Christ Church was Georgia’s first church and held its initial worship service in Savannah immediately upon the founding of the colony on February 12, 1733. Its initial minister was the Reverend Dr. Henry Herbert, who arrived on the ship Anne with James Oglethorpe and the other 114 original colonialists. 

The building painted here was designed in Greek Revival style by James Hamilton Couper and completed in 1840. It was the third house of worship built on this site selected by James Oglethorpe. 

Like so many of Savannah’s historic buildings, a fire led to the redesign of the building’s interior in 1897. Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, as well as famous songwriter Johnny Mercer attended this parish. You can sit upon Johnny Mercer’s bench in Johnson Square while admiring this scene. 

John Wesley began American’s first Sunday School here in 1736 and with the assistance of his brother Charles published the first English hymnal in America. The church bell was designed by Revere and Son in a foundry owned by Paul Revere out of Boston. The bell was hung in 1819 and is still in use today. 

Oglethorpe emphasized religious issues throughout his leadership of the colony; but he also prioritized more immediate existential concerns, such as the military defense of the colony. This focus led to several conflicts with ministers serving the colony, including both John and Charles Wesley. 

John Wesley arrived in Savannah hoping to save his own soul by carrying his evangelical missionary gospel to the Native Americans located nearby. But Oglethorpe was more concerned with dampening the rumblings of discontent that were continuous among many of the Georgian colonialists.  

Much of that discontent was centered on the restrictions over land and labor, aside other unpopular strict rules that governed the colony. It was in these matters that the Trustees and their ‘Georgia Plan’ came into conflict with the very people chosen to fulfill its utopian and philanthropic mission. 

The prohibition of Slavery was the cornerstone of the Georgia Plan. However, the Act of 1735, which forbid slavery in Georgia, also included a fugitive slave clause that assured other English colonies that Georgia would return any escaped slave — so slavery would continue wherever it was then practiced. 

The plan was that Georgia would be ‘the place where England would grow rich by sending her poor abroad.’ This philanthropic and altruistic mission was at the heart of the Trustees’ plans for Georgia. 

Unfortunately, the primary problem from its beginning was that the Trustees believed they fully understood which crops could successfully grow in Georgia and how land thereby needed to be used for that purpose. As a result, land-use in the colony was strictly controlled. Individual holdings above 500 acres were prohibited, while most of the colonialists who came to Georgia as a direct result of the ‘charity’ of the Trustees were allowed to control only 50 acres, which they could not sell nor divide.  

The plans of settlers would soon override those of Trustees. The idea this colony would fit neatly into the mercantilist system to serve British economic needs was flawed from the beginning; those living in the colony found Georgia land unsuitable for the opportunities Trustees imagined it would provide.