1820: “Our City Seemed a Living Hades… Death Covered Us”

All research and commentary by Jefferson Hall

“Burning of Savannah,” painted in 1820 by a witness on the east side, visiting nationally-known artist, Joshua Shaw (1776-1860)

“She has become a Niobe of cities, a chaos of ruins; who can trace the void, or who can bend him over the fallen pile, without remembering her former greatness; she was rising a model, she has fallen a monument….”

– William Jay editorial, published in the January 22, 1820, Georgian

A fire. A lethal and growing epidemic. A financial depression. In early 2020, a fire broke out on the Eastern Wharf property, followed soon thereafter by the arrival of COVID-19 and its resulting disruption of businesses and economic despair. Eerily, these events of 2020 share striking parallels to the disasters of another year experienced by the town, exactly two centuries earlier. As the saying goes, history does not necessarily repeat, but it does rhyme. But while there are similarities to 2020, 1820 was a far more devastating year, assaulting a much younger town. Certainly, there is a Shakespearean quality to the notion of Savannah’s most triumphant year followed by its worst, but such is the mythical contrast between the Savannah of 1819 and the Savannah of 1820. The change of a calendar altered the city forever, as waves of disaster and destruction washed over a town wholly unprepared, and still blissfully slumbering in its 1819 dream.

Savannah’s rise from 1790 to 1819 was meteoric, an era which had witnessed Savannah’s growth from backwater to a cotton metropolis. The population of the town tripled between 1794 to 1819, and the number of squares—the very barometer of Savannah’s growth in the 18th and 19th centuries—exploded from six to fifteen in the short span between 1791 and 1819. Particularly in the post-War of 1812 era, Savannah’s prosperity bounded. But like Icarus reaching great heights, nothing could prepare it for the fall. The mansions of William Jay still standing today (Owens-Thomas House, Scarbrough House and Telfair Museum) are time-capsule manifestations of that “one minute before midnight,” as Savannah’s boundless prosperity of 1819 ran into the smoldering ruin of 1820. William Jay arrived in Savannah on December 30, 1817 aboard a vessel called the Dawn. A burgeoning architect from Bath, England, he had arrived in Savannah to oversee the completion of the house that he had designed the year before for Richard Richardson (1785-1833), a 32 year-old bank president and distant in-law whom he had never met. Ironically, architect John Holden Greene—whose proposed design for the Independent Presbyterian Church had won out over Jay’s own 1816 design—arrived at the port of Savannah the same day.

William Jay, whose sister had married into the wealthy family of Robert Bolton, found himself quickly ingratiated into Savannah society, and in record time was designing multiple properties in Savannah, mansions for Savannah’s new class of “merchant princes.” The Bullochs, the Habershams, the Telfairs; by 1819 everyone who was anyone in Savannah was having a William Jay mansion built for them. It was almost a status symbol for the merchant class.

Even the smallest of the Jay mansions was still pretty impressive: Robert Habersham House at Hull and Barnard *(demolished)*

By 1820 the Telfair House was valued at $18,000, the Richardson House $20,000, the Bulloch House also $20,000; the more modest home of Robert Habersham—which was probably the most middle class of the William Jay houses—still clocked in at $7,000. In retrospect, one is left to wonder if the ambitious Habersham ever looked enviously at that larger William Jay mansion of Archibald Bulloch just across Orleans Square and thought, “one day….”

And why not: money was plentiful. In 1819 Jay’s in-laws, the Bolton family, claimed assets valued by the tax digest at $244,000 up from $208,500 three years before. William Scarbrough (1776-1838) was another already-legendary name of industry in Savannah.

“My dearest Julia….

“It was understood the President was not to be here till Monday next; but a messenger… reports he is to be here tomorrow or Saturday at the furthest…. Our home is quite in readiness for him. It is most tastefully and elegantly decorated and furnished – and seems to bring to the recollection of all who have lately visited it – the House of the Lord Governor in the neighborhood of Chester and Liverpool.”

– William Scarbrough, May 6, 1819

President James Monroe arrived on Saturday, May 8, 1819 and resided at the Scarbrough House, another mansion built by William Jay (and completed so recently the paint on its walls was barely dry). “The President must be pleased with Savannah,” Scarbrough wrote with pride.

William Jay’s Bulloch House (1819-1916), Orleans Square

Over his five-day visit in Savannah President Monroe attended the dedication John Holden Greene’s recently completed Independent Presbyterian Church and attended a grand ball—whose pavilion was built by William Jay. He also spent a day on William Scarbrough’s ambitious steamship Savannah, which on her maiden voyage just days later, would become the first steamship in history to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The energy and spirit of the ship’s namesake city was at this moment indomitable. According to the census Savannah had a population of 7,523—a breakdown of nearly four thousand white and 3500 persons of Color. According to a national directory, vessels of fourteen-foot depth could navigate the river right to the bluff. The city boasted nine houses of worship, seven white and two for its communities of Color. It also had three banks, where just a decade before there had been none.

By the end of 1819 Savannah had sent a steamship not just across the ocean, but across the globe, spreading Savannah’s commercial good will with ports of call in Liverpool; Copenhagen; Arundle, Norway and St. Petersburg, Russia. It had received a presidential visitor and shone brightly in the national spotlight. In a single generation it had risen from obscurity to become one of the biggest cotton ports in the world. With the dawn of 1820, the city’s good fortune still seemed boundless. Within months, however, all would be a different picture: a significant portion of the town in ruin, many businesses and its financial elite broke, and nearly nine per-cent of the population dead. The year 1820 brought an abrupt end to endless prosperity.

