Page 55 - Pilgrims in Georgia

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However, they also experienced the rejection of those agreements, the closure of their
churches, persecution, prison, and martyrdom which they called the “killing times”.
Many had to meet secretly at various times in forests and field gatherings for worship
and teaching called “conventicles”. But if the struggle for the liberty of their faith were
not enough, by the early 1700’s the economic situation for many Scots was dim at best.
The English domination of Scotland through taxes, and disarmament, overpopulation,

crop failures, infertile land, and depletion of the value of their livestock, “meant that the
bulk of the people in the Highlands were in a poor, starving condition.” Many
considered emigration to the New World in order to start over. A Conventicle in a Scottish Glen

As General Oglethorpe began to establish the Georgia colony, he recognized the need for a military buffers to the south
to protect the primary settlement of Savannah from possible Spanish attack. The area was still claimed by both the
English and the Spanish. South of Savannah at the mouth of the Altamaha River there was an abandoned English
outpost named Fort King George which he decided on first. Later and further south, he would build a more elaborate
fortress and town named Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island. To inhabit the first of these buffer towns Oglethorpe and
the Georgia Trustees sought out Protestant Highland Scots families known for their familial Clan structure and their
tenacious military prowess to be soldiers-farmers on the southern border of the colony. Being made of aware of the
distress of many Highland families and their willingness to emigrate the Trustees sent Captain George Dunbar and
Lieutenant Hugh Mackay to go to Scotland to recruit families from the vicinity of Inverness and by October 1735 the

first Scots sailed for Georgia on the transport ship Prince of Wales.
With them the trustees made provision to send a Minister from their
own people, Reverend John McLeod from Isle of Skye, to be one of the
Society’s Pastors for the Highland families and missionary/ teacher to
the Natives Americans. In this first group there were 177 people

including women and children, with their leaders John McIntosh Mohr
and Hugh Mackay. By early January 1736, they arrived at Savannah and
on January 19th, the Highlanders landed at Barnwell's Bluff on the site of
Fort King George. Reverend McLeod, said to the Highlanders around him,
`Let us pray.’ and beginning the first Presbyterian presence in Georgia. A
small church structure was built, dwellings for the soldiers and families,

Rebuilding Fort King George and the defenses of Fort King George repaired and reinforced.