A Gullah Speaks

Georgia Lost and Found
CURWOOD: It's Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood. On Georgia 's mid coast, there's a place that was once so isolated locals say it was three years before anyone there heard about the Emancipation Proclamation. The place is called Harris Neck. And while Lincoln 's words finally did reach the community in McIntosh County , its isolation didn't end with the Civil War. Well into the twentieth century, Harris Neck was a world apart from much of the United States . African-American families fished and farmed and owned their own land and boats. They built a community and sustained themselves for generations through their own businesses. Today that community is almost gone. It's been eroded by forces far beyond its control. And the local African-American culture, with its close connection to the land and the sea and its past in West Africa , is almost gone, too. Almost, but not completely. Living on Earth's Jesse Wegman recently traveled to Harris Neck. He met a man there whose own life story is also the story of the near-death of this unique culture, and of a small flicker of hope for its continuation. Here's his report.

WEGMAN: If you ask Wilson Moran, the trouble started six months before he was born. It was the summer of 1942, and someone reported seeing a German U-boat in the waters off Harris Neck. Within days the military decided it needed an airbase there. The residents were given three weeks to leave.

(Bird calls)

MORAN: They took all the crops, carrying all the beans, peas, okra, tomatoes, all that stuff, carrying it out. Some houses they even tore down.

WEGMAN: Several older townspeople died of heart attacks from the strain. Wilson 's grandfather, a farmer and crabber, refused to leave, and was removed by force.

MORAN: There is no sign that we ever lived there. Now, those people, they had a grade school, they had a fire house, they had a police department, which worked from the county seat therein. They had two oyster houses, two crab houses, and they had stores. They made everything, including their liquor. They made moonshine. They were good at it. Very good at it. (Laughs)

WEGMAN: Harris Neck had been a tight community, about 90 families, all black. Mostly fishers and farmers, the children and grandchildren of freedmen.

MORAN: And all this way of life was gone.

WEGMAN: The military seized 2,687 acres at Harris Neck. The families were offered plots of land a few miles away, a fraction the size of what they had left. Five months later, in November 1942, Wilson Moran was born on this new land, in a small shotgun shack his parents built with wood they salvaged from their original home. He was the fourth of 13 children.

(A vehicle drives on rough road)

WEGMAN: On a late spring afternoon with the sun low in the sky but the air still warm, Wilson drives his old Dodge pickup a mile or so down Route 2 to the land his family once owned.

MORAN: Now this land here, from here to the woods and back, my grandpa had 11 acres right in here. This was where his main house was.

WEGMAN: Today the land at Harris Neck is lush and seems untouched by human hands. Shaded groves of pecans and live oaks open into the wide, flat marshland of South Georgia 's barrier islands. Wilson drives intently, hunched over the wheel. As the truck rounds a bend, he points to a large field.

MORAN: That was a big old point, that's where they grew rice in my grandpa's day. These are people's, you know, livelihood. And it really destroyed a lot of people. Two of my uncles left and never came back. Both of them lived in Philadelphia . They became porters on the railroad. But it was just -- this hurt them, you know what I mean? That somebody could be so powerful to move you, and after they were through with it wouldn't let you back. They wanted to use the airstrips right here.

WEGMAN: Out the window a dormant runway lies like an unhealed scar, its pavement cracked and overgrown with weeds. Moran says the military promised to return this land to the residents as soon as the war was over. But no one at Harris Neck remembers getting that promise in writing. So after the war, the land was turned into a county airport. Then in 1962, it was designated a national wildlife refuge.

MORAN: Now it takes an act of Congress for us to get this land back. And you know, the Audubon Society, and they have little bird walks and they have archery hunting and, you know, things like that. But this land is ours. Is ours. It's beautiful, man, you wouldn't believe it, man. And to walk or ride a bike in here and just listen to all the sounds, man, the red-headed woodpeckers, the larks, the sparrows, the cardinals, the bluebirds. They're all here.

WEGMAN: Do you come in here a lot?

MORAN: No. It's not a good feeling for me. I don't enjoy coming in here.

(The pickup advances)

MORAN: Now, isn't it -- you wouldn't believe this was here, would you? This is where we lived. This place here was called Thomas Landing. This was the main landing for the community. Would you believe?

(Car door opens, shuts)

WEGMAN: Wilson walks through dry marsh grass down to the water's edge.

(Surf, bird calls)

MORAN: This, it doesn't get any better than this.