On December 31, 1819, with temperatures never rising above a frigid 29 degrees, the townspeople nonetheless celebrated, welcoming in the New Year with a buoyant hope for the future. The next morning, on January 1 the Columbia Museum & Savannah Advertiser published a welcome to the New Year, a commentary which should have been optimistic… but instead ended in a strange, rambling and eerily prophetic preamble to what was to come:

“The ceaseless current of time rolls on, and the monuments of human glory, the works of genius and the labors of wisdom, are swept away in its rapid march. Everything earthly, melts under the fervent touch of time, and nothing of all that now spreads itself beneath the ardent gaze of our sun, shall escape the final doom….”

It was a cryptic epistle that might have puzzled a reader or two, but its author could have had no way of knowing how soon this prediction would come to pass. Ten days after ringing in the New Year the town was quiet; the city was still in mourning over the death of the Rev. Henry Kollock, who had died a week and a half before. The night of January 10 was clear and cold, with the stroke of midnight a great hush fell over the city. The night sky was dark; the moon had not yet risen—we know such a detail thanks to a footnote by Richard West Habersham, who years later composed an entire epic poem lamenting the events of that night.

*“Savannah on the Morning of January 11, 1820,”*
(My 30-year-old photocopy of Richard West Habersham’s poem, quoted below)
*GHS Collection 560, item 19*

“The noise of revel was hush’d – and midnight profound

Had spread its black mantle, o’er all things around:

As sound broke the silence, save the westerly breeze,

As it swept thro’ the streets – or sigh’d through the trees.

“The hopes, and the sorrows and the labours of day,

In that sweet hour of quiet, had all pass’d away

Save where Fancy, in dreams and visions of night

Pictur’d prospects and hopes, which the morrow would blight.

“How many on that night, had retired to rest

With wealth in abundance, and with happiness bles’t,

Who never again, after the coming tomorrow,

Would lie down to sleep, save in want and sorrow;”

– Richard West Habersham, “Savannah on the Morning of January 11, 1820,” stanzas 1-3 (GHS)

Site of the Boon Stables, where the blaze began

The clock in the Exchange tower next chimed one. Before it hit two the cry had gone out for fire. The blaze had taken spark in the livery stable belonging to Mr. Boon, on Lot 18, Franklin Ward, the northeast trust lot facing Franklin Square. Its cause was unknown, perhaps a lantern. The flames spread quickly to the surrounding buildings, every one of wood—and every one, observed the Georgian, in “the most combustible state.”

“The fire had gained a great height before the citizens and the fire companies could assemble, or organize any efficient plan of action; and even when the most strenuous exertions were made the flames advanced with a widening and appalling violence that seemed to deride resistance.”

–Georgian, January 17, 1820

“For the word had been said – and the pride of our Land,

Was doom’d to destruction by Almighty command,

And Pity and Mercy, when that mandate was given,

Fled in trembling away – and flew back to Heaven.

“At that awful command rush’d the winds thro’ the sky;

The red torch was appli’d and the flames rose on high,

And flashing abroad, with a wild lurid glare,

Roll’d in volumes of crimson on the dark troubled air.

“The quick roll of the drum, and the trumpets shrill wail,

Were mingled together with the noise of a gail,

And heavy and sad, fell the deep tones of the bell

As it rung out at midnight that fair city’s knell.

“The strength of that flame, man had no power to stay,

As urg’d by the whirlwind, it rush’d on its prey.

And the labours of genius, & the structures of taste,

Were crumbled to ashes, in its wide spreading waste.”

– Richard West Habersham, “Savannah on the Morning of January 11, 1820,” stanzas 4-7 (GHS)

The fire spread quickly to the south and to the east, even consuming the offices of the Georgian, while the staff scrambled desperately to save the type, press and paper. By the time the newspaper resumed printing nearly a week later it summed up a scene by now already familiar to most of its readers.

“The city of Savannah, after a lapse of twenty-four years, has again experienced the horrors of conflagration far surpassing the… melancholy fire of 1796. Numbers were at that time reduced to extreme distress, yet the buildings consumed were generally of so little value compared with those we have just lost, and the property they contained was so inferior in every respect… that it was generally considered beneficial, by making room for other buildings better adapted to the growing commerce of the place.”

Strangely, in lamenting the fire of 1820, the Georgian found an opportunity to praise the fire of 1796.

The flames rolled with an intensity and fury the citizens could not match. Only the width of Broughton Street saved the southern region of the city from destruction. A hail of burning cinders rained over the city, “to the remotest parts of the town, where the roofs of houses were repeatedly on fire.”

As the fire advanced into Market Square it ignited a cache of gunpowder that had been stored there illegally, resulting in two large explosions. With the blasts the secret was out, and a startled population fled the square.

An altered contemporary McKinnon Map, demonstrating the extent of the fire damage in black

Cotton was lost, homes were destroyed and businesses ruined. That “Genius of desolation,” the January 17, 1820 Georgian remarked, could not have chosen “a spot within the limits of our ill-fated city where so wide a scene of misery, ruin and despair might be laid as that which was recently the centre of wealth and industry, but is now a heap of worthless ruins.”

As the fire spread Richard West Habersham, then a child, was captivated by the steeple of the Independent Presbyterian Church, whose white surface glowed and reflected the fire light like a beacon. He described the steeple in stanza 8: “Like Devotion it seem’d – as its beautiful form / Reflected the fire, and calmly beam’d in the storm.” And then, silently and slowly, the moon rose; as Habersham remarked in a footnote at the bottom of his poem: “The moon rose bright and clear about four oclock in the morning.”

“Amid that dread scene of despair and dismay,

A light broke from the East, like the first smile of day;

And the moon slowly rose, o’er the horrors of night,

Like the rainbow of promise, to the suff’rers’ sight.

“Her face was serene, as she silently mov’d;

O’er the wreck of our hopes, and of all that we lov’d,

And she shone in her course, thro’ that wild troubl’d sky,

Like the ray of the light house, to the mariner’s eye.”

