Karen Auman, "The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – American South

Episode Title: Karen Auman, "The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
Date: November 20, 2025
Host: Lucy Smith B. Miller
Guest: Dr. Karen Auman (Assistant Professor of History, Brigham Young University)

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Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Karen Auman discussing her new book, The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 2024). The book investigates the Salzburgers, a group of Protestant exiles recruited by the Georgia Trustees to settle in colonial Georgia. Dr. Auman challenges common historical narratives by spotlighting the Salzburgers' unique experiences, success as settlers, and significant impact on early Georgian society while exploring themes of religion, philanthropy, environment, social cohesion, and morality.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Karen Auman’s Background and Motivation

• [02:54] Dr. Auman explains her interest in German settlers in colonial America and how their stories often remain isolated from broader colonial or transatlantic narratives. She found the Salzburgers especially compelling due to the rich primary sources available—most notably an 18-volume diary collection by George Fenwick Jones.
• Quote:

  "The settlers don't fit the standard narrative of the history of Georgia... I kind of objected to the idea that Georgia only prospered because they adopted slavery."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [04:55]

2. Genealogical Approach in Research

• [05:56] Dr. Auman notes that her skills as a genealogist helped her locate vital records that might be overlooked by traditional historians, allowing for richer, more personal, and better-sourced historical narratives.
• Quote:

  "Any good historian can also be a good genealogist... we're searching and sourcing records, we think critically and carefully about them, and we build stories about people's lives."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [05:59]

3. The Book’s Title, “The Good Forest”

• [07:33] The title, suggested by Dr. Laurie Benton, carries dual meaning: referencing both the Salzburgers’ new physical and moral landscape, and how they saw their colonial journey as a kind of biblical, moral trial.
• Quote:

  "It also has all the moralistic overtones... their chief pastor, Johann Martin Bolzius, really framed their experience as being just like the Israelites in the Old Testament."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [07:54]

4. Salzburgers as Ideal Settlers: Comparison with Savannah Settlers

• [09:10] The Trustees intended Georgia as a charity colony for "worthy poor"—religious, communal, hardworking, preferably Protestant. The Salzburgers, as persecuted exiles, matched this ideal. Savannah, by contrast, was more heterogeneous, motivated by economic opportunity rather than charitable or communal ideals.
• Quote:

  "They did build a community...really cohesive and work together. And they were not rich...they were deferential to hierarchy."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [10:22]

5. Exile and Community Formation

• [12:00] Exile for religious reasons was the defining event for the Salzburgers, acting as a strong unifying force. Being forced out of Salzburg (an independent prince-archbishopric) bonded the group through trauma and shared experience.
• Quote:

  "If you could meet one of them today...being exiled from their homes for the sake of their religion was the defining moment of their lives."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [12:02]

6. Trustees’ Role and Limits of Their Control

• [14:06] While Trustees believed they exerted substantial control, the Salzburgers effectively negotiated with them, and made pragmatic adaptations—especially in land allocation, to ensure fair distribution of poor soil.
• Quote:

  "The Salzburgers kind of made those outlines on a map, but in reality they kind of worked together so that everybody had a little bit of good soil."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [16:27]

7. Protestant Philanthropy and the Network of Support

• [18:31] The SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) and German pietists supported the Salzburgers for religious and political reasons—an ecumenical Protestant response to Catholic Counter-Reformation, solidarity among Protestant monarchs, and Christian charity.
• Quote:

  "English and German Protestants worked together...they saw helping the Salzburgers in America as part of their Christian mission to help the weak and the poor and to spread the Protestant gospel."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [21:09]

8. Environment and Adaptation

• [22:04] The Salzburgers’ Alpine origins contrasted sharply with the pine barrens and swamplands of Georgia. They adapted by changing the environment—clearing land, communal farming—but also interpreted hardships as a spiritual trial.
• Quote:

  "Everything was totally different. And I think that had a powerful impact on the Salzburgers while they tried to figure out how to make it there."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [24:42]

9. Identity, Leadership & Power Structures

• [26:30] After being exiled, Salzburgers became "stateless," accepting subjecthood to the (German-born) King George II. Trustees’ attempts at remote control led to confusion and a power vacuum. Pastor Johann Martin Bolzius naturally assumed authority—becoming both spiritual and civic leader due to his leadership and the Trustees’ absence.
• Quote:

