šThunderbolt's Colonial Settlers

šThe Laceys

šThe Hetheringtons & Bishop

šColonial Fortification & Farms

šColonial Abandonment

šThunderbolt & the Royal Colony of Georgia

Led by General James Oglethorpe, a variety of colonists settled in Savannah in 1733.Though the major settlement in Georgia was to be Savannah, Oglethorpe developed numerous smaller settlements in an “agrarian-military outpost scheme to protect the settlement of Savannah from the Spanish.” 

Along with Thunderbolt, these outposts included Hampstead, Highgate, Abercorn, Acton and Joseph’s Town.The majority of these small settlements disappeared after a short period due to poor agricultural conditions.However, Thunderbolt’s location on the intra-coastal waterway ensured its continued importance.

Oglethorpe chose the former Native American site as a settlement to provide a defense against southeastern access to the City of Savannah.Thunderbolt was on the inland water route which led from Savannah south to St. Simon’s Island and Spanish Florida.Oglethorpe established defenses along this route in the event of a Spanish invasion.Early detection of intruders by these outposts could provide Savannah residents with the necessary time to prepare themselves for defense.

Thunderbolt was planned as a “fortified farming village,” and in 1736 had two constables guarding it.Oglethorpe continued to check on Thunderbolt after colonists had been installed.He often stopped at the settlement on his trips south to Darien and St. Simons Island.In February 1735, he informed the Trustees in England of Thunderbolt’s development, declaring it “in a very good situation.”

John Percival, the Earl of Egmont, recorded the minutes of the meetings of the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia who oversaw the planning of the colony, and the distribution of land and resources to potential settlers.Thunderbolt’s colonial settlement can be traced through the minutes, as well as the role Roger Lacey placed in its development.On 24 May 1732, Lacey presented a proposal to the Trustees to take twenty charity children to Georgia for use in the production of silk.Sericulture in Georgia was of great importance to the Trustees, who hoped that a successful silk industry would ensure Georgia’s success and importance as a British colony, encouraging increased financial support by investors and the Crown.Lacey, with his brother James, brothers Theophilus and Joseph Hetherington, and Philip Bishop formed a company in 1732 to carry on the silk industry in the new colony.

Though the Trustees encouraged Lacey’s idea, the children’s parents objected, and the plan fell apart.After this there is no indication in the Trustees minutes that Lacey and his partners were involved in sericulture.In December 1732, Lacey addressed the Trustees, announcing that he “desired for himself and four other persons five hundred acres of land in Georgia each, carrying over with them each man four servants.”Two weeks after the request, on 21 December 1732, the Trustees granted Roger Lacey, James Lacey, Joseph Hetherington and Philip Bishop each country lots of five-hundred acres along the Thunderbolt Bluff.

On 4 July 1733, Joseph Hetherington’s brothers, Theophilus and Robert, each received grants of two-hundred and fifty acres in Thunderbolt, bringing the total original Trustee grants in Thunderbolt to 2,500 acres.The new village along the bluff was now characterized by three distinct family settlements, that of the Lacey brothers, the Hetherington brothers, and Philip Bishop’s family.

The clear leader of the group in England and once the group settled in Georgia was Roger Lacey.Roger Hugh Lacey was born on 24 June 1706 in London, England.He became a merchant and was one of the stewards of the Grand Lodge of Masons.On 1 February 1734, Lacey arrived in Georgia with his wife and son to settle his new land.

Lacey had been preceded on the journey by his mother, Elizabeth Lacey, who arrived in Georgia on 14 January 1734.Unfortunately, Elizabeth died only six months later on 1 August 1734.Lacey’s brother, James, also a recipient of a five-hundred acre tract, died shortly after arriving in the new colony, leaving Roger Lacey in control of his land as well.

By December of 1736 Lacey was well settled on his land.Lacey cleared a large portion of his property, which he called “Oakland” and planted Indian corn and grain.John Wesley, clergyman of the Church of England and later founder of Methodism, formed a close friendship with Lacey.Wesley often stopped at Lacey’s home in Thunderbolt on his circuit route to preach to the settlers and Indians.Wesley is said to have preached under the oaks along the Thunderbolt Bluff.

In 1735, Thomas Thynne, Lord Viscount Weymouth and Grand Master of the Grand Lodge in England, appointed Roger Lacey the Provincial Grand Master of Masons in the Province of Georgia.Lacey is considered the “Father of Freemasonry in Georgia” and his role was commemorated by an historical marker along the Thunderbolt Bluff which was unveiled on 2 March 1956, during the town’s centennial celebration.The Thunderbolt Lodge is also named in his honor.

In June 1736, surveyor Noble Jones laid out the new town of Augusta, along the Savannah River, which would serve as a trading post for Indian traders.As in Savannah, Oglethorpe established an organized town plan utilizing a center square surrounded by public lots, forty one-acre house lots and a six-hundred acre common.Oglethorpe appointed Lacey to establish the trading post at Mores’ Fort (Augusta) and distribute the fifty-acre lots outside of the main town “to those he saw fit.”Lacey used ten of his own servants in the construction of the new fort and served as the Captain of Militia at Augusta.Lacey further aided the Trustees by serving as an “Agent to the Indian Nation twice” in 1737.