– Richard West Habersham, “Savannah on the Morning of January 11, 1820,” stanzas 9-10

The city burned the entire early/late morning of January 11, 1820. According to the Georgian, the fire was not finally extinguished until “between twelve and one o’clock” on the day of the 11th. The Georgian reported that ninety-four lots lay naked and blackened, the ruin spread from Bay to Broughton and Montgomery to Abercorn. Those standing in Franklin Square had an unobstructed view of the houses on Abercorn, three squares away. With the destruction of Decker and Derby wards the fire had leveled the business center of town. In all, 463 buildings had been destroyed. “The entire commercial part of the town is destroyed,” the January 13, Columbia Museum & Daily Advertiser lamented. “There is but one solitary dry goods store remaining. The finest buildings are in ruins.” From an economic standpoint, it was the most devastating fire the United States had seen to that time. As the January 17 Georgian observed: “The total loss of property is variously estimated, but the prevailing opinion calculated it to be upwards of four million dollars.”

“Hundreds are reduced in a moment, as it were, from opulence to poverty, and many of our most respectable families are thrown on the charity of the world. It is hardly in the language of soberness, that we can speak of this dreadful catastrophe. We yet behold crowds of aged and infirm, of women and children, wandering houseless in the streets, and so rapid was the progress of the flames, that those in the vicinity where it originated, lost their all—even to their necessary clothing.”

-Columbia Museum & Daily Advertiser, January 13, 1820

More than 200 families were left homeless. Those who sifted through the ashes on January 11 were appalled.

“Alas! Never did the sun set on a gloomier day for Savannah, or on so many aching hearts. Those whose avocations called them forth that night will long remember its sad and solemn sadness, interrupted only by the sullen sound of falling ruins.”

– Georgian

Many of the same lots destroyed in the prior the 1796 fire were similarly wiped out this time, the crucial distinction being that in 1820 the fire was successfully contained north of Broughton Street. In many respects, the Fire of 1820 did not match the scope of its 1796 predecessor. By 1820 the city of Savannah was a town of 1012 lots, plus or minus. Most of the lots were located within the Common, the remainder spread between the eastern and western suburbs; but with 94 lots laid waste this ultimately accounted for less than one-tenth of the total number of town lots. And as even the Georgian remarked, many of the 463 buildings destroyed in the blaze were tenements, out-buildings and shacks. The true and lasting devastation of the fire may have lay in the fact that for the second time in a quarter of a century, the portion of the town laid waste happened to be its commercial center.

1820: more buildings destroyed, but a smaller proportion of the whole

Though he had only been a resident of the city for barely two years, architect William Jay posted an open letter to the community. “In a calamity so dreadful as the late fire, which laid prostrate much of our city, it behooves every one to offer his assistance: the benevolent man his charity, and the scientific his genius,” he pleaded in the January 22, 1820 Georgian. Jay urged the rebuilding of Savannah in brick and iron, forgoing wood—and with it, the old custom of frame structures which had so long congested the town, leaving it vulnerable to every stray spark. Jay advertised his suggestions in conjunction and association with Henry McAlpin and his plantation west of town.

McAlpin had begun purchasing the tracts of the old, ill-defined “Hermitage,” in April, 1815 via his attorney, William Scott. In 1785 Savannah surgeon Samuel Beecroft had purchased these tracts; in June of 1798 he advertised it for sale with its “large handsome convenient buildings” in tact. John Montalet, a white French emigree from the Haitian Revolution, bought the property in 1798, but made few changes before his death in 1814. In reality, the plantation had produced bricks since the Beecroft era of the 1790s, but it was Henry McAlpin in this 1815-1819 economic Renaissance who had expanded the enterprise, beginning between 1818 and 1819.

But as the other events of 1820 played out these pleas of William Jay and Henry McAlpin fell on deaf ears. By March wooden shanties were rising in blackened lots.

“The late fire has given the town a most desolate appearance, yet the inhabitants are most inconsiderately running up wooden houses again with great rapidity.”

-Adam Hodgson, March, 1820

In the wake of the fire the call for financial assistance was sounded, and it was answered generously. Donations poured in from all over the country. In all, just under $99,500 was pledged to Savannah. South Carolina donated $20,000, Pennsylvania was close behind at $19,000. New York offered $12,500, but politics intervened… its gift was proffered with the very specific condition that the monies donated were to be used for assisting “all indigent persons, without distinction of colour.” The caveat was clear, and the Georgian was insulted by the implication. The “indelicate insinuation, that it is their wish that black, as well as white, should participate in the bounty; thereby insinuating the Common Council of Savannah is destituted of that humanity,” was seen as an affront. “Ought any conditions, be attached to an act of charity?” the editors queried. The New York donation was ultimately rejected.

Fire from the westernmost square, sickness from the easternmost square

Tour guide lore: During the yellow fever epidemic of 1820 (and the later epidemics in 1854 and 1876) bodies were hauled away in secrecy, hiding from the public the number of casualties in an effort to avert mass panic.

The reality: Much the opposite. With sobering transparency the newspapers published the mounting death toll each week, while civil authorities actively urged residents to flee the town with haste. Far from trying to hide the danger, panic was, essentially, encouraged.

As spring gave way to summer another indiscriminate disaster descended upon the town. On May 7, 1820 the first case of bilious fever was reported; it was later confirmed as yellow fever. Before the month was over, there would be two more fatal cases. In June victims in the city would die at a rate of one every other day. In July, it would be one every day. By September, the average would be nearly eight per day. The epidemic had begun.

Savannah was no stranger to yellow fever or its related malarial diseases. There is no record of any case of yellow fever in Savannah before 1801; this is probably more due to lack of proper diagnosis rather than a lack of disease. However, in the early years of the 19^th century cases of “bilious fever” were persistent, and minor yellow fever outbreaks visited Savannah on a semi-annual basis, typically beginning in late summer and continuing until the first frost of the year, sometimes referred to as the black frost; at which point the illness invariably subsided.