  "They appeal everything to...Oglethorpe, the Trustees, to Franke in Germany...They don't go through any hierarchy of positions in Savannah or in Georgia."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [28:04]

10. Community Cohesion and the Role of Bolzius

• [33:25] Bolzius’s long leadership provided stability. The community was maintained through shared trauma, religion, language, and outsider status. Conflict with English-speaking settlers (the “Malcontents”), who favored slavery, enforced group cohesion.
• Quote:

  "Their poverty linked them together...they need each other. And the fact that they were a different religion and language...kept them communal too."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [34:00]

11. Moral Economy: Cattle, Lumber, Silk

• [36:10] The Trustees actively discouraged plantation agriculture/slavery and instead promoted industries like cattle farming, lumber, and silk (sericulture). These were both practical and considered "morally good," promoting communal well-being and enabling contributions from women, children, and the elderly.
• Quote:

  "Silk was widely viewed as a morally good industry because… the poor, the weak, disabled, women and children could do the work."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [38:40]

12. Neighbors and External Influences

• [42:24] The strongest influences on the Salzburgers came from their European and British supporters, less so their physical neighbors (including Native Americans or nearby malcontents). The rise of pro-slavery, English-speaking malcontents eventually upended the Trustees’ social and economic vision.
• Quote:

  "The people who had the greatest impact...were actually not their neighbors, but they were their supporters in Europe and Britain. They're the ones that kept them going, kept them spiritually and physically fed."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [42:34]

13. Decline of Ebenezer

• [45:35] The convergence of the introduction of slavery, loss of Bolzius’s leadership, and the American Revolution fractured the Salzburgers’ cohesive community, as political, economic, and social shifts undermined their communal model.
• Quote:

  "All three of them...is what ended the community, although their church is still there."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [47:38]

14. Current and Future Research

• [48:18] Dr. Auman is working on projects exploring philanthropy, empire, and early capitalism, as well as the intersection of philanthropy and Anglo-German relations in the context of 18th-century charity schools in Pennsylvania.
• Quote:

  "I've been working on a book on the intersection of philanthropy and empire and with possibly another variable in there of early capitalism."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [48:19]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On integrating genealogy and history:
  "Any good historian can also be a good genealogist... we're searching and sourcing records, we think critically and carefully about them, and we build stories about people's lives."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [05:59]

• On the Salzburgers’ sense of exile:
  "Being exiled from their homes for the sake of their religion was the defining moment of their lives."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [12:02]

• On the environment:
  "Everything was totally different. And I think that had a powerful impact on the Salzburgers while they tried to figure out how to make it there."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [24:42]

• On community divisions:
  "Nothing unifies like having a common enemy."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [35:52]

• On the intersection of morality and economy:
  "The Trustees fished around for economic ventures that could sustain the colony and also contribute to the British Empire. There's no reason to have a colony unless it can contribute to the empire, right."
  — Dr. Karen Auman [36:38]

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Timestamps for Major Topics

| Timestamp | Topic | |------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:54 | Dr. Auman’s background and motivations | | 05:56 | Influence of genealogy in historical research | | 07:33 | Meaning behind the “Good Forest” title | | 09:10 | Salzburgers vs. Savannah settlers as ‘ideal’ Trustees’ colonists | | 12:00 | How exile shaped the Salzburgers’ communal identity | | 14:06 | Trustees’ role and their limited actual control | | 18:31 | The Protestant philanthropy network supporting the Salzburgers | | 22:04 | Environmental adaptation and impact on settlers | | 26:30 | Identity, subjecthood, and power/vacuum filled by Bolzius | | 33:25 | Community cohesion and the influence of Bolzius | | 36:10 | Development of moral, communal economy: cattle, lumber, silk | | 42:24 | Influences of European sponsors, Native relations, and the “Malcontents”| | 45:35 | Decline of Ebenezer: Slavery, loss of leadership, and Revolution | | 48:18 | Dr. Auman's current and future research |

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Tone & Style Reflection

Dr. Auman’s language is accessible, nuanced, and engaging, blending scholarly insight with storytelling. She repeatedly stresses the complexity—socially, morally, and economically—of the Salzburgers’ story, rejecting simplistic “decline-and-fall” or “slavery = prosperity” narratives. The tone is inviting, thoughtful, and humanizes both leaders and ordinary community members.

