Georgia on my mind

Savannah skyline - gold domed building is city hall

I love Savannah, definitely the quintessential Southern City. Next time we will have to stay longer to do it justice. I think it is a much nicer city than New Orleans.

Georgia was formed in 1732 by royal charter of George II. Georgia was formed as a buffer state between South Carolina (a British colony) and Florida (a Spanish colony). It was named for George II. James Edward Oglethorpe (1696 – 1785) was the kings general who settled Savannah. He called it Savannah because his first sight of the land reminded him of the savannah in Africa. There were four prohibitions in the charter for Georgia.

1. No Slavery. 2. No Catholics (because Florida was Spanish and they were Catholic). 3. No hard liquor and 4. No Lawyers. No-one explained the fourth prohibition to us. But needless to say there are lawyers in Georgia today.

In December 1864 General Sherman finished his ‘march to the sea’ at Savannah. He caused a million dollars worth of damage on this march from Atlanta to Savannah. He burned all the plantations along the Savannah River.

When he arrived at Savannah General Hardy and his Confederate troops were in Savannah. The city fathers requested Hardy to leave. He and his troops left by pontoon bridges across the river. The city fathers surrendered to Sherman. In this way Savannah was saved from burning.

General Sherman gave President Lincoln a Christmas gift of Savannah, guns, ammo and 25,000 bales of cotton. Each bale of cotton weighed 500lbs and was worth a fortune. So Sherman’s gift was probably the best one Lincoln received that year. It is rumoured that he had not given his wife a present and so gave Savannah to her!

Savannah is also the site of the First African Baptist Church. It was built by slaves from the Brampton Plantation. After work they walked the 3 miles into Savannah to build the church and then walked the 3 miles back to the plantation to sleep for a time before getting up to begin work on the plantation. The church was an important stop on the underground railway. The diamond shapes on the floor were air holes for the slaves hidden under the floor, waiting to move further up the railroad.

Savannah is a city of squares. This is because Savannah was set up in a ward system. Each ward is a square. The centre of the square is a park the buildings closest to the square are government and schools. After that come the houses. We spent some time in Chippewa Square which is where Forrest Gump was filmed. It was hard to figure out where he was though. Have to pay more attention next time we see the movie! His bench is in the museum.

Forrest Gump's squareChris in Chippewa Square

We toured Savannah by tram tour though we ended up walking more than riding. We had lunch in a British pub called the SixPence Pub. I had a Newcastle Brown Ale which I haven’t had for years. When I was in college it was rumoured that in Newcastle Hospital there was a ward with a blue star above it for all the people who had been sent mad by drinking too much Newcastle Brown. How true this is I don’t know.

This was also my first introduction to Paula Deen. I had never heard of her but apparently she is a big hit on the cooking channel. They even have Paula Deen tours in Savannah. Her restaurant does not take reservations but people line up to get their name in for lunch at 8:00 a.m in the morning. Our tour guides seemed ambivalent about if this lining up was worth it.

Funnily enough from never having heard about Paula Deen I started seeing her everywhere. No matter where we went there she was smiling from the cover of her cookbooks. Now I am going to have to look into her Southern cooking recipes. Apparently she was the first person on the Cooking channel to bring Southern cooking forward.

They say that Savannah is a haunted city. We visited the Bonaventure Cemetery one of the oldest in the city. One of the most poignant graves was that of Little Gracie she was six when she died of pneumonia. She was the daughter of the manager of one of the hotels in tha city and was a great favourite with the guests. Her statue was created from a photograph by John Walz two years after her death. Her father had the statue created when he was about to move from Savannah and did not want Gracie to be forgotten. When he took the photo to john Walz he was so overcome with grief that he was unable to open the envelope. He left it with Walz and the result was the statue.

It is also said that the hospital is haunted. During the yellow fever epidemic thousands of bodies were taken through tunnels and buried under Forsyth Park one of the largest parks in the city.

The widows and daughters of Confederate soldiers who died in the civil war raised the money to erect a memorial to their husbands and fathers. The monument to them was erected in Forsyth Park. The monument was made in Canada. It arrived by water as the ladies did not want it to touch Union soil at any point on its’ journey.

Many of the streets are cobblestones. These stones were used as ballast in the ships coming into port. Rather than the stones being thrown away they were used to construct the roads. We think we have discovered recycling but obviously our ancestors were already doing it hundreds of years ago.

There are many memorials of women who made their stamp not only on Savannah but on the States as a whole. Juliette Gordon Low was the founder of the Girl scouts in America. She was born in Savannah on Halloween 1860. Her nickname was Daisy. As a teenager she formed her first organization Helping Hands and made clothing for the poor. She was almost completely deaf but didn’t let that stand in her way. She was an accomplished painter, sculptor and blacksmith. The first meeting of the Girl Scouts was on March 12th 1912. Daisy believed the Girl Scouts could help promote world peace.

Another lady who had long term effect on education in Georgia was Nina Anderson Pape. She was a pioneer in women’s education. She founded the Froebel Circle which educated the poor children of Savannah’s Yamacraw Village. She also founded Tybee Island’s Fresh Air home for disadvantaged youth. In 1905 she established the Pape School which became one of the premier schools in the Southeast. Miss Pape was instrumental in bringing kindergarten to Georgia. As early as 1911 she included a kindergarten in her school.

Much of the restoration in Savannah has been driven by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). They own many buildings in the city and have grown from a small college with a few students to a worldwide college with students from all around the world.

It is 150 years since the civil war began. I get the impression that some people in the South have long memories and their loss of the war still rankles.