WEGMAN: The water here is calm. It's protected from the open ocean by the barrier islands offshore.

MORAN: Now, when I was a little boy, we'd come down here, and we'd hit this river, and we'd crab and we'd fish. And, like, there are oysters right there, and we'd oyster. Man, it was amazing, you wouldn't believe it. We thought it was all ours. (Laughs) We sure got fooled, didn't we?

WEGMAN: When the families of Harris Neck lost their land, they also lost their docks. Fishing had been central to the community and to blacks up and down the Georgia coast for centuries. Many of the first Europeans to settle here were from cities and knew nothing about fishing. But the Africans who soon followed as slaves did. It wasn't long before they dominated the fisheries. Like their ancestors, they worked close to shore using small boats and cast nets. It was one of the last links they had. Even into the twentieth century, shrimping, crabbing, and oystering all remained virtually 100 percent black.

(A boat engine starts up; voices on radio)

WEGMAN: Then the diesel engine found its way into the area, which meant fishermen could use bigger, more powerful boats. If they could afford them. Within 20 years a new breed of fisherman had pervaded the industry. One with more money to spend, frequently northern, and almost always white.

(Voices, chains. Man: "I'll stop it right there...")

WEGMAN: After World War II thousands of white servicemen came home looking for work. Soon the Georgia fisheries were controlled by white families. By one independent estimate, of the more than 400 shrimp boats currently licensed in the state, blacks own and operate fewer than ten. When Wilson Moran was born, there were still blacks making a living on the water.

MORAN: But as we began to grow older, we saw that it wasn't a good way of life. Every year you were in debt. Every year it was getting harder. And I just didn't want to do it. And none of my brothers. We decided that there had to be something more. There had to be something better than crabbing and being the low man on the totem pole. We didn't have the farms like my grandpa did. So hey, next thing for us, everybody started going into the military.

WEGMAN: Wilson was 17 when he left McIntosh County and joined the army. Then he went north to Hartford , Connecticut , and became a cop. As American stories go, it's a common one. Young man from small town leaves home to find a better life. In Hartford , Wilson found it. He had a good job, and soon his wife Ernestine gave birth to their first child. But it didn't make sense to him that he should be doing well and yet be so far from home. He grew increasingly uncomfortable with his new life. Then in the late 60s, Wilson hit the breaking point. His unit was called to respond to a riot downtown. Amid the chaos, he shot a man. Not long afterwards, Wilson was on traffic duty, waving a group of children across the street, when a young boy pointed at him. The boy said, "That's the man that shot my uncle."

MORAN: And that was the end of me. And I couldn't last any longer. I didn't like it any more.

WEGMAN: Moran packed up his family and headed back to Georgia , settling in Glen County . He tried catching and selling crabs as his father and grandfather had done. He even tried police work again. Ernestine was losing patience. They had a young child, and their jobs up north had paid well. Here, Wilson was making as little as $86 a week. Eventually he landed a job with the phone company, one of only two black men he remembers being hired in 25 years. It was a decade after the Civil Rights Act, but Wilson was discovering that in small southern towns, things changed slowly.

MORAN: The mainstream jobs were closed, and even today some of them still are closed. There's no secret. You can't cover it up.

WEGMAN: Wilson Moran had entered this world literally surrounded by the wreckage of a once vibrant culture. Now, at the end of his working life, he had never worked in his own community. And he had never been able to earn a living doing what he had been raised to do. His own children were putting down roots elsewhere. Wilson knew as well as anyone what all this meant.

MORAN: When that way of life be interfered with, then the culture begins to fail. That subculture, the dialect, you lose the dialect. You lose the skills. Like building a boat. My granddad built boats. My father built boats. I cannot build a boat. You understand? My grandmother knitted nets. I can't knit a net. So therefore, we've lost these things. That was handed down through generations, is now gone. Now, I still have my garden, so I can keep myself informed. But my boys can't plant. They don't even know what season to plant in, right? That way of life is gone, yeah. It's gone. That's the end of it. Want to see my garden? Man, I've got a great garden. Come on, let's see my garden.

(Footfalls)

WEGMAN: Wilson 's garden is out back, on the same acre of land he was born on. Unlike so many others who left McIntosh County , Wilson Moran has come home.

MORAN: This is my garden. You know what that is. Sweet potato. Man, they are something else. And there's my peppers. Sweet peppers...

WEGMAN: Wilson and Ernestine returned here to Harris Neck in 1992, moving into a modest brick house next door to his parents.