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Summary Conclusion

This episode delivers a rich, accessible discussion of the Salzburgers’ central role in early Georgia—their origins as persecuted Protestants, their adaptation to an unfamiliar environment, their creation of a tight-knit, morally-driven community, and their eventual decline amidst shifting political and economic tides. Dr. Auman provides fresh perspectives on colonial Georgia’s history, emphasizing the lasting impact of religious community, philanthropy, and leadership.

If you’re interested in colonial American history, the intersection of religion, migration, and community, or the ways in which morality shapes economies, Dr. Auman’s work and this episode provide a compelling, insightful listen.

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Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

Hello and welcome back to the American South, a channel on the New Books Network. I'm Lucy Smith B. Miller, a host on the channel. I'm joined today by Dr. Karen Amman to discuss her book, the Good the Salzburger's Success and the Plan for Georgia. The Good Forest was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2024 as part of the Early American Places series. Karen's book explores some of Georgia's earliest settlers, the Salzburgers. She investigates the plan of the Georgia Trustees to create a colony that would improve the lives of the poor and consist of hardworking, morally upstanding settlers. Through the exploration of the Salzburgers, origins, benefactors, environment, community, economy, and their relation to other settlers in the region. The Good Forest seeks to widen the narrative of early Georgia history. Dr. Karen Almond is an assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University and a certified genealogist. She studies Germans during the colonial period in the Atlantic world, religion on the frontiers of America, migrations and families. Dr. Karen Aman, welcome to the show.

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Well, thank you, thank you for having me.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

Yes, thank you for being here. Before we begin, I would love to hear about your background and what inspired you to write this book.

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Well, I was interested in Germans and the role of Germans in settling colonial America. You might guess from my surname that I have German heritage, although that's just one of my ancestries. And so, and I, I felt like colonial stories about Germans in America were often kind of as their own separate little things. They're not all often widely integrated into the broader colonial experience or the transatlantic experience. There's certainly lots of good historians who work on Germans in America, but I'm trying to get it more integrated into what happened in America ultimately. My dissertation advisor, Dr. Karen Kupperman, pointed me to the Georgia Salzburgers. And as you said, they were part of this group of Protestants who were exiled from their homelands and they were recruited by the founders of Georgia to settle there. And the more I looked at the sources, they have a lot of great sources because a German professor named George Fenwick Jones published this 18 volume collection of the official diaries of them. So there's a lot of good sources and they frequently make appearances in Georgia history, but just sort of dropping in and dropping out, out of context. As I looked at the sources, it became clear to me that the settlers don't fit the standard narrative of the history of Georgia and that in early Georgia they were pretty significant part of the colony. So if I grossly oversimplify this, what I would call the traditional history of Georgia is that the Trustees who founded it were naive, they were heavy handed, they were paternalistic and opportunists, not opportunist, over, overly excited by what they did. And they just didn't really know how to run a colony. And they were complete failures that they were, you know, full of cockamamieny ideas about how a colony should be that just doomed it to fail. And that main point was around slavery. The Trustees did not want slavery in their colony because they thought it led to moral decay for the enslaver who would live off the luxury of other people's work. They were not so concerned sadly about the lives of the Africans who were enslaved. So I just felt like it didn't, it didn't fit. The Salzburgers didn't fit that, that standard history at all. And I kind of objected to the idea that Georgia only prospered because they adopted slavery. And that's when everything got great in the colony. So I really wanted to tell their story.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

Yeah, very interesting. And so like, did your work at all as, like, as a genealogist, like, play. Play a role in how you kind of, like, formatted this book or like, kind of how you approached it.

[Dr. Karen Almond]

I wouldn't say that it mindfully played a part. Um, although I did procrastinate writing my dissertation by doing genealogy because then I felt like I was still doing something productive. But I think it did maybe, maybe subconsciously play a role because I believe that any good historian can also be a good genealogist. Because we do the same things. We're searching and sourcing records, we think critically and carefully about them and we read them for clues and we build stories about people's lives. So we know that historians do that every day. That's the job of a historian. I think what's a little bit different being a genealogist is that I was very, very familiar with how to find certain types of records. So I think all historians know, if you're going to work on colonial Georgia, that you should look at the colonial records of Georgia, which are held at the National Archives at Kew in Britain. But you may not know that Family Search has the world's largest collection of probate court and property records, and that you can sit in your home and read the wills and the deeds and all of that of the people that you're studying. So I think I. I've actually had histor. Other historians contact me, like, can you help me find this? And for a genealogist, it's really easy to find. So I think maybe that's the only real impact.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

