Georgia Historical Society

A New Theory to Consider: The Debtor Colony That Wasn't 

Actually, this is not a new theory, but misinformation continues to creep into classrooms and conversations.
 
Although the Georgia Trustees original intentions did include the use of debtors to colonize Georgia, in reality very few - probably a dozen or fewer - ever came to Georgia. The Trustees instead sought the "worthy poor" - those who could not support themselves or their families in England but had skills or a work ethic that might be beneficial to the founding of a colony.
 
Teaching Tip

Discuss this and other historical myths and consider how such stories originated and what purposes they might have served. Do they continue to serve a purpose or do they simply skew our view of history?
 
Additional reading suggestions for the study of encounters and exchange in early Georgia:
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North
     America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
     Press, 1998).
 
Kenneth Coleman, Colonial Georgia: A History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
     1976).
 
Judson J. Connor, Muskets, Knives and Bloody Marshes: The Fight for Colonial
     Georgia (St. Simon's Island, GA: The Saltmarsh Press, Inc., 2001).
 
Walter J. Fraser, Jr, Savannah in the Old South (Athens: The University of Georgia
     Press, 2003).
 
Charles M. Hudson, "The Genesis of Georgia's Indians," in Forty Years of Diversity,
     Essays on Colonial Georgia (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press,
     1984).
 
Hudson, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando De Soto and the South's
     Ancient Chiefdoms (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1998).
 
George Fenwick Jones, The Salzburger Saga (Athens, GA: The University of
     Georgia Press, 1984).
 
Jones, The Germans of Frederica (St, Simons Island, GA: Fort Frederica
     Association, 1996).
 
B.H. Levy, Mordecai Sheftall: Jewish Revolutionary Patriot (Savannah: The Georgia
     Historical Society, 1999).
 
The New Georgia Encyclopedia website, "English Trade in Deerskins and Indian
     Slaves," http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-585 .
 
The New Georgia Encyclopedia website, "Mary Musgrove,"
     http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-688.
 
The New Georgia Encyclopedia website, "Tomochichi,"
     http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-689.
 
Anthony W. Parker, Scottish Highlanders in Colonial Georgia (Athens, GA: The
     University of Georgia Press, 1997).
 
Paul M. Pressly, "Scottish Merchants and the Shaping of Colonial Georgia," The
     Georgia Historical Quarterly 91, no. 2 (2007): 135-168.
 
A.G. Roeber, Palatines, Liberty, and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British
     America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
 
Thomas A. Scott, editor, Cornerstones of Georgia History; Documents that Formed
     the State (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1995).
 
Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin
     Books, 2001).

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