On 1 August 1737, Lacey returned from Augusta, however he died only two days later in Savannah.Lacey was buried with full military honors on his property at Thunderbolt.

The remaining settlers of Thunderbolt are shrouded in controversy.It seems that left without Lacey’s guidance they let the settlement decline and became engaged in illegal activities which led them to flee the colony.

Joseph Hetherington, the first of the three Hetherington brothers to receive a Thunderbolt grant, took possession of his property on 7 July 1733 and was well settled by that September.Little is known of his activities until July 1738 when he was convicted, with Robert and Philip Bishop, of felony for killing Henry Parker’s hogs and cattle for their own use.The Hetheringtons and Bishop were also involved in smuggling rum into Savannah, which was prohibited during the early period of Georgia’s colonization under the Trustees.The three were incarcerated in Savannah on the livestock charges and on 25 July 1738 escaped and fled the colony.This left all of the Hetherington land in the control of Theophilus and the Lacey brothers’ land in that of the widow Lacey.Theophilus Hetherington and the widow Lacey left the colony in 1740 due to debts, abandoning all of the original grants. 

The settlement of Thunderbolt, comprising a total of 2,500 acres, consisted of one-hundred acres of cleared land and a fortified village of settlers’ homes built within a palisade fort.The fort was armed with cannon manned by a nightly guard of the settlers and servants.The log fort, built in 1734, had fallen into disrepair by 1737 with the absence of Lacey.

The Trustees noted the progress of the settlers at Thunderbolt in one of their meetings in September of 1737:

Near one-hundred acres of land cleared, three houses which are musket proof, and a small fort which was mounted with nine guns: But part of the walls are now fallen which the rest will soon follow.

All progress at Thunderbolt was centered around the efforts of Roger Lacey.He was the most industrious of all the Thunderbolt settlers.Sixty of all of the cleared acres, more than half the total, were on his property.Lacey erected “a very handsome house,” and had eleven servants working for him.Lacey led the settlers in planting and supplementing their income by “sawing timber for the sugar islands and splitting staves to go to Madeira.”The journal of William Stephens confirms that Lacey was responsible for Thunderbolt’s advancement and that “the improvements of Hetherington and Bishop are very little.”

Without Lacey’s leadership the promising colonial settlement of Thunderbolt began a fast decline.By the summer of 1738, Thunderbolt’s abandonment was evident:

Thunderbolt…that village, once the great exemplar of all improvements in these parts,…in a manner become desolate…

When Theophilus Hetherington and the widow Lacey left in 1740, the last of the original settlers were gone and the village was abandoned for the second time.The large tracts of five-hundred acres were divided into farm lots of forty-five and fifty acre increments and were designated as parts of the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th Tythings of Reynolds Ward.Two-hundred and fifty acres were set aside in 1743 for former indentured servants.The premise behind the so-called “Servants Lands” was that the former servants “might have encouragement given them to go upon and cultivate the land.”

The strategic importance of Thunderbolt was not forgotten during this redistribution of land.In 1742, William Stephens noted that a watch had been sent to Thunderbolt and settlers in the area were instructed to fire the cannon on the bluff to warn Savannah of an emergency.Stephens provided settlers with arms and ammunition to defend themselves against enemy attack.

In 1752, the Trustees’ charter for the Colony of Georgia expired and the colony was taken over by the Crown.The new government implemented in Georgia, led by a Royal Governor, eased many of the former restrictions established by the Trustees in their effort to create an ideal society, resulting in a new era of development and settlement in Georgia.Plantations became more prominent with the use of slave labor, overshadowing the smaller landowners and farmers.

The Servants Lands had been kept separate from the farm lots, however by 1765 the two were combined under the ownership of two men as large tracts of land.The original 2,500 acres were reunited under the ownership of Governor Ellis, the first Royal Governor of Georgia, and Grey Elliott, a partner in the firm of Elliott & Gordon and a prominent Georgian at the time.Elliott called his property, about four-hundred and sixty acres, “Greenwich.”

In 1765, Elliott sold Greenwich to Samuel Bowen, and two-hundred and forty-five of pine lands to Claudia Mulryne.Bowen raised Sago palms at Greenwich and in 1768 he received a King’s Patent for his Sago Powder.Bowen was a supplier of Sago, which could be used as a food source, to the British Royal Navy.It is probable that Greenwich was also the first Georgia plantation to produce soybeans.

The Mulrynes combined the pine lands with their plantation “Bonaventure.”Claudia and her husband, John, had settled at Bonaventure in 1765.John Mulryne operated large sawmills throughout coastal Georgia and owned a great deal of land including “Placentia” plantation south of Thunderbolt.“The Cottage,” a small plantation of only eight acres, was carved from the Bonaventure tract for the Mulryne’s daughter, Mary.Mary lived there with her husband, Josiah Tattnall.The Cottage was the only plantation actually located in Thunderbolt, though all of the plantations in the area, Bonaventure, Greenwich, and Placentia, play a role its history.The Cottage plantation was small by all standards and provided only garden products.Part of the Cottage property was the site of the Savannah Yacht Club built in the 1880s in Thunderbolt.

By the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Thunderbolt had evolved from a colonial settlement with small subsistence farming into a system of plantations.The politics of the plantation owners would play a role in the war with Bowen supporting the American patriots, and the Tattnalls and Mulrynes supporting the British Loyalists.