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Bicentennial

The “Patriarchess” of Evangelical Revival

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.

Saint Paul’s Church and the Founding of Augusta

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.

The faithful pastor, Bartholomew Zouberbuhler

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.

A famed evangelist left Georgia in disgrace

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

Coosaponakeesa, the wealthy and influential wife of a rector

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.

The Idealistic James Edward Oglethorpe

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.

An Authentic History of Our Diocese

Bishop F.F. ReeseAs 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.

The Diocese of Georgia Approaches Bicentennial

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.