Many maladies of the 19th century were not fully understood, and yellow fever was no exception; what was correctly understood, however, was that a warm, wet, marsh environment contributed to contracting the illness. While the mosquito had not yet been identified as a culprit, blame instead fell upon the ancient idea of miasma. Miasmatic air was believed to be the noxious fumes and rot from the decay of organic matter; invariably it was part of the unhealthiness of living near a swamp. Savannah’s particular disadvantage in this regard was that it was geographically surrounded by lowlands and marsh.

Following the 1817 yellow fever epidemic—the Savannah’s deadliest at that point—the city had undertaken an ambitious endeavor: attempting to bribe, shame or otherwise coerce nearby landowners to dry out their rice fields and convert to a dry culture, thereby reducing the swamp lands that bordered the town and the greater threat of these malarial-related illnesses. The November 16, 1826 Savannah Georgian published an extract of a letter explaining the process. “The corporation has purchased a right to all lands within two miles of the city, to prevent the cultivation of rice; and to attend to the draining and keeping in order the low growth.” In this ambitious proposal, landowners would bind their lands from wet rice culture for $40 per acre. The total cost was estimated at $200,000, but given the recalcitrance by some landowners—the Stiles family in particular, bordering the west flank of the town with both Vale Royal and Springfield—the city was still fighting to dry lands in the city limits as late as 1877.

By the beginning of August, 1820 there was a growing sense of unease in Savannah. Though the yellow fever mortality had risen between June, with 14 deaths, and July with its 39, it was with August that the epidemic accelerated. It quickly became clear the town was dealing with something quite different from previous years. In the words of the mayor: “A mortality prevails in this city, never before experienced.”

The hints of a growing epidemic only gradually began to appear in the documentary record of the newspapers, and at first rather innocuously. “It is true, a small part of the inhabitants of Washington ward, have been visited with disease, within the last two weeks,” the Savannah Daily Republican reported on August 15.

But by the following month Mayor Thomas Usher Pulaski Charlton, urged the city to full alert, remarking of a “deep gloom and despondency which surround and afflict our people.” He rued “this dreadful, indiscriminating fever,” and published a note in the newspapers asking that “the physicians of the City are respectfully requested, to report at this office, or to me, every morning at 10 o’clock, all new cases of a malignant fever.”

The newspapers now reported a tally of deaths by the month, by the week, and even by the day. Yellow fever deaths became a daily column in both the Georgian and the Savannah Daily Republican.

From the Georgian:

From the Savannah Daily Republican:

In Savannah’s 1876 yellow fever epidemic the death ratio per-capita was one in 32.
In Savannah’s 1854 yellow fever epidemic the ratio was one in 25.
In 1820 it was one in 10.

Citizens were urged to leave the city, and those who had the means did so, leaving Savannah in droves. Mayor Charlton posted public addresses within most editions of the newspapers.

Mayor Charlton within the Savannah Daily Republican, October 10, 1820

“Just coming to town–I find it deserted by almost all of my friends–many stores closed–very little moving in the streets, and the only activity displayed, is in cropping the trees; the axe sounds in every square, and the dismal appearance of the empty streets is thereby much increased.”

– Correspondence of “O.”, Georgian, September 28, 1820

Trees were cut down; the fear of miasma extending even to the ornamental trees of town. “Our poor trees have undergone the same persecution as the witches of yore,” the above correspondent remarked a few days later in the October 7 Daily Republican. On October 14, Mayor T.U.P. Charlton requested a census of the populous remaining.

Savannah Daily Republican, October 14, 1820

The procedures and rituals of government were falling apart. Mayor Charlton apologized to the remaining community for forgoing a regular session of Mayor’s Court. “So precarious is the tenure by which every individual now hold his life, such the sorrow and despondency which pervade every breast, that, (even if the present number of inhabitants could have admitted it,) I am convinced, not a suitor, witness, or juror would have attended.” Savannah had become a ghost town, abandoned.

Savannah Daily Republican, October 21, 1820

Nowhere was the epidemic worse than on the eastern side of town, specifically in those homes unlucky enough to be positioned around Washington Square, which for years would retain its infamous stigma. “Washington Ward,” remarked Dr. William Waring in his 1821 final report to the city, “became the great theatre of desolation.”

Waring documented Savannah’s yellow fever mortality for each month of 1820.

June: 14 dead
July: 39 dead
August: 111 dead
September: 241 dead
October: 268 dead
November: 50 dead

Ultimately, more than 700 persons died in the epidemic… a number which may or may not have been inclusive of the communities of Color—which despite the promise of the Savannah Daily Republican, never appeared in the newspapers.

By late October, the results of the Mayor’s impromptu census of the white residents in town were published, revealing that of a full population of four thousand there remained but 1494 still in the city.

Reprinted in the October 26 Daily Republican

The results of that census were made even more frightening by the fact that with the reduced population the death ratio per-capita now was nearly one in four. Those remaining citizens, unwilling or unable to leave, were picked off indiscriminately. The Savannah yellow fever epidemic of 1820 had become, per-capita, the deadliest epidemic ever seen in the United States of America. In his 1821 report Dr. William Waring remarked of Savannah’s mortality… “just doubling that of Philadelphia, in 1793. Such an enormous sweep of human life, has scarcely a parallel in the medicine of Europe, or America.”

“To give you a list of the dead would fill this sheet,” Savannah resident Martha Richardsone wrote to a relative. “History does not give any account of the plague half as dreadful. Father, Mother, and child have been seen on the same hearse going to their graves. More than one instance has occurred where whole families have been swept away…. Yellow fever and black vomit is our daily theme and nightly dream.”

