THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF GEORGIA Trustee Colony transitioned

THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF GEORGIA • Trustee Colony transitioned into the Royal Colony. • Trustee Period lasted 21 years (1733 -1754) • Laws were changed (Land ownership, Slavery, alcohol) • Governance of the colony was taken from the Trustees and returned to the king. • Governors were appointed by the King to rule the Georgia colony as his representatives.

John Reynolds 1754 -1756 (Officially in 1758) • In 1754, was appointed to be Georgia’s first royal governor. • He started Georgia’s bi-cameral General Assembly, comprised of an elected Commons House of Assembly and an appointed Upper House of Assembly, met to determine laws for the colony. • He required all males between 16 and 60 to be organized into militias; • White males who owned property could vote and a court system was established to settle disputes. • Reynolds often found himself at odds with the General Assembly and many colonists were not fond of him. • Complaints about him found their way to the British government and, in 1756, he was recalled to Britain to address the complaints but he did not relinquish his position until 1758.

Henry Ellis 1758 -1760 • Appointed to govern in Reynolds’s place • He became more popular than Reynolds. • Under his leadership, eight parishes were established along Georgia’s coast. He had a workable friendship with the leaders of the Creek nation, who were long irritated by the land claims of Mary Musgrove. • He was able to manage trade agreements between the Creek and local traders encouraged stability in the colony. • Had to resign due to poor health

James Wright 1760 -1776 • Appointment as Ellis’s replacement • The most able, most popular and most efficient leader of the royal governors, because Georgia enjoyed a period of remarkable growth. • A practicing attorney and plantation owner in South Carolina. • He encouraged neighboring American Indians to cede land to the colony. • As revolutionary feelings ignited, Wright maintained his loyalties to Britain and he enforced the Stamp Act. • Georgia was the only colony in which stamps were actually sold. • Placed under house arrest in 1776, he escaped to London where he encouraged a full-scale British attack on the Georgia colony in 1778. • Wright sailed for London when the British evacuated Savannah in July 1782. He never returned to the Georgia colony and died in England in 1785.