"In launching the Georgia project the Trustees had attempted to stamp a clearly defined pattern of social and economic development on the southern borderlands, but their scheme was based on a serious misconception of the region's environment and, more seriously, of the settlers' aspirations." 

—Betty Wood (Slavery in Colonial Georgia 1730-1775) 

The Presidents' Quarters Inn off Oglethorpe Square  

The Presidents' Quarters Inn, found at 225 East President Street, is a cozy bed and breakfast to nestle yourself comfortably into the Savannah Historic District — naturally, together with a favorite lover.  

The structure of the Inn combined a pair of classic Adamesque, or Federalist Style townhomes, settled adjacent to this beautiful courtyard painted en Plein air here. This scene is as it appears: A very peaceful place to relax. The Presidents' Quarters Inn showcases sixteen luxurious suites. 

The townhomes were built before the Civil War by George W. Anderson and the estate of William Washington Gordon in 1855. Major Anderson (see PFS-42) was the commanding Confederate officer at nearby Fort McAllister. In the final days of Sherman’s famous March to the Sea, which began its trek in Atlanta and burned its way through Georgia, ending outside of Savannah with Anderson’s surrendered. 

William Washington Gordon was the first President of the Central Railroad of Georgia (see PFS-91), grandfather to the founder of the Girl Scouts, Juliette Gordon Low (see PFS-32), and honored by the city with a centering monument on Wright Square (see PFS-65). His son, William Washington Gordon II, was the first President of the Savannah Cotton Exchange (see PFS-28). 

The Presidents' Quarters Inn is located on Oglethorpe Square, which was renamed in 1787 from its original name of Upper New Square after the death of the founder of the Georgia Colony, James Edward Oglethorpe. The Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters (see PFS-13), one of the main Telfair Museums (see PFS-112 and see (PFS-34), is located on the northeast corner of Oglethorpe Square. 

The Georgia Colony initially prohibited slavery. The Georgia Charter of 1732 named twenty-one trustees. Over the two-plus decades that followed Oglethorpe's arrival on the Savannah River bluff, an additional fifty would serve in that capacity. In its prohibition of slavery, the Georgia Colony offered a unique alternative path to British Colonial social and economic development in North America. It didn’t last. 

Slavery prohibition was an ambitious dream for General Oglethorpe and his associates, but a dream ultimately rejected by those who sailed here and lived the experience of settling Georgia.  

The optimism and idealism of the Georgia Trustees in a unspoiled environment abundant with peaches, mulberry trees, and other natural wonders contrasted sharply with the dangerous malarial swamps and the impenetrable forests the arriving Colonialists found in Georgia. 

It didn't take long for Georgian settlers to contrast the prosperity they readily witnessed just across the Savannah River in South Carolina with their own struggles to achieve it in the new colony. 

Almost from the moment Oglethorpe first stepped ashore to greet Tomochichi in 1733, a pro-slavery sentiment emerged in Georgia. University of Cambridge Professor Betty Wood (1945-2021) documents the whole story in her book: Slavery in Georgia 1730-1775. It is an eye-opening read. 

Arriving in 1734, Patrick Tailfer and a group of Scottish adventurers who paid their way to Georgia, bringing servants with them, immediately dashed off letters to the Georgia Trustees demanding permission to purchase and employ enslaved people. Within a decade, the South Carolinian model of slavery came to Georgia, and the plantation economy based on the slave trade was soon adopted.  "