Not surprisingly, the single most represented year in the Colonial Park Cemetery today is 1820… though with only 49 markers, fewer than 7% of the victims are represented with markers still standing today. Simply, more than 93% of 1820’s yellow fever epidemic victims lie unacknowledged.

“Ah! much to be remembered! Not long—and sack-cloth covered us: —Our city seemed a sort of living Hades. The shops were shut, to let their keepers die; or that they might attend the dead—or flee from death by flying from the city. The market, too, was thinned, below whatever it had been. . . the city seemed forsaken to the reign of death—DEATH covered us.”

– N.B. Honestus, Georgian, November 25, 1820

A tropical storm struck the city on October 1; it was just another hardship to be checked off the list.

Savannah Daily Republican, October 3, 1820

With the arrival of the first frost in November, at last the tide of cases receded. But even as the danger was deemed over, residents were slow to return. What did they have to return to but a town of ruins and a shattered economy.

One year ushered in an entire decade of depression

Even those who had eluded the fire or fled from disease could not outrun the depression. The financial depression which had hit the rest of the United States the year before was finally catching up with Savannah. Cotton prices had hit an all-time-high of 75 cents per pound for Sea Island cotton in the summer of 1818, but by the last week of 1819 they had slipped to 38 cents, with a paltry 15 cents for Upland cotton. Many of the local business merchants—the “merchant princes” and Savannah’s nouveau riche—considered this only a temporary drop, a simple correction after a parabolic rise; after all, cotton had built Savannah… not the backwater Savannah of the 1730s, but the gilded Savannah of the 1790-1819 era, a 29-year epoch that really may be seen as Savannah’s golden age. With the town’s fortunes so tightly tied to the cotton industry, it was inevitable that there would be some financial impact as the cotton bubble began to burst, but the “white gold” had become a worldwide necessity, and those in Savannah who could continue to live well did so in the interest of waiting out the market, believing that cotton prices would rebound shortly. In fact, cotton prices would not rebound again for another ten years. By April of 1820 Sea Island cotton was 28 cents, Upland 14; a year later 26 and 12.

William Scarbrough’s fortunes had turned bad as early as November of 1819 when, following its maiden voyage, first to Liverpool then to St. Petersburg, the venture of the steamship Savannah failed. Further reduced in the depression, by the fall of 1820 his accommodations came down a bit in the world: He was in jail for debt. Scarbrough had lived in his magnificent mansion in Savannah’s Court End district on West Broad Street for barely twelve months. Almost exactly one year after the maiden voyage of the Savannah Scarbrough was forced to sell his house for cash. Four months later, in September of 1820 as he languished in jail, he petitioned the court that he was insolvent and “willing to surrender all his estate for the benefit of his creditors,” but there was very little left.

Scarbrough was just the first of the mighty to fall. Two years later he would be followed by Archibald Bulloch, who sold his own William Jay mansion on March 7, 1822 for $19,000. The Boltons, too, were crushed, and would never again regain their pre-1820 prominence. Even Richard Richardson, the man whose current Owens-Thomas House still proudly overlooks Oglethorpe Square, fell with a mighty crash. Richardson, the man with the wealth, the foresight and the energy to commission a special mansion for his wife now watched his world collapse, as his debts piled up and his wife died in 1822. Richardson, president of the Savannah Branch of the Bank of the United States, would see his own bank seize the house on February 3, 1824. Widowed, washed up, broke and homeless before the age of 40, he died at sea at 48.

Within four years’ time most of the small palaces of William Jay, the status symbols of the wealthiest in Savannah at its peak of prosperity, were bank foreclosures, empty and abandoned, some leased out as boarding houses… and Savannah an economic wasteland for the next decade.

After visiting Savannah in 1834 one visitor remarked that Richardson’s house was one of “several very ambitious-looking dwellings, built by a European architect for wealthy merchants during the palmy days of trade; these are of stone or some composition, showily designed, and very large…. They are mostly deserted or let for boarding houses, and have that decayed look which is so melancholy, and which nowhere arrives soon than in this climate.” (Tyrone Power, Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834, and 1835, ii. 70)

19th century glass image of the Richardson-Owens-Thomas House

William Jay himself would die in obscurity on a small island in the Indian Ocean. In 1836 the architect was appointed by the British Government to design buildings in St. Mauritius, a low paying post that brought him little joy, and his life there was short and bleak; in 1837 he fell a victim of bilious fever… the same type of illness he had avoided in Savannah so many years before.

An entire generation of merchants and importers simply vanished from the record after 1820. When Savannah eventually recovered there were new names in the advertisements and new leases on the riverfront. Fire-damaged building were still visible at the time of Cerveau’s 1837 painting of the town (William Jay’s unfinished custom house, for example), but with time every last vestige of ash was wiped away; yellow fever protocols better established and a new age of prosperity took shape in the 1830s. In so many ways, though, 1820 was the year of demarcation for the town’s history. There was the Savannah before 1820 and the Savannah after 1820, and where one ended a new one could never go back.

There were two William Jay houses on Orleans Square and Robert Habersham managed to live in both of them

Except for Robert Habersham (1783-1870). The owner of that most modest of the William Jay houses before the depression, he had navigated his fortunes so deftly that by 1833 he was able to move across Orleans Square into the much larger William Jay house built for Archibald Bulloch.

Were the 1796 Fires Arson?

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All research and commentary by Jefferson Hall

Extent of the 1796 Fires
(Image – Library of Congress [https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3924s.ct002304/?r=-0.413,-0.006,1.918,0.696,0])

On Saturday, November 26, 1796, the heart of the city of Savannah was reduced to ash in the first of its major historical conflagrations. This fire destroyed more a third of the town and utterly wiped out the commercial center of the city. This November blaze also marked the first of a number of suspicious fires that took place in those closing five weeks of 1796.

As the Columbia Museum & Savannah Advertiser opened its issue on November 29:

“Savannah, Nov. 29.

