Our First Visit in America: Early Reports from the Colony of Georgia, 1732-1740

In November,1732,the first colonists sailed from England to Georgia, and during the next ten years some 6,000 hopeful people followed them to America. These colonists had been attracted to the new colony by an extravagant promotional campaign, which painted a roseate picture of a blessed and bountiful land. But the colonists found that life in Georgia was primitive and hard. This volume presents some of the most famous and informative journals written by the colonists who were making what one of them called “our first visit in America.” Included are reports early colonist Peter Gordon, Philip Von Reck and John Martin Bolzius, leaders of the protestants from Salzburg, Francis Moore, storekeeper at the southern outpost of Frederica; Benjamin Ingham, religious disciple of John Wesley; Reverend John Wesley, Thomas Causton, the angry and controversial storekeeper at Savannah and George Whitefield, founder of the orphanage at Bethesda outside Savannah. Trevor Reese, who taught at the University of London, sets the historical scene. The book is embellished with illustrations of title pages and manuscript pages from the original publications and documents.