Outlined below are some very special people. They are the pioneers who played a major role in settling Bryan County, Georgia during its first hundred years, i.e., circa 1733-1833. These first settlers were a mix of people who were rich, poor, educated, and uneducated - - and they were Bryan County's first planters, homemakers, farmers, blacksmiths, lumberjacks, millers, carpenters, ministers, teachers, lawyers, judges, law enforcers, politicians, Revolutionary War veterans, businessmen, plantation overseers, slaves, etc. Many of them were also the original settlers of the areas in Georgia we now know as Chatham, Effingham, and Bryan Counties, i.e., the individuals and families who were part of English General James Edward Oglethorpe's military group of English Officers and Scot-Highlander soldiers, and from those who first migrated from the English Province of South Carolina . . . into St. John's Parish (which are now parts of Liberty, Long, and McIntosh Counties), and then into Indian Lands that later became part of Tattnall County, Georgia.

First, and starting in 1733, there were the non-English "Salzburgers" settlers in the area just North of Bryan County, i.e., a location called "Ebenezer," in what became Effingham County, Georgia. Soon afterward (in the 1740s), many who came into the area were English Mounted Rangers, Scot-highlander soldiers, businessmen, and planters from Virginia and South Carolina. Included in this early wave of settlers were General Oglethorpe's original group of military soldiers who built and manned the First and Second Fort Argyle sites, as well as the first Ogeechee River settlements, just upstream from the mouth of the Canoochee River.

As more settlers trickled into Georgia they traveled through St. George Parish, i.e., from parts that make up present day Burke, Screven, and Bulloch counties. By the end of the 18th century -- and especially after the American Revolutionary War (circa 1776-1785), there was a flood of migrants into the area, with some settlers coming from as far away as the New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Northwestern Georgia Indian Lands. Among this flood of settlers were uprooted war refugees from Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina ... who were starting their lives over -- after losing everything they had during the American Revolutionary War.

The roots of our early Bryan County settlers were in distant England, Scotland, Ireland, Austria, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Morovia, Portugal, Switzerland, and Italy. They traveled overland and by sea, i.e., through the English Province of South Carolina, and through the small port and town of Savannah. This sea of migrants spread out and into the surrounding English Parishes of Christ Church, St. Andrew, St. James, St. John, St. Matthew, St. Philip, and Eastern Georgia Indian Lands. After the Revolutionary War all of the English Colonial Georgia Parishes were abolished, counties were formed and reformed, and a number of the first settlers were cut into the present day Bryan County lands from nearby parts of the older Bulloch, Chatham, Effingham, and Liberty Counties.