MORAN: I grow it and I can give it away.

WEGMAN: A few years ago, Wilson retired and started this garden. It's small, nothing compared to the hundred acres his family once owned. But it's growing.

MORAN: And this is just enough for me to keep me acclimated to what, you know, how to plant. And look how pretty and green they are. Aren't they pretty?

WEGMAN: It's easy to see the loss in the story of Harris Neck. But the way Wilson sees things, standing on this land he left 40 years ago, something is truly lost only when you stop trying to find it. And recently, he found something remarkable, right in his own back yard.

M. MORAN: (Singing) Wombay I walk a mon a cambaleali lily... [phonetic spelling]

WEGMAN: That's Wilson 's mother, Mary Moran. A few years ago, an anthropologist named Joseph Apala heard Mrs. Moran singing this song. When he asked her where she had learned it, she told him her mother had taught it to her as a child. Apala traced the song to a region in West Africa that is now part of Sierra Leone . At less than half a minute, it's believed to be the longest text in an African language preserved by an African-American family.

M. MORAN: (Singing) I walk a mon a cambaleali lily. Wombay I walk a mon a cambaleali lily... [phonetic spelling]

MORAN: We found so much history, man, it is unbelievable, all kinds of stuff.

WEGMAN: Wilson immediately began to look into his family history.

MORAN: You've got the sentence, pictures. This is the root people right here. And all these people...

WEGMAN: In 1997, Joseph Apala and Wilson Moran helped organize a family trip to Sierra Leone . In a small village called Sanahungola they met a woman who knew the exact song Mary Moran sang. She'd learned it as a child, too. Wilson says the trip to Africa was like a fairy tale.

MORAN: Because me, being black, I don't know how many generations black in this country, called African-American, but ain't nothing African about me but my color, because everything about me is American.

(Mary Moran sings)

MORAN: So when they found out that this song took us to West Africa , yeah, it was unreal. How could I trace myself to not West Africa but almost the very village in which my grandmother's people came from? That's impossible. But it happened. And then, what was even more strange was, met a guy on the riverbanks, and this guy is knitting a net. The same way my grandma, Madie Dolly, knitted nets. And I said wow, this is unbelievable. And there are some guys making boats, the same way this guy here made the boats. It was unbelievable.

(A boat cuts through water)

WEGMAN: In Gullah, the West African English hybrid still spoken on the sea islands off Georgia and South Carolina , there is a proverb that says, "If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you come from." A song can't tell you where you're going, but the song that led Wilson Moran to West Africa helped him find a thread that runs through hundreds of years. From a riverbank in Sierra Leone through slave ships across the Atlantic , through his family's lost farmland, fishing boats, and nets, right up to his back yard garden, his mother, and himself, today. Wilson Moran knows he can't get back what's gone, but he also knows that the thread which ties his family to this stretch of Georgia coast isn't broken yet. And that he won't be the one to break it.

MORAN: My children don't know this, but my grandson, who comes every summer, I take him on the water. I get him acclimated. And now, this summer I teach him how to cast the net, at ten. I'm just giving him a taste of what it is. He'll never learn how to read the water. He'll never learn how to read the weather, other than listening to it on television. But he will get some knowledge about what we were about. And every year we teach him, and every year we put him in situations that he can know something about his environment, that it was unique, and it is almost gone, but it did exist. So he can tell his children about it.

(Bird calls, fade to flute up and under)

WEGMAN: For Living on Earth, I'm Jesse Wegman, with Wilson Moran in Harris Neck, on the coast of south Georgia .

PinPoint and Johnny Mercer

Contributed by M Harris

Pin Point

Johnny Mercer learned many life lessons during his childhood visits to Pin Point, near his family’s

Vernon View home. Pin Point is a little fishing village along an estuary south of Savannah , near

the Bethesda orphanage. Freed slaves founded the rural settlement after the American Civil War.

It is one mile wide and a mile and a half long, and has been accessible by paved roads for some

years. The small, predominantly African-American community has a well-established community

of Gullah speakers, a dialect that draws heavily from West African languages. It is the birthplace of

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In Justice Thomas’s memoirs, “My Grandfather’s Son,”

he vividly describes the poverty in which he spent his early years, and the hard work and discipline

of his years living with his grandparents in Savannah .

The crab pickers in the Pin Point community will treat Savannah schoolchildren to a videotaped

storytelling and impromptu a capella folk singing.

