by Wainwright and Eudora DeRenne Roebling, direct descendants of Nobel Jones. When you visit Savannah, a trip to Wormsloe Plantation is a requirement.