![]() ![]() With the leadership of Governors Jimmy Carter and George Busbee, in 1978 the Georgia legislature created a new designation for protecting Georgia’s cultural and natural history: the State Heritage Preserve. Chatham County dramatically reappraised the island’s value, resulting in a proposed astronomical increase in property taxes. In the mid-1970s, however, all that came under threat. Spearheaded by Sandy, their philanthropic support was legendary in fostering interdisciplinary connections between art and science at this island retreat. The Torrey-West family clearly was committed to conservation at Ossabaw. Fortunately, after only a week or so, in her rambles with her brother, Sandy came to realize that she had found her place. Sandy resented being separated from her Savannah friends so much that at the conclusion of the storm-tossed move aboard a dangerously listing boat, the 11-year-old spat on the ground as soon as her feet touched shore. Following a disastrous house fire, however, her parents bought Ossabaw and moved the family there. Each year, her family left Michigan to spend the winters at their home near Thunderbolt. In a conversation I had with her in 2003, Sandy said that at first, she hated Ossabaw. While the fate of Ossabaw has lain in human hands for centuries, its conservation from 1959 well into the 21st century was guided and inspired by Eleanor “Sandy” Torrey West, who died on Januon her 108th birthday. Finally, in 1924, the entire island’s 26,000 acres were purchased for $150,000 to serve as a winter home for the Torrey family. Once emancipated, the freedmen established their own mainland communities at Pinpoint and Sandfly, while a few returned to live and work on the island as Ossabaw changed hands many more times. Today the restored slave dwellings at the North End site bear witness to the presence of the enslaved on the land.ĭuring the Civil War, everyone abandoned Ossabaw for the relative security of the mainland. Whatever the crop, plantation owners relied on the labor and skills of enslaved Africans. Then, in the 1800s, four plantations switched crops to grow the pride of the Georgia coast: long-staple Sea Island cotton. Forests growing on the rich soils in the island’s interior were cleared first for indigo culture, a blue dyestuff highly prized by the British. Its live oaks were cut for valuable ship timbers a few ships were even built on Ossabaw, right next to the lumber supply. Once the English settled their boundary wars with Spain, Ossabaw’s natural resources became a magnet for a series of landowners. So far, only a few pottery fragments from broken olive jars reveal their presence there. ![]() Catherines Island to the south, on Ossabaw the Spanish seemed to be just passing through. Likewise, the Spanish continued to explore the islands of “La Florida.” Although they established a mission on St. The native peoples used buckeye sap to stun fish so they were easy to harvest in these calm backwaters.īy the 16th and 17th centuries, coastal natives would have seen French sailing ships mapping the Georgia islands and naming its rivers after those of their homeland. Often there’s a clump of red buckeye growing close by it’s not a coincidence. Although much of the shell material later was mined to build tabby structures and to surface sandy roads, in places you still can stand on the remains of a midden bordering a tidal creek and contemplate a landscape across the centuries. These mounds also served as burial sites for their kin in four Ossabaw mounds dated at 1100-1300 C.E., archaeologists found dogs interred there as well. As they did on many other Georgia barrier islands, native peoples left behind evidence of their occupation in the form of shell middens, mounds constructed largely of oyster shell left over from seasonal feasting. Humans have been part of the Ossabaw landscape for over 5,000 years. We may give a name to an island but we are defined by the imprint it leaves on us. ![]()
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