So very cool. What led you to title your book the Good Forest? The Salzburgers Success and the Plan for Georg?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Well, I have to be honest here and say that I had a chapter that was titled the good Forest. And Dr. Lori Benton was on my dissertation committee and she suggested it as the title for the book. And if you've ever read any of her work, you know that she just has wonderful prose and she has a way with words. And so I take her advice seriously. But the reason I had the chapter on that and the reason I liked the title is the Good Forest refers both to the physical environment and this brand new environment that the Salzburgers found themselves in. And it also has all the moralistic overtones that came along with. With these settlers settling in Georgia, trying to create this really great moral, bonded religious community. And their chief pastor was a man named Johann Martin Bolzius. And he was sort of their de facto leader. And he really framed their experience for them as being just like the Israelites in the Old Testament, you know, it's a place where God will test them and try them and ultimately strengthen them and prove them. And so that title just has that meaning to me of all of that together.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

So your main argument focuses on how the Salzburgers fit the ideal settlers that the Trustees intended to live in Georgia. So how did the Salzburgers live up to the expectations of the Trustees? And why didn't the settlers of Savannah live up to those expectations?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Oh, well, that's a very big question.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

It is.

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Part of me wants to say, we'll go read the book. No, the Trustees, they start. The core group that comprised the Trustees for Georgia had this very idealistic idea that the colony would be different. Right. First of all, it would be a charity. There's no other American colony that was a charity. And it was supposed to be about making the worthy poor turn them into valuable contributors of society. And they partnered with religious philanthropies to do this. So what does worthy poor mean? So it generally, it could take on different meanings, but worthy poor generally meant that you were religious and better if you're Protestant. You're, you don't count if you're Catholic. They did let some Jews in. You need to be community minded and you need to be hard working. Right. They didn't want people who were given to luxury or. And that's why they banned slavery, as I mentioned before. And they thought, they looked at what was going on in the Caribbean and in South Carolina where the wealthy were white enslavers, didn't. They thought didn't really work. And the Bible said that your man is supposed to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. So he wanted this. So I think the Salzburgers fit that really well. They, they have this shared background of being religious exiles. The phrase that gets used all the time in Europe by the Trustees and many, many others was poor persecuted Protestants of Europe over and over. The Triple P and the Salzburgers were that. And they did build a community, have a community that was really cohesive and work together. And they were not rich. I mean, they were exiled, they were poor. They had nothing. Right. So they just really fit that. They were deferential to hierarchy. So that fit, that all fit. Savannah was settled by people of all different backgrounds. I mean, they're British and they're Scottish and there's Germans and there's other people there, but they're not coming as a group. And they don't have that, that cohesiveness that a group had coming together. Some of them paid their own way And I. I think a lot of them came for the same reason that my ancestors came to America, which was for land and economic opportunity. Right. And so coming for land and to become rich is not really what the Trustees wanted.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

So moving into chapter one, titled Exile. So how did being exiles affect the early Salzburger settlers and what role did that play in shaping the formation of the community?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

I think if you could meet one of them today in person, I think they would tell you that being exiled from their homes was for the sake of their religion, was the defining moment of their lives. Right. It was. So a little background. Salzburg was not part of Austria. It was its own prince archbishopric. It was ruled by, you know, an archbishop of the Catholic Church and part of the Counter Reformation. He brought in the Jesuits. There were quite a few Protestants in his territory. It's not just the city of Salzburg, it's the territory all around it. And in 18, in 1731, he issued an expulsion order for all Protestants. Ultimately, that was 20,000 people who were expelled from Salzburg. And the vast majority of them stayed in Central Europe, went under the protection of Prussian King Frederick William to East Prussia. But I think that whole experience, many of the Salzburgers probably didn't know each other a lot before they decided to go to America, although there are some clusters of people from the same town. They didn't all know each other, but they'd all gone through this shared experience. Right. And it had to be quite traumatizing. Originally, they were supposed to leave behind all children under age 12 because the children were going to be raised as Catholic. So if you're a devout Lutheran, Protestant, just the thought of that, that's not just all your personal possessions, Right. But that's your family, their eternal souls. Right. And so I think all of that just going through that exilic experience together was just really unifying common bond. It had to be.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

