Keywords

colonial America, eighteenth-century religion, colonial Georgia, Salzburgers, Boltzius, German-American culture, Pietism

Abstract

A group of Protestant refugees from Salzburg founded the town of Ebenezer, Georgia, in 1734. The Pietists at the Francke Foundation in Halle sent two pastors, Johann Martin Boltzius and Israel Christian Gronau, to lead the religious immigrants in their new settlement. As other historians have shown, the Halle sponsors wanted Ebenezer to fulfill their own purposes: establish social and religious autonomy under British colonial rule, reproduce the economic structure and institutions of social and religious reform of the Francke Foundation, and establish a successful Pietist ministry in North America. This study examines journals and correspondence from Ebenezer's pastors, British colonial authorities, and the German religious sponsors to reveal how different aspects of the Pietist vision were compromised until Ebenezer resembled a typical German-American settlement rather than a model Pietist community. Georgia's economic conditions, political pressures, and Ebenezer's internal demographic changes forced the pastors to sacrifice their goals for an orphanage, a free labor economy, and a closely structured community of persecuted Protestants. They ensured Ebenezer's economic success and social autonomy, but they were unable to replicate their sponsors' most distinctly Pietist economic, social and religious enterprises.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2005

Semester

Summer

Advisor

Beiler, Rosalind

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

History

Degree Program

History

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0000698

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0000698

Language

English

Release Date

August 2005

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

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