Aunt Jemima and her Scarf

All pretty black mamas from the south adorn there heads with the prettiest scarves.You see it in the Southern Pictures of old,the slave women in the field,as the headdress of the Black Mississippi Masalas,this colorful headdress of color.So,I wonder if it carries a special meaning on Aunt Jemima's Head Scarf, Mrs.Butter Worth's headdress, or my grandmama's photos.Is this part of our Southern Heritage.Are we all descended from the Geechee?

First African Baptist Church Harris Neck

Hinder Me Not oh world because I was so happy to see Reverend Timmons Jr,walk blindly by faith to the table and eat.That's how strong the Geechee Gullah eatings smell. And 3 times people had to tell me he was blind.I finally got it when a bee flew right into his fish and he kept eating.

And then my cousin next to me,whose nose was stuck down in the red beans and rice...and the white folks who just drove off the road and helped themselves to some food. You knew they hadn't seemed black people before,but they decided it was time for them to eat so they caught a little of the Gullah spirit so they can make their way over to the eating tent.

So word to the wise,next time you come,get everybody's name before the food starts.We all know Chester Dunham and McIntosh county,but I don't know the name of the soul eating the sloppings next to me. No wonder,the other church was called Hinder Me Not..because nothing hindered Reverend Timmons from his food. A Blind Man that walked and smelled by faith,so much for seeing eye dogs.

F.A.B. Harris Neck 2009 Fall Festival November 28

It was midday...Addy..her Cherokee spirits and foremothers had traveled a few hours to get to the woods we call Harris Neck. And she says foremothers,because it is the only place where God's voice is a woman,the Cherokee nations speaks through a women,and the Afrikan mother is worshipped by all men on their feet.

As Addy pulled into the First African Baptist Church located on the Ancestor's land,she thought of only two things...the crocodile eyes in the pond and the Cherokee/Creek Indians on the stage. She had too forgotten that the Indian soul had been melted in the black ancestry that lines the Gullah culture.She was greeted by the spirits of the wood and remembered how to run through these woods and outrun the tally whacker,the deer, and the croc as she had when she was a child.It is the one thing that made the slave the slave to begin with. The Afrikan Slave was master over Mother Nature and the master couldn't conquer without the Afrikan Slave subduing the land.

Nature slaved to the Afrikan souls and that's why this land remains unconquered by the Whites until its returned by to its Afro-Indian hands.That's why we were all here to remember how we were booted off,and the Afrikan mama's that have held on after death to see it returned. A history never written but never forgotten.

She also thought about what fools her and her brother had been to run this marsh as young as if there were the only existents.

The best part is that Amelias hammock was still there, the Old Country Store was still cooking and like Ossabaw the long road to life was still intact. And even better,no names need to be remembered we recognized each other by spirit.

This is the only place where Addy will worship because as they say God is in the Water. The Water Spirit is in the water..it's that spirit that gets you cross the sound and calls out snake as you run through the water.This is Harris Neck...Where our people once sailed from to other ancestral grands.Yes, the storyteller said it right, the Water Spirit will call you to the water,to the edge of the water,and when you get in,only then do you get the Cool Water of The Holy Ghost.

Welcome to Harris Neck.

I hope to see ya here next here

Ossabaw Island Asks Part X

Ossabaw Island: Cousin Mayberry, You never went over to Ossabaw?
Cousin Mayberry: I never been on Ossabaw Island.But they got that boat that come over there and get them.

Ossabaw Island Asks Part IX

Ossabaw Island:...Interuppted by Cousin before the question asked!
Cousin Mayberry: Willie Mae,Bobo Mama,I think she would live over der too.

Ossabaw Island Asks Part VI

Ossabaw Island: Cousin Mayberry, Who is them?
Cousin Mayberry: Ohh, Aunt Christmas and Bobo Mama Willie Mae use to work over there.

Ossabaw Island Asks Part V

Ossabaw Island: Cousin Mayberry,Tell me more about their hunting?
Cousin Mayberry:They got 'coon,sometimes they'd go crabbing over der,and sometimes they'd come back with fish.

Ossabaw Island Speaks Asks Part II

Ossabaw Island: Cousin Mayberry, Who was your Daddy?
Cousin Mayberry: My daddy's is Luscious, I think you spell it Luciuicuis, and he use to go over there for 'coon and sell it around Pin Point.