Right. So looking at chapter two Trustees, how did the Trustees impact the settlement of the Salzburgers? And to what extent were they in control of the settlement?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

I think they thought they were in a lot of control, but I don't think they were. So the Trustees, as I point, as I mentioned in the book, the Trustees were shaping their. They got the charter for Georgia in 17, spring of 1732, which is right when the Salzburgers were being kicked out. And so very quickly, the Trustees recruited them. Obviously, if that group didn't, if the Trustees didn't exist, those people would have not come to America. So on the. On the highest level, they impact the settlement. The Trustees Kind of negotiate a little. Going to America was not the obvious choice. It was by far the riskier choice than staying in Europe. And they had to negotiate a little with the trustees. And they got the trustees to, you know, in addition to their generous offer of supplies and land and all that, they got them to make commitments such as they would have a pastor with them as a community. So. So from the beginning, I think the Salzburgers had a little more say over their community than we might think with the trustees. Now having said that, this is 18th century British aristocrats, right? They, they control things. They think they do. And especially in just in the everyday basics. The first few years, the Salzburgers were dependent on these charitable suppliers for food, for shoes. They didn't have a shoemaker in the colony, so they had to get shoes sent to them and clothes and material. And you know, so they were, you know, physically dependent. And so that, that made Boltzius and others who had a natural inclination to support hierarchy, that made them even more willing to position themselves as the ideal settlers. Deferential, ready to go. But you know, on the ground, the Trustees. On the ground, things happen that the Trustees can't control. From London, right. So a good example of that is the land. So you mentioned to me that you're from Savannah and you know how it's beauty, it's beautifully laid out with these beautiful squares. It's the one of the hallmarks of the city, right? Well, the Salzburger settlement, Ebenezer, was supposed to be that same way with that same plan with, you know, and then the small town lots and then smaller lots, ring in the town and then your big plantations outside. Well, where the Salzburgers settled, the, they were in the Pine Barrens and the soil was terrible. And so the Salzburgers kind of made those outlines on a map. But in reality they kind of worked together so that everybody had a little bit of good soil because there just wasn't enough good soil to go around. And it would if, if they'd done it the Trustees way, some people would have pretty okay land and other people would starve, right? So it's that kind of thing where they just kind of like, yes, that's a great idea. Trustees, we love it. But then they do what they have to do.

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[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

And for delivery the next chapter titled Protestant Philanthropists. So let led the SPCK and the German ties who supported the Salzburgers to be so heavily invested in the welfare of the settlers.

[Dr. Karen Almond]

This is the question that actually really drove my interest from the. And it still, it still motivates my research a little bit. Why would Germans who never intend to migrate to America, why would they work so hard to build up the British colonies? I think there's lots of different answers for that depending on what you're looking at. But for the, for Georgia and for the Salzburgers, part of the explanation has to be that the King of Great Britain was German, right? King George II was born and raised in Hanover. He was a elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire. And the reason he became king is because his ancestors had had ties to German princes. And his, his great grandmother, yeah, his great grandmother was the daughter of King James I. So that's how he's related to them. So you know, the royalty, they're all interconnected anyway, so that has to be part of it, right? It's they're all interconnected anyway. He's a German Lutheran, so Queen Anne before him had had a Lutheran chapel right there at the palace of St. James. So there's already been connections is what I' camp. A stronger explanation is that because of these sort of high level ties, English and German Protestants worked together and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge the SPCK already had established a network of connections on the continent of like minded Protestants. It was a very ecumenical organization. As long as you didn't like Catholics, you were in the club. Right. So they already had this network in place and I and I. It's very clear that the SPCK and the Pietist network, which was centered around the Franke foundations in Halle, Germany. It's really clear that they. They saw helping the Salzburgers in America as part of their Christian mission to help the weak and the poor and to spread the Protestant gospel. Right. Both the British and the Prussian king thought of themselves as the protectors of Protestantism. And this is the height of the Catholic Counter Reformation, which the Catholics are winning. And so this is a. This is a joint effort against pushing back against that. So I'm sure it's all, it's all of that all combined. I. What I don't know is, you know, there's specific individuals. There's a banker in Augsburg named Christian von Munch, and he, he sponsors a lot. He's. He's part of this Franca Foundation's network of rich pietists. And I would just love to know more about why he personally spent so much of his fortune and time, you know, supporting this colony in Georgia. Part of it. I know he was interested in silk production and so he, he was interested later on, and maybe there could be some financial gain there, but initially I don't think it was that at all. I think it was his Christian charity.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

Is what we'll call it in the next chapter, which is the title of your book, the Good Forest. You focus a lot on the environment in which the Salzburgers settled. In what role did the wilderness play in the lives of the settlers? And how was the environment shaped by the Salzburgers and how did the environment shape them? Right.

