Journals of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of the Colony/State of Georgia: 1755–, Savannah, etc., var. colonial and state
printers, 1755-– (The first incursion by Europeans onto soil that would eventually end up in the State of Georgia came in 1540 during the disastrous
expedition of Spaniards led by Hernando de Soto, 1539-42. For the next120 years, territory in Georgia was variously claimed by Spain, operating out of St.
Augustine; Frenchmen, who attempted a settlement on the St. Johns River; and English settlers drifting south from Charleston. In 1663 Charles II of
England granted a charter for the Carolina Territory, which nominally included vast territories that eventually would end up in the states of Alabama,
Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The first English settlement in territory that eventually would become Georgia came in 1721.
However, the true beginning of Georgia as a separate entity dates to 9 June 1732, when George II granted a charter for a colony christened “Georgia” to
a group of “Trustees” headed up by the great prison reformer James Oglethorpe. In the Charter, the territory of the new colony was cavalierly
defined as being all lands between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers (ca. 75 miles of Atlantic coastline) and thence to the Pacific Ocean (a distance of ca.
2,250 miles). Oglethorpe and the other founders established the first settlement, Savannah, in late 1732. They were a distinctly virtuous lot, and
their goals were extraordinarily utopian. One of their reforming goals was to resettle Britain’s poor, especially those in debtors’ prisons, in the New
World, where they would live in a model agrarian society. Since, in contrast to previous colonies in British America, no provision was made for a
legislative body, legislative power resided in the Trustees. While they did govern, they issued only three laws: banning liquor, mandating the maintenance
of peace with the Indians, and banning slavery {7 & 12 pp, Apr. 1735 & 4p., Mar., 1741}. These laws were exceedingly unpopular with the settlers, and
none long endured. The ban on slavery, for example, was overturned in 1750. The subsequent rapid growth of slavery fueled growth in the colony’s first
major agricultural industry, its coastal rice plantations. The original George II charter expired in 1752. With the non-Native American population
then approaching 3,000 souls, the British Government chose to convert the territory into a Crown Colony
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