Ossabaw Island Asks Part I

Ossabaw Island: Cousin Mayberry, Who do you know from Ossabaw?
Cousin Mayberry: My daddy use to go over there on that Island,I din't go, no I never went...

Pig Hunting At Ossabaw

Ossabaw Island: Did you do any Pig Hunting at Ossabaw like they use to do at Ossabaw, I know you were a hunter so...I just wanted to know?

Cousin Freddie: Yeah Yeah...ohh...it was so many of them.

Cousin Freddie

Ossabaw Island Asks: So, we heard that your family came here from Ossabaw Island, did you know or hear anything about that growing up?

Cousin Freddie: Yea, I didn't live there, but it was a stopping point Ossabaw. They used to stop at Ossabaw to pick up fruits and vegetables. You know Ossabaw is where the rich use to stop ...it was for the rich people. They use to stop over their to get their fruit and vegetables on their excursions.

Their were many old houses and churches over there. I don't remember the name of the black or white churches tho.You know I use to sail over there with my daddy, the Revered. The only was you use to get over there was by boat. That use to be the only way you could get to Skidaway too before they built the land pass. Buck and Mollie use to carry me over there from the dock in Pin Point at your Grandma's House.

Do you know how Pin Point started. Well you know, everybody use to work at the crab factory at your Grandma's House. You know we, my daddy, your daddy, and I use to catch about 30 to 40 pounds a day and she would sale 40 pounds of crab meat at a time. And you know all the boats use to stop there in her yard, she would have 4 to 5 boats pulled up there at a time.

Miss M...

Ossabaw Island Asks: So, we heard that your family came here from Ossabaw Island, did you know or hear anything about that growing up?

Miss M: You know, I am still learning about the story myself, But you know what I wanna tell you is that most of your people and their people (Pin Point) great great grandparents grew up in the Tabby Villas over there on Ossabaw.There was a church over their "Don't Hinder Me Church", where most of our people went.We, our people in Pin Point were force to moved when the "Great Hurricane" came in the late 1800's and blew it down. That's when they moved over to Pin Point.

Cousin Iggy

Ossabaw Island Asks: So, we heard that your family came here from Ossabaw Island, did you know or hear anything about that growing up?

Cousin Iggy: No, I just new Ms. Helen and the crab factory she ran at her house. I don't really remember how she got to Pin Point. I had just joined the Army from 1951, and was in the Korean War, I was in the Army from 1951 to 1953.

My first trip to Pin Point was in 1952, but I don't know how she got there.

Hemo

They called him "Hemo" because he loved chocolate milk. You know "Hemo" is what they use to call chocolate milk back in the day. "Hemo" drank so much chocolate milk in his granddaddy's truck, that "Hemo" became his name....

Hemo..One of the legends of Ossabaw

Look at the Hemo Ad

Vernon View

From PinPoint To Vernon View Island To Ossabaw
Check out the view at, you can PinPoint the locations: Map

Our family car would leave Mama's house from PinPoint, no later than 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning. You know with Mama we were never late.We would get to Vernon View in time enough to load the boxes and stuff onto the boat so we can be off and on the Torrey's Boat(which was docked at Vernon View) by 9 a.m.

Malcolm Bell The Purchasing Agent...he had the dock at Vernon View...he was a purchasing agent ..... The go to guy for when you needed anything on the island ...and the go to guy for the Torreys. So when The Torreys needed something...you can count on us sailing along with their supplies.

So ...through him we were able to come and go on the island... Horse

Horse ... And The Tallywacker

His name was Horse...as a young boy he was the smartest of the clan. For years he remained silent of his roots until he heard the call in the middle of the night "Come Home." But this time home wasn't to Pin Point or Savannah. It was the long silent boat ride across the Moon, pass Skidaway, down Green River. After 40 years, he came back home to Ausapaugh. Where the spirit of the Indian was in the Negro, the white folks were not native, and his tabby shack stood waiting for his story to be told and the white mans story to be untold-besides what did the historians know.

This was Oesebaw, and Ausaaugh when the Indian descended into the night from the back of the island with the Water Spirit beckoning everyone home. There he stood, Horse, as he walked into his Tabby Shack and the long black tally wacker that kept him company at night.

You see here, the Afrikaan was not a slave, the Indian was not massacred, and the European was not power. They were Ausapaugh, one race called to the invisible island...and this is where I, Horse, became one with my Tabby Shack,the Tally Wacker, and the voice that calls me in the middle of the night...

