Tyrconnel & the Yamacraw
Look at Viscount Tyrconnel in a red riband to the left, third owner of Belton House, meeting Chief Tomochichi of the Native American, Yamacraw tribe in 1734 London. What is going on?
Georgia Trustees meet the Yamacraw in London. Viscount Tyrconnel to the left wears a red riband over his right shoulder signifying the Order of the Bath. Chief Tomochichi is accompanied by his wife in western dress, Senauki, and his nephew and future Chief Toonahowi in blue. The view without insets.
The Colony of Georgia
Parliament under George II awarded James Edward Oglethorpe £7 billion (today) to establish Georgia, now a U.S. state, in 1732. A board of Trustees that included Tyrconnel governed this colony from London.
Tyrconnel’s involvement while MP for Grantham reflects views on imprisonment, religion & enslavement. The Trustees were social reformers. They wanted farms for the poor and ex-prisoners.
Oglethorpe and his Protestant settlers disembarked at Yamacraw Bluff on the Savannah River in 1733 after 2-months at sea. Catholics excluded - the law forbade them land ownership until 1778.
Yamacraw were hunters not farmers. They bartered agricultural ground for cloth, gun powder and tobacco. Colonists shipped rice, deerskin, and silk from imported mulberry trees. Tyrconnel Tything titled one Savannah district.
Peter Gordon, A View of Savannah as it stood the 29th of March 1734. To the Honble The Trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia in America; This view of the Town of Savannah is humbly dedicated by their Honours Obliged and Most Obedient Servant Peter Gordon. Engraved by P. Fourdrinier. Tyrconnel Tything is already erected, the two rows of houses immediately behind the four smaller trees towards the back. Any buildings that remained by 1796 were destroyed in a disastrous fire.
City Plan
Gordon's view depicts Savannah a year after being founded. Before Oglethorpe left England he had a plan for laying out the new colony. This was important militarily, because it would make the city easier to defend from the Spanish to the south and against potentially hostile Indians. Oglethorpe built the city around a series of squares with the streets in a grid pattern. Each square had a small community of colonists living around it, and had separate lots dedicated to community buildings. For each of the freemen who came to settle the new colony, Oglethorpe awarded 50 acres of land. This included a house lot in the city of Savannah where the colonists lived for safety, a five-acre garden lot outside of the city, and a 45-acre farm lot beyond the garden lots.
Each community or ward centred around a square and had four tythings on the north and south sides of the square. Tythings were rows of house lots, ten lots long named after the Trustees. On the east and west sides of the square there were trust lots that were used for public buildings such as churches or the courthouse. Tyrconnel Tything titled one Savannah district in the Derby ward.
A harmonious interdependence brought the Yamacraw to England in 1734. During their five-month sojourn, they met Royalty, cemented trade agreements, and got a school funded for American Indians.
Tirconnel Tything 10 houses bounded by Johnson Square and Broughton Street, between Bull & Drayton Streets and 330 m from the Savannah River to the north, image bottom. Savannah City Plan 1796.
Tyrconnel Tything location, part of it now a car park. North image top. Johnson Square seen on the C18 plan remains a park & gardens, partially hidden behind the brown skyscraper. Christ Church Savannah is north of the car park. Founded in 1733, but rebuilt in 1838 on the same site. Code D on the left-hand map.
a theological defense for Enslavement
British colonists in North America exploited enslaved peoples. Radically different, Tyrconnel and his fellow Trustees decreed goods produced from free labour. A Trustees’ byelaw forbade Black or Indian slaves, later strengthened by King George in 1735 with,
An Act for rendering the Colony of Georgia more Defensible by Prohibiting the Importation and use of Black Slaves.
The penalty for contravention was £50 (£8,000 today). Banning enslavement made Georgia unique among 13 British territories in America. After Tyrconnel’s retirement, 1751 saw enslavement introduced in Georgia after lobbying by George Whitefield, an Anglican cleric and advocate for slavery (right). He believed that his pet project, the Bethesda Orphanage suffered financially without slaves. A century would pass before Britain’s final abolition Act in 1833. Georgia joined the United States of America in 1788 and saw abolition only in 1865. The U.S.A. abbreviation dates from 1776.
Trustees for 2024
Tyrconnel’s descendant, the 6th Baron Brownlow attended the 1933, bicentennial of Georgia’s founding.
Nowadays, each year, the Georgia Historical Society and the Office of the Governor name two leaders as Trustees based on their business, advocacy and philanthropic achievements.
Carol B. Tomé is the Chief Executive Officer of UPS, and Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., was president of Morehouse School of Medicine, are the 2024 Georgia Trustees.