There are so many journeys that our ancestors took. Each one was different from every other one. I know a lot (but not everything of course) of the journeys of Eastern European Jews and their lives, since that’s where I spend most of my research time. I constantly learn new things about people whose stories and journeys I have much less familiarity. At the end of this week, I’m traveling to the east coast where I’ll spend a chilly week on Hilton Head Island. My research will take me about 50 miles from there to a small town just north of Savannah – Rincon, Georgia, and slightly south of Savannah to Walthourville, Georgia. The two places are related through settlers from Germany in the eighteenth century.

I’ve been learning a great deal about the Palatine German migrations of the 17th and 18th centuries and the people who settled in Pennsylvania and Georgia. I know I don’t have it all sorted out in my head, and that there’s a huge amount of information to learn and absorb. In Rincon, I’ll be visiting the Salzburger Society which is located on the grounds of Historic Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church – the oldest church in Georgia. It was constructed in the 1760s.

The first of the ships carrying refugees left Germany in 1733 following an Edict of Expulsion n 1731 under which about 20,000 Protestants were expelled from Salzburg, now part of Austria, but at the time of the expulsion, an independent country. King George II of Britain extended an invitation to the refugees to settle in Georgia which was a newly formed British colony. It landed in Georgia in March 1734, just a year after Georgia was established. Their first settlement which they named Ebenezer was about 5 miles from the Savannah River. A few years later they moved the town closer to the River.

I went to college at Valdosta State College (now University) and never knew any of this, nor did I know about the Palatine Germans.

Walthoursville was settled after the American Revolutionary war. Originally called Sand Hills, it was renamed around 1800 after Andrew Walthour, a man who established a plantation in the area. So what’s the connection between the two towns? Andrew Walthour and his family first arrived in Georgia on one of the Palatine ships and settled in Ebenezer!

I’m thrilled by the thought of this adventure – driving to a couple of towns I’ve never been to before, learning about a group of European settlers about whom I know so little, and exploring more about the history of our land. And as a bonus – it’s all so close to the lovely city of Savannah! As much as I love being able to research using digital resources, there is nothing like being onsite and seeing where the people lived.