Hello, my name is Horse ...and I am from Oesebaw...not a Geechee...but Ausapaugh.

The Politics Around Ossabaw

Taken from the site: http://www.usg.edu/ossabaw/report/

2009 Annual Report of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance
January 2009

Overview
As we approach the second decade of this century, the Georgia coast faces a critical issue. On the one hand, it remains remarkably well preserved in contrast to the coast-line of neighboring states. One-third of the salt marsh that exist on the entire east coast today are found within the waters of Georgia, and nine of the thirteen barrier islands boast sand dunes, maritime forests and marsh where the human presence is minimal. On the other hand, development of the mainland along the coast is inevitable, and pressures on barrier islands for greater usage are increasing.

This paradox places a special burden on the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance. Created in 2005, the Alliance exists to stimulate usage of the island by faculty and students of the University System, create educational programs that will benefit the young, and reach out to conservationists, naturalists, artists and writers. The dilemma we face is simple. How do we share this island without destroying it? In the past year, 2008, the Alliance reaped the benefit from the groundwork laid down in previous years. The following is a brief synopsis of the high points.

The Symposium
In August, 2005, the Alliance held a roundtable discussion on Ossabaw of historians, educators and archaeologists to discuss how best to interpret the three tabby slave cabins that stand at the North End. The outcome was a recommendation for a symposium on a much neglected topic, African Americans life in the Georgia Lowcountry from the eighteenth century onwards.
The symposium attracted an array of sponsors. Three regional universities agreed to be co-sponsors with the Ossabaw Island Foundation: Armstrong Atlantic State University, Georgia Southern University, and Savannah State University. The Georgia Historical Society lent its support as did the University of Georgia Press. Finally, the Georgia Humanities Council joined in. Eleven leading scholars were invited to present original research. All but one accepted. This distinguished group included three winners of the Bancroft Prize.

The topic attracted a broadly based audience. Thanks in part to exceptional marketing, 445 people attended the three-day symposium at the end of February 2008. They came from eighteen states and three countries. The participants took part in visits to the cabins on Ossabaw Island, teacher workshops, and a tour of African American sites in Savannah, including the place where the largest slave sale took place in Georgia. The Symposium illustrated a fundamental principle of the Chancellor’s program: finding resources outside the University System to fund university activities. The Alliance raised $71,500 for this occasion and another $30,200 in ticket sales for the special events.

University of Georgia Press
Nicole Mitchelle, Director of UGA Press, supported the idea of a book on African Americans in the Georgia Lowcountry and had her staff give valuable assistance at every step of the way. At the end of May, all ten writers turned in their manuscripts. By September, two reviewers produced an evaluation of the articles and made constructive recommendations. And in December, final revisions were received. At the moment, the senior editor of UGA Press, Nancy Grayson, and I are selecting as many as fifty photographs and images to illustrate the book, which is scheduled to come out this fall. Their intention is to make this a trade book aimed at a general audience as well as specialists.

NEH Planning Grant
The Education Alliance, together with the Foundation, is submitting a request to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a Planning Grant of $40,000 to continue the planning for the interpretation of the three tabby cabins on the site of the North End Plantation. The project will build on the work of the symposium. We spent the past fall assembling a team for this undertaking, writing the proposal, compiling a bibliography and researching the evidence. The cabins offer the opportunity to tell three different stories over time— the enslaved workers of the colonial and antebellum periods, the freedmen of the second half of the nineteenth century and their struggle to carve out an existence for themselves, and the African Americans who left the island in the 1890s to create a small community on the mainland and whose principal activities and culture reflected their earlier life on Ossabaw.

The Georgia Power Island Observatory
Ossabaw Island is a national treasure. Thirty years after its purchase by the state of Georgia, the 26,000-acre island offers a rich set of overlapping eco-systems, with verdant foliage, wildlife peculiar to each system, and a natural beauty that cannot be surpassed. The island consists of a 40,000-year-old backbone and a 5,000-year-old arm attached at the southern end that boast different vegetation and land formations. In going from one to the other, the visitor feels as if she is crossing from one time zone into another.

A main thrust of the Alliance is to share that pristine state with the wider world in a responsible way. The primary thrust is the creation of an ambitious network of sensors, monitors, and video cameras to capture the life cycle of the island and convert it into real- time information and images available on Internet. In the fall of 2007, the Foundation received grants totaling over $200,000 to create the first stage of this observatory. Several organizations are now at work to bring the barrier island’s unique environment into focus in classrooms and household across the nation through the use of broadband technology. Partners include Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, Georgia Research Alliance, Armstrong Atlantic State University and NOAA through its grants to SKIO.