[Dr. Karen Almond]

So I've always been interested in environmental history and the way people think about and interact with their surroundings. I think it has much greater impact than we in our modern world will recognize sometimes. And for this group of people, I was just really struck with. These people lived in the deep valleys south of Salzburg in the Alps. A big group of them came from a place called Gastein Badgestein, and it's now like a ski resort area. And if you've ever been there, the valley is so narrow, it's like barely two roads wide. It's just. This is where they lived. They, you know, their men were miners or they ran their sheep up the mountain to the Alpine meadows during the summer and brought them back down and all of this. And then they arrive in Georgia and they're in pine barrens and in swampland and in canebrakes, and they sort of nonchalantly write in the. In the journal, we had very strong storm yesterday, and I'm Thinking, yeah, maybe that was a hurricane, you know, that you're describing. Right. So it's just so different. And so I felt like I just really wanted to investigate that more and write a chapter about it because it has to affect. It has to affect. I'm a displaced Californian and I'm still trying to figure out how to grow stuff where I live. So they initially settled inland a little bit, but the, the soil was so poor that they moved to a location that's right on the Savannah river at the intersection of Ebenezer Creek and Ebenezer Creek is still what they call a blackwater Creek. It's got bald cypress and tupelo trees and the water'. Black. The land that off of that was pine barren. So, you know, not thickly covered forest floor, more straight tall pines. So everything was totally different. And I think, I think that had a powerful impact on the Salzburgers while they tried to figure out how to, how to make it there. They. James Van Horn Melton, who sadly recently passed away, was professor emeritus at Forgotten the Name now Atlanta. It'll come to me. He, he researched them. That's embarrassing. He's, he's, he researched them and he found a lot of the first ones who came Emory, Emory University. He found some of the first ones who came were miners. So, you know, now they're expected to be farmers in a pine barren where you can't grow things. So I think it really affected them. Like all colonists, they shaped their, the environment and changed it dramatically. They cut down trees, they thought it was so hot because there were so many trees. And so, and they weren't stupid. This was the best thinking of the day. And so they would chop down trees to get the winds blowing so that they wouldn't be so hot. They built fill up fences around their orchards, right? They protected their animals. They got angry when Native Americans would kill their pigs because they let their pigs root around the forest. Well, if you do environmental history, you know, letting pigs root around in the forest changes the floor and fauna that changes the soil, changes the flora and fauna that grows. So they changed the, they changed everything. You know, they had a significant impact on the land. What's different for the Salzburgers from the other low country settlers was the religious interpretation of the whole experience in the landscape. They just framed our lives as, you know, this is like they would never have said a promised land. That's not the right thing. But they framed it as, this is a place where God will try and protect them. So. And it did try them. I Mean, it's, I think it was hard. They were starving at the beginning.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