“On Saturday the 26^th inst. this city exhibited a scene of desolation and distress, probably, more awfully calamitous than any, grievously experienced in America.

“Between six and seven o’clock in the evening, a small Bake-house, belonging to a Mr. Gromet, in Market Square, was discovered to be on fire. The Citizens together with the Officers and crews of the vessels in the harbor, were soon convened; but, unfortunately, no immediate and decisive measures were adopted, by which the fire could be stopped at its beginning. The fortunate escape from this destructive element which the City for many years past experienced, had greatly lulled the vigilance of its inhabitants, and prevented suitable preparations for such a calamity.

“The period when such precaution and the united efforts of active exertion could have been useful, was however, of very short duration.

“The season for two months previous to this incident, had been dry; The night was cold, and a light breeze from the N.N.W. was soon increased by the effect of the fire. The covering of the buildings being of wood, were from the above circumstances, rendered highly combustible. Several of the adjoining houses were soon affected, and then almost instantly in flames: The wind now became strong, and whirled into the air, with agitated violence, large flakes of burning shingles, boards and other light substances, which alighting at a distance, added confusion to the other terrors of the conflagration.

“The use of water was now rendered totally vain, its common extinguishing power seemed to be lost—Torrents of flames rolled from house to house, with a destructive rapidity, which bid defiance to all human control, and individual exertions were from this time, principally pointed towards the securing of private property.

“The direction of the fire, being now committed to the wind, its rages was abated only when, by its extending to the Common, it found no farther object, wherewith to feed its fury.

“On the north side of the Market square, and thence in a south easterly direction, the inhabitants were enabled by favour of the wind, to save their houses, and limit the conflagration.—On the other hand, by the time it had extended on the Bay, nearly to Abercorn street, the prodigious quantity of heat already produced in the center of the City, began to draw in a current of air from the east, and enabled some of the most active inhabitants and seamen to save a few houses in that quarter, after having been in imminent danger.

“Between twelve and one, the rage of fire abated, and few other houses from this time took fire. The exhausted sufferers, of both sexes, had now to remain exposed to the inclemency of a cold frosty night, and to witness the distressing spectacle of their numerous dwellings, covered with volumes of smoke and flame, tumbling into ruins.

“Thus was this little City, soon after emerging from the ravages of our revolutionary War, and which had lately promised a considerable figure among the commercial Cities of our sister States, almost destroyed in a single night. The number of houses (exclusive of other buildings) which are burned, is said to be nearly 300, but of this (together with an estimate of property destroyed) a more particular statement than we can now furnish, is expected shortly to be offered to the public. We can now only say, that Two Thirds of the City appears in ruin, in a direction from the corner of Market Square, along the Bay to Abercorn Street, thence in a South-East direction, taking the whole center of the City, to the South and East Commons; a few houses quite in the South-East part only excepted. ‘Tis said that three or four White Men and two or three Negroes lost their lives, in rendering assistance during the fire, and whether any more, is not yet ascertained. The morning after the catastrophe, a most interesting and melancholy picture presented itself, in the depressed countenances of its inhabitants—the smoking ruins, the forest of naked chimneys, the various kinds of destruction of Goods and Furniture, and the crouds of houseless inhabitants. The hospitality of the few, whose houses remain, has been general and unrestrained; their tenements are shared with others, but they are insufficient. The buildings of the City were before wholly occupied; what remains can not now contain the inhabitants. Every thing which an affecting sympathy, which an active benevolence among their Fellow Citizens can perform, will undoubtedly be don.—A timely interference of the State Legislature, may also be expected. But we presume to hope, that the prospect of relief will not be limited to these resources alone—the truly humane are not confined in their benevolence to objects that are near them—and many instances have occurred of misfortunes far inferior to this, which have evinced the justice by which the Americans can claim the honor of being humane.

“The anxious eye of immediate distress, must however, be turned to the planters of the neighboring counties; and we should be sorry to do them the injustice to suppose that they will not feel a satisfaction in affording the necessary relief—We persuade ourselves that we shall be sincerely joined by our readers, in fervent wishes, that Providence may avert from others, so severe and afflicting a calamity.

“The following statement is just handed, as this paper is going to Press:

“During the Conflagration on Saturday night last, in four hours, 229 houses, besides out-houses, &c. were burnt, amounting to One Million Dollars, exclusive of loose property—375 Chimneys are standing bare, and form a dismal appearance—171 houses only, of the compact part of the City are standing—upwards of 400 families are destitute of houses.—Charities are solicited.”

The Columbia Museum & Daily Advertiser was the only newspaper to remain in print in the days that followed the calamity; the offices and printing equipment of the Georgia Gazette were all but obliterated in the fire. But even the Columbia Museum took damage; after its November 26 edition another week would pass before it could resume. With its resumption on December 6, it acknowledged the commercial and personal loss endured by the Georgia Gazette: “Among the unfortunate sufferers by the late fire, are Messr. James and Nicholas Johnston, Printers, who have lost their Office, together with all their Printing material, dwelling-house, &c.” The fire also resulted in the death of James Johnston’s wife.

Over the next several days and weeks the character of the town changed, as essentially one half of the town moved in with the other half. Adverts began appearing in the Columbia Museum, as business owners tried to let their clientele know where to find them.

Savannah was on edge; in the days following the fire, several alarms were sounded, some may have been false alarms… but others were not. As the Columbia Museum noted on December 6, “So frequent are the alarms in this city, that three times during the one day, last week, the citizens were roused by the cry of fire.”

