Historic Sites in Glynn County

The history of Glynn County

Glynn County was created on February 5, 1777, from the colonial parishes of St. David and St. Patrick, and named for John Glynn, an English lawyer and member of Parliament who was sympathetic to the American colonies. Lower Muscogee (Creek) people inhabited the coast before Europeans arrived. In 1736 James Oglethorpe's colonists built Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island, and in 1742 British forces turned back a Spanish invasion at the Battle of Bloody Marsh. Brunswick, the county seat, was chosen as a town site by the colonial council in 1771 and takes its name from the ancestral German home of the House of Hanover. In the 1790s live oak timber from St. Simons went into the frigate USS Constitution, and from the 1780s until the 1830s planters there used enslaved labor to grow high-quality cotton. In the 1870s a major lumber company based its operations on St. Simons, and in 1888 the Jekyll Island Club opened as an exclusive resort for wealthy businessmen. Visitors today can explore Fort Frederica, the St. Simons lighthouse, the Jekyll Island Club and Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation. In 2020 the killing of Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick drew protests around the world, and three men were later convicted of murder and hate crimes.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org