In the past several months, two 100-foot towers have been purchased and taken to the island by barge. The first of the towers will be erected near Bradley Beach. Sensors for measuring water quality, salinity and other variables are to be installed on the North End dock. A video camera will be placed on the tower at Bradley Beach. At the present time, the weather station is producing real-time data while a camera on the North End dock offers a 360-degree view.

Ossabest
This past summer, the first wave of students and teachers took advantage of the network and went back to their classrooms this fall to develop projects using the information provided by the Observatory. Armstrong Atlantic State University, under Dr. Ashraf Saad, chair of the Computer Science Department, obtained a grant of $1.1 million from the National Science Foundation to use the Ossabaw Observatory to interest young people in computer technology. During August, 40 students and 30 teachers from the Savannah-Chatham County School System came in four teams to collect weather data, take GPS measurements and to select some object or animal for further study. That study is resulting in a web-based field guide to Ossabaw Island. The teachers spent seven days on Armstrong’s campus to develop lesson plans.
The Savannah Morning News quoted a student from Savannah Arts Academy as saying how delighted he was with what he found on the island: “Aside from the bugs, this place has been great! In a lot of places it’s just untouched, just like it was 500 years ago when the Indians lived here.” That thought captured an essential part of the experience.

The Torrey-West House
In July 2008, seven consultants came together to explore the possibilities for the Torrey- West House when that structure passes back into the hands of the state and then comes under the direction of the Ossabaw Island Foundation. For many years, the Foundation Board has kept discussion of the House off limits in deference to Mrs. West and her desire for privacy. This event marked a turning point. Mrs. West was fully supportive of the effort and spoke at length with the visiting team.

The report affirmed the principle that the optimal use of the House would replicate the spirit of the Ossabaw Island Project of the 1960s and ‘70s. During that period, individuals from different fields of endeavor came together to pursue their own interests and gather for informal conversation. Potential users were identified, including scholars in residence, small think tanks, study tours, group retreats, cultural events, a meeting of scholars, and non-profit board retreats. Suggestions were made about developing partnerships, creating a “ramp-up” strategy that would use the house sooner than later, outlining options in operating the House, and establishing a sound financial base.

The on-island educator for the Foundation and I journeyed to Sapelo Island to survey the Reynolds Mansion and its operation. That structure comes closer than any other to providing a model for how to manage a barrier island study center. The annual budget is $500,000 and the facility is close to but not quite at the break-even point. The manager emphasized how little he and his small staff have to do for host groups. Once on Sapelo, visitors are stunned by the live oak trees, marsh, wildlife and exotic sub-tropical appearance and take over their own experience. Although the Reynolds Mansion does not have the same commitment to “study, research and education” as the Education Alliance, its workings offer insights in how to handle food, linen, room service, and maintenance. “Keep matters as simple as possible; that is what people want,” says James Maunde, who directs the estate.

Visits to Other Sites
This fall, a team from the Foundation and Alliance visited Hobcaw Barony and Yawkey Wildlife Center near Georgetown, S.C., to see how these two locations handle using coastal sites for study, research and education. Hobcaw Barony consists of 17,000 acres given to Clemson and the University of South Carolina for marine biology, and forest and wildlife research. There are fifteen full-time faculty members present as well as 35 graduates and associates. Yawkey Wildlife Center consists of three islands off Georgetown, with 22,000 acres. It has an enormous endowment and is open to college students and faculty at no charge. Hobcaw Barony was a bit like the UGA Marine Institute on Sapelo except more extensive and active. Yawkey is a good illustration of what a sound endowment will do for serious research. It was interesting to note that UGA classes go over to this location for study. Again, there is no charge in reaching the island and no charge once on the island. The only requirement is that visitors bring their own food.

I want to thank Dr. Cathie Mayes Hudson for participating in two of the biggest events of the year. She came to the symposium and attended three days of presentations and activities. And she joined the team of consultants to examine future possibilities of the Torrey-West House, devoting valuable time to helping establish ground rules for considering how best to use this structure.

Paul M. Pressly,Ph.D.DirectorOssabaw Island Education Alliance

List of Original Afrikaan Families

If you are a descendant of one of the original Afrikaan families to Ossabaw. Please send in a comment with your family name.