Page 48 - Pilgrims in Georgia

V Finally Home at “New Ebenezer”

In 1736, they were allowed to move to the present site at New Ebenezer
located where Ebenezer Creek runs into the Savannah River. The town of New
Ebenezer was laid out similar to Savannah. The Salzburgers were an

industrious group that took to building their settlement right away, they
planted crops sufficient for surrounding areas and in spite of hardships
advanced the industry of the community they built from scratch. Within ten
years of the transfer to New Ebenezer the community established water
driven mills for grain and lumber, and a mill for stamping rice and barley to
encourage the rice production in the local swamps. Boltzius asked the
Trustees for the financial support to build water-driven mills. For Oglethorpe Town Plan of New Ebenezer
and the Trustees, a mill in Ebenezer meant additional food for troops and it would aid in the colony becoming self-
sufficient. They built the first sawmill in Georgia on Ebenezer Creek (1735), the first rice and grist mill in Georgia (1740).
By 1741, the town had grown to a population of twelve hundred and become successful in agriculture, raising cattle,
lumbering and silk culturing producing silk from mulberry trees. Ebenezer’s success in agriculture and industry was an

example the Trustees used many times as proof that their philanthropic intentions were possible without slavery.
Ebenezer was able to produce the silk the Trustees desperately wanted, they were peasants perfectly suited to the small
farm lifestyle in the colony, and they did all of this without slavery, they argued that the Trustees had a sound vision for
Georgia. Many Salzburgers believed that in order to realize their goal of building a religious utopia, they needed the
social utopia promised by the Trustees as such, the Salzburgers were influential in shaping the original laws and
character of the colony. In addition, Ebenezer became an area where other religious refugees, such as the Moravians,
chose to settle. Transports with new colonists continued to arrive until 1752 and the population of Ebenezer continued
to grow until the Revolutionary War when they supplied the first governor of Georgia, John Adam Treutlen in 1777.

Governor, John Adam Treutlen Church door plaque New Ebenezer Retreat Center, Church, Museum