Page 68 - Pilgrims in Georgia

V Providential Pilgrims
African and Jewish colonists

in July 1733 forty-two Jews, who had fled the European continent landed their
ship in Savannah. They would become the largest group of Jews to settle in
North America in the Colonial period. They had first gone to London but could
not stay there. And hoped to be received in Georgia. This was unexpected and
Oglethorpe had not received instructions from the Trustees concerning colonists
who were not Christian, but welcomed them, observing that the colonial charter

forbade Roman Catholics, but that there were no contractual reasons for
preventing these pilgrims to participate in the colony. Further, they brought a
Doctor with them, Dr. Samuel Nunes Ribeiro who could immediately help treat
colonist suffering from yellow fever. Oglethorpe would later appoint him as the
official colony physician in thanks for his treatments and the saving of many lives.
By 1735 they and met in a rented house and created a synagogue, "Mickve
Israel”. making it the third-oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. After
Congregation Mickve Israel
the Revolutionary War Governor Edward Telfair, the first governor to serve under
the new Georgia Constitution, granted the congregation a perpetual charter in
1790 that the congregation still operates under today.

Though many of the pilgrim colonists came as a result of persecution,
hardship, and poverty, some later came as forced pilgrims’ i.e. slaves. The
original charter of Georgia forbade slavery, but with the Trusteeship giving
way to British Royal control by 1752, Georgia became a typical British colony
were slavery became legal. In 1773 George Leile., a slave who had been freed
by a Baptist Deacon, became the first Baptist African American licensed to
preach in Georgia. As a result he organized the beginnings of what is now the
First African Baptist Church that same year. Two years later, Rev. Leile was

ordained as the pastor and by 1777 the church was officially established and
recognized. Rev. Leile would go on to become the first Baptist missionary in
Jamaica. Today, First African Baptist Church is still an active congregation with
First African Baptist Church the claim of being , “The Oldest Continuous Black Church in North America”.