On December 6 yet another fire broke out, this one consuming an entire tything. From the December 9, Columbia Museum & Savannah Advertiser:

“On Tuesday night, the 6^th instant, about 9 o’clock, this City was again visited by a dreadful fire—it broke out in the stable loft of John Glen, Esq. but whether by accident or design, has not yet been ascertained—In a little while it communicated to Mr. Glen’s dwelling house, where the families of Doctor Noble W. Jones and Mr. W. Hunter had taken refuge, after the first fire. It soon after reached to the corner houses on the Bay, the property of Doctor George Jones, occupied by Messrs. John Gibbons, Charles Jackson, & John Caig—then to that owned by Mr. Harry Grant, occupied by Messrs. Kennedy and Parker—from thence to R. Wayne’s, Esq. where Mr. George Anderson’s family had taken shelter—then to the dwelling and store of Mr. Saul Simons: About the same time the fire reached the Bay, it broke out at the house of D.B. Mitchell, Esq. Mr. Schiek, the new building lately erected by John Cunningham, and in which the unfortunate family of the late Capt. McCullough resided. It then consumed the house and store of Capt. Doyle, and all the buildings belonging to Mr. Thomas Hogg.

“In the space of two hours, the whole tithing was laid in ashes. This second and afflicting misfortune, has not only destroyed as valuable a part of the town as remained, but thrown a number of families on the bounty of those, who have houses remaining.—And let it be told to their praise, that they have come forward with a liberality, unbounded. Nothing but great exertions, saved the houses facing the tithing on the W.&S.W. side, from being destroyed, to which, had the fire communicated, the remainder of the City, together with all the buildings of the wharfs, must have fallen prey to that destructive element.

“This fire consumed about 20 houses, besides out-houses.”

With no fewer than five fires in ten days, suspicion gave way to creeping certainty that many of these follow-up fires were an act of an active arsonist. The mayor offered a $1000 reward for the apprehension of any caught in the act of arson.

And indeed, the fires were not over. On December 26, “a fire broke out in the house occupied by Mr. James McIntosh and Capt. E. Swarbreck.” It was clearly an instance of arson. “Upon examination, it appeared that the house must have been set on fire by some wicked incendiary, as the fire originated under the lower floor, in distinct places.” The evening before, “a bowl of pipe containing fire, wrapped in a parcel of oakum and other combustibles, was placed near the store door,” of one of the properties beneath the bluff, in a brazen attempt to set the riverfront ablaze. “Fortunately, it was early discovered and removed.” With the New Year of 1797, however, the fires seemed to have come to an end, and as the threat of fire gradually receded the town could exhale again.

In the meantime, many people who had placed possessions in the streets during the fire in order to save said items, instead had found their items purloined during the chaos. The newspaper offered to publicize free of charge advertisements “of the inhabitants, who have missed articles, that were so far saved, as to be placed in the streets.”

William Hunter—whose ad appears above—deserves a special recognition; not only had he been subject to theft but also found himself dispossessed twice within 10 days. The December 6 fire which had left him homeless a second time also displaced one David B. Mitchell. In the years that followed the fortunes of both men would improve, as Mitchell became mayor and Hunter’s business flourished on the wharf, but as we’ll seen in the next post… less than six years later Hunter would die at the hands of Mitchell.

Savannah History Narrative: The Earthquake of 1886

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Researched and written by Jefferson Hall, 1993

“I found a large pan filled with scuppernong grapes on a shelf in the pantry. I could not keep away from them. They belonged to two very lovely and charming young women, both of them partial to nice boys like me. Mother told me not to ask for any, under no circumstances ever to take any, and not eat any just before a meal. I obeyed. But one time while I was still looking at the grapes with longing eyes and hoping that somebody’s generosity would strike me right away, I heard an awful rattling of the dishes in the pantry. It terrified me and I ran out hollering to everybody that the dishes in the pantry were rattling away to beat the band. Nobody believed me. The usual remark was ‘Go along with you, boy. Dishes don’t rattle just so.’ One person went back to investigate and sure enough there was no longer any rattling. I was termed a sensation monger.

Two days later mother got a letter from father saying that the earthquake had hit Savannah and Charleston.”

– Richard Malcolm Charlton

When Mary Johnston Charlton and her three children returned to Savannah from vacation they found their Jones Street house cracked from basement to roof. No one who experienced that night of August 31, 1886 would ever forget it.

A lasting souvenir from the earthquake: Charlton House at Jones and Drayton, Drayton side

It was a warm Tuesday evening in Savannah; at 5:30 it was still 88 degrees. A cool breeze from the northwest had subsided at mid-afternoon, and now the air was perfectly still. John Crowther, superintendant of the Georgia Military Academy, lived on Abercorn Street. A few minutes past 9:30 on that Tuesday evening, as he was preparing to write his wife in Augusta, he heard a noise which at first he thought was a streetcar. At the same moment, more than a hundred miles away in Augusta, Mrs. Crowther in heard the same noise. She thought it was a wagon.

“Uncle Willie looked up smiled & said Earthquake (you must know that they thought they felt a very slight one here on Saturday morning, and Uncle Willie thought it was just going to be a little shake). Willie Carmichael (Uncle Willie’s nephew) thought Uncle Willie was just shaking the table for a joke & then the house began to shake & upstairs the things to tumble around, & then we were all terrified & stood looking at each other.”

– Mary Elliot Crowther

The Earthquake of August 31, 1886 was felt from Maine to Florida; it did damage as far away as Chicago. But nowhere was it worse than Charleston. Mrs. deCaraduec, living with her husband on Meeting Street in Charleston, recalled the terrible commotion.

“Chimeys toppling – bricks falling – glass – china – furniture crashing and breaking – the terrified shrieks and screams of the affrightened negroes in the neighborhood all… to spring up from one’s bed – feel the house rocking – earth trembling & shaking.”

It was, she wrote, “like the huge billows of the ocean.”

Worse than a wagon or a streetcar, she compared the noise to a thousand steam engines. The damage to Charleston was extensive; few buildings were undamaged, and as many as two-thirds were left in ruin. Over the next several days there were countless aftershocks. The scene in Charleston was near apocalyptic. Mysterious water spouts appeared and disappeared in yards, some rising a dozen feet. Outside of the city this water was replaced by a strange blue substance, it was said resembling volcanic matter. Thousands of people refused to enter their own homes, choosing instead to camp out in empty lots.

