Founded by James Oglethorpe, the corporate charter for the Province of Georgia was signed by King George II of Great Britain on April 21, 1732 (The colony was named for George.) The original charter specified the colony as being between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers, up to their headwaters (the headwaters of the Altamaha are on the Ocmulgee River), then extending westward "sea to sea". The area within the charter had previously been part of the original grant of the Carolina Colony.
The colony's original purpose, according to Oglethorpe's plan, was as a penal colony for the resettlement of people in debtor prison. The first convicts arrived on February 12, 1733, a day still celebrated as Georgia Day. For half a century the colony was an important means of relieving overcrowding in British prisons; after the British lost control of the province they created the first colony in Australia to serve the same purpose.
From 1732 until 1758 the minor civil divisions were districts and towns. In 1758 the province of Georgia was divided into eight parishes, plus another four added in 1765; in 1777, the original eight counties of the State of Georgia were created.
In practice settlement in the colony was limited to the near vicinity of the Savannah River. The area of western area of the colony remained the territory of the Creek Indian Confederation until after the American Revolutionary War, when it was ceded to the U.S. in 1805.
See also
History of Georgia (U.S. state)
List of Governors of Georgia#Colonial
External link
LOC: Establishing the Georgia Colony 1732-1750 (http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/colonial/georgia/georgia.html)
Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia: Georgia History (http://www.cviog.uga.edu/Projects/gainfo/gahist.htm)
The object in founding the colony was threefold: to afford an opportunity to the unfortunate poor to begin life over again, to offer a refuge to persecuted Protestants of Europe, and to erect a military barrier between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida.
Georgia was the only colony of the thirteen that received financial aid by a vote of Parliament -- the only one in the planting of which the British government, as such, took a part.
To the end of the colonial era Georgia was essentially the southern frontier of South Carolina, as North Carolina was of Virginia.
Oglethorpe and his friends decided to add the Bray legacy to the funds in hand for the purpose of establishing a new colony between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers, in territory claimed by both the province of South Carolina and the Spanish colony of Florida.
One of the absent Indians died of smallpox, despite the ministrations of the eminent physician Sir Hans Sloane, and was buried by his grieving comrades in the burial plot of St. John's in Westminster.
Oglethorpe went to Georgia in 1736, with the approval of his fellow Trustees, to found two new settlements on the frontiers, Frederica on St.
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