Historic Sites in Chatham County

The history of Chatham County

Chatham County was created in 1777 from the colonial parishes of Christ Church and St. Philip, and it is named for William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham. Its seat, Savannah, was founded in 1733 when James Edward Oglethorpe and the colonists of the ship Anne settled on Yamacraw Bluff, where the Yamacraw leader Tomochichi and the trader Mary Musgrove helped establish peaceful relations. Oglethorpe's plan of wards built around public squares remains one of the most admired examples of eighteenth-century town planning in North America. Georgia initially barred slavery, but after 1750 Savannah became a port where enslaved Africans were brought and sold. British forces took the city in 1778, and in October 1779 they held it against a siege by American and French troops. During the Civil War, Union forces attacked Fort Pulaski in April 1862, and General William T. Sherman occupied Savannah in December 1864; on January 16, 1865, he issued Special Field Order No. 15, the source of the promise of "forty acres and a mule" for freed families. Juliette Gordon Low organized the first Girl Scout troop in Savannah in 1912, and in the civil rights era leaders including Ralph Mark Gilbert and W. W. Law led voter registration drives and pushed to integrate the police force.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiaencyclopedia.org