In Savannah the initial terror was no less dramatic. At a quarter past nine Joseph Weed left the Screven House hotel on Johnson Square. As he walked to Wright Square he overtook two acquaintances, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Bryan.

“We continued together until we got to Mr. Gordon’s corner, where they were to part from me, and go down South Broad St. Before separating, we stood chatting, and suddenly we heard a low rumble and felt the earth moving under our feet, undulating slightly, then from the North East came a roar – such a roar as I can never forget – the earth began to shake and vibrate. Mr. Gordon is putting another story around his house and [it] is surrounded by scaffolding. The whole building began to vibrate, and shake and rise up and down.”

– Joseph D. Weed, September 2, 1886

The three men rushed into the median of South Broad Street. As the trees in the median rocked to and fro, the massive steeple of the Independent Presbyterian Church swayed high above them, “oscillating in a mass.”

Custom House engraving from F.D. Lee and J.L. Agnew’s *Historical Record of the City of Savannah*, 1869

“Night Inspector Higgins, of the custom house, describes his experience. While in the building during the prevalence of the shock, he heard a noise as if a heavy weight was being hauled across the building, and then he heard the plastering falling up stairs. The iron doors and window shutters began rattling, and all at once the building seemed to raise as if it was going to tilt over. It settled back again, seemingly as if going into the ground. The inspector did not stop to make any more observations, but grabbed up his coat, collar and tie, locked the door and ran down the steps across Bay street, where he met a policeman holding onto a post for dear life.”

– Savannah Morning News, September 2, 1886

People jumped from windows, including a Mrs. Smith, who took a high dive from two stories up; another man on Isle of Hope crashed through a church window when he found the more traditional exit too crowded. The quake lasted only thirty seconds, but it was the longest half minute of many people’s lives.

“The top of the earth seemed as if it must be in the condition of the surface of water when boiling… and the low rumble that first came, growing louder as it approached nearer, until it was like rolling thunder, succeeded by the great paralyzing roar, must have been caused by the vibrating of the earth and the rattling of the shaking buildings. About one half second more of such severe upheaval [might] have brought down half the brick structures in the city.”

– Joseph D. Weed, September 2, 1886

Conversely, as the ground rocked and quaked, witnesses observed that the air was perfectly still and calm, eerily devoid of any breeze.

Female Asylum, built 1839; engraving from F.D. Lee and J.L. Agnew’s *Historical Record of the City of Savannah*, 1869

Joseph Weed rushed to his home, today known as the Sorrel-Weed House, on Madison Square. There the girls of the female asylum (which stood on the southeast corner of the square, today site of the later Volunteer Guards Armory building/SCAD Poetter Hall) had rushed out into the square, where the matrons, fearful that it was “dangerous for the little ones to be exposed to the night air,” nonetheless concluded that it was safer than letting them return to the building. Each square offered its own theater of confusion. One square farther south the Pulaski Monument actually shifted six inches on its pedestal. In Whitefield Square a large tent was erected by nurses at the adjoining St. Joseph’s Infirmary, where they removed all their patients for safety. In Johnson Square “Christ church was cracked from the roof half way to the ground,” the Morning News reported.

It was, Joseph Weed remarked, “Everything shaken in every way.”

All clocks in the city facing east or west froze, eerily stopping at or about 9:28. As the Morning News noted, this fact later played a role in answering a particular question.

Get your watch from Samuel Hamilton… in 1886 his store was at the southwest corner of Bull and Broughton

“There are many speculations as to the direction from which the earthquake came. The clocks in the city seemed to play an important part in deciding this question. A visit to the majority of jewelry stores brings forth the following facts: in every store except that of Mr. S.P. Hamilton’s all clocks and regulators facing east or west stopped within a few seconds of 9:28 o’clock, the time of the first great shock, while those facing north or south continued to run. This seems to indicate that the earthquake must have come from an easterly direction.”

– Savannah Morning News, September 2, 1886

The streets of Savannah were filled with terrified, helpless souls, in addition to chairs and furniture emptied from the houses by their frightened owners. The sidewalks were covered with bricks from fallen chimneys. There was only one reported Savannah death as a result of the earthquake, a woman named Lucy Foster, who died of shock. Despite the damage done to many of the buildings, only one was considered to be a complete loss – a small one story store on Broughton Street, which suffered the loss of nearly two walls and most of its roof. In addition, the 100 pound capstone of the neighboring three story building fell in through the skylight and smashed the cashier’s desk.

Another shock hit at 4:50 the next afternoon, interrupting an inquest on Hutchinson Island for an old black man. A witness was in the midst of testimony when the tremor was felt. Said the Morning News:

“‘There she goes again,’ the witness said. His eyes grew double the ordinary size and he started for the door, leaving his evidence half finished. The juror nearest the door waited about half a second and he gave a leap out.”

The others froze in fright, but when the body began to move, all but the coroner rushed out.

Immediately, the call went out to aid a battered Charleston, and despite Savannah’s own damage in the quake, the citizens of Savannah answered the call. An office was established on Bay Street to take goods and subscriptions, but even the railway shipment was delayed due to the effects of the quake… the tracks had shifted in the quake, now warping east and west.

From this point on earthquake rods became standard in all new buildings in Charleston and Savannah. It would be years before some of the damage was repaired, but the earthquake of 1886 would never be forgotten. None of this, however, was on the mind of little Richard Malcolm Charlton on the evening of August 31, 1886. His impression of the importance of the earthquake was a little more personal:

“I have always been thankful for that earthquake that it actually kept me from snitching some grapes.”

– Richard Malcolm Charlton