Social Activists: The Georgia Colony

The Georgia Colony In 1932, James Oglethorpe led a group of trustees that chartered to Georgia and made a colony to perform a social experiment on man’s capacity to improve. Not long after the colony began, the colonists began to complain and disapprove of the government they were under. The trustees set strict rules and did not give the settlers the same benefits that other colonies got. By the 1950’s, all of the trustees gave up on their experiment and Georgia became a royal colony. The trustees had failed and the colonists in the colony got their way. Was it the kinds of settlers in the colonists, the form of government, or both that ultimately led to the demise of the social experiment? Many different races and origins made
their way to Georgia. Including: British Isles, northern Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, the Caribbean, and other American colonies. Migrating to the Georgia colony was a difficult journey and by 1752 over a third of the settlers had died. Most of the deaths were due to typhoid and malaria. These diseases are common in swamp areas and water. The settlers struggled to reproduce and grow the population. Another reason the settlers had a tough time growing the population, was the gender ratio. “Fertility was also stunted by the fact that males outnumbered females two to one in the early years, while children accounted for only a quarter of the population of the new arrivals.” (“Colonial Immigration”, Ben Marsh). The settlers were forced to look past their cultural differences due to the lack of women to keep the population up. The trustees