Chapter 5 subjects why was it so easy for the Salzburgers to see themselves as English despite their German roots? And why did the Trustees never directly appoint a leader for the settlement? And what were the consequences of this decision?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Well, so after being exiled, the Salzburgers were stateless, right? They didn't have anybody. And I don't, I, I don't think any European would have ever considered not being subject to a monarch somewhere. Right. I don't think they considered themselves English. They did consider themselves subjects to King George ii, who was German. He was English. Right. And Also by the 1730s, it's pretty clear that Britain did have a reputation for liberty be, you know, floating around Europe, at least among Germans. And I spent some time in the book talking about what that actually meant to different people. It meant different things to different people what liberty means. But for the Salzburgers, it seems to have been the liberty to practice your religion and to live in your community. And that all fit well with what King George and the Trustees had on offer to them. Right. As long as you were Protestant. I mentioned that the Trustees, you know, promised in writing some things to the exiles. And one of the things they promised is that in addition to unencumbered land, so they wouldn't have a feudal duty to like serve in the military or something like. So unencumbered land, freedom to practice their religion and all the rights of the, the phrase was all the rights of his Majesty's natural born subjects. So that was, that was quite an offer to a stateless people, right. That you could become, you could have all the, the rights that Englishmen had. Now, Baltius thought that the English took liberty too far right. But it was certainly appealing as far as local rule. So the Trustees attempted to control everything out of London. And the critics of Trustees and the quote, standard narrative of Georgia that I critiqued earlier, I think they're right in saying the Trustees, you know, didn't really do this part very well. They, you know, James Oglethorpe was one of the Trustees and he was there for a while and he'd be their eyes on ears on the ground. And they sent, later on, they sent a man named William Stevens and called him a president, and he was their eyes and ears on the ground. But they really tried to control everything from London. And that would be, I think, hard today with the, an era of instant communication. So I don't know what they were, why they thought it would work, what that meant in, in ebenezer. For the Salzburgers is that Boltzius. They. They appeal everything to, you know, Oglethorpe, to the Trustees, to their. To franca in Germany, to. To their European context. They don't go through any hierarchy of positions in Savannah or in Georgia. At the very beginning, the Trustees appointed a commissioner for each transport, that is each group of Salzburgers when they're on the ship. The commissioner was in charge of getting them there, helping them, you know, establish homes, build places, and giving out the food, aid and all that kind of stuff. And just so happened in 1736. There are two transports were there at the same time. So we have two commissioners who think that they're in charge of everything there at the same time. And they fought and it, it became a real, real tangible problem where people were starving because of it and aid was being locked up and things like that. So power doesn't, you know, somebody needed to step in. And the person who did was their pastor, Johann Martin Bolzius. He became the de facto civil and religious leader. He very politely and deferentially kind of bad talked both of these commissioners, and they were gone in a year or two. And he kind of ran everything day to day. There's a lot of opportunity there to abuse that position, but I don't really get the sense that he did. He just seemed to have the support of his people. I mean, after a few years, they could have left. People were talking all the time about how great Pennsylvania is. They could have left and they didn't. They stayed in this really, you know, communal society. So it had a. I think it had a bigger effect on the colony as a whole because that power vacuum just let people who were dissenters, you know, fill the void, if you will. But for Ebenezer, it meant that they could kind of actually do their own thing.

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[Dr. Karen Almond]

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[Dr. Karen Almond]

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[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

The stay terms apply in chapter six. Community. You note that the success of the Salzburgers in Georgia was tied to the tight knit community that they formed. What factors led to the creation of this close community and would this community have formed without the leader leadership of Baltius?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

So I do believe that Johan Martin Boltes was a key part in creating and sustaining a sense of community. So I talked about that, you know, shared experience of being exiled from your home. But that's really only the first few groups of people. After that other transports come of people from a much more, more diverse background. And then of course second generation and third generation Bius lived a long time. He died in 1765, so more than 30 years. So you have that consistency there. So I think that's, that's part of it. The religious ties linked them together. Their poverty linked them together. You know, I argue that they're successful. They are in the sense that they can sustain themselves, but they're certainly not wealthy. Right. And they need, they need each other. Right. And so I think that helped build the community. And the fact that they were a different religion and a different language than the people in Savannah or some of the Altamaha, some of the other settlements sort of kept them communal too. And this, this idea that they don't, they work with those power structures in the colony, but they always have that ability appeal to Franca or to the SPCK or to the Trustees directly. They can always kind of go over whatever else is going on in Georgia. So they kind of, it helps them kind of stay their own little thing. They had a later when, you know, a few years later, by the early 1740s we get a group called the Malcontents in Georgia. They're well known in Georgia history. They are the group of English speaking settlers who want, who are critical of the Trustees and who want slavery and some other things. And they ultimately succeed. The Trustees surrender their charter and it becomes a royal colony in 1752. So Boltius called them unchristian Christians. He did not like those English people who were so Defiant and rude to the charitable trustees and. And the spck. And so he kind of set up. I'm not sure it was intentional, but he kind of set up an us versus them mindset there in the colony. In the Malcontents wanted slavery and the Salzburgers didn't want slavery and were too poor to have enslaved people anyway. Uh, and so it just kind of, again, kind of coalesced. That group. Nothing unifies like having a common enemy.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

Sadly, in chapter seven, the Moral Economy, the sources of income that the settlers participate in, cattle, lumber, and silk, are rather unique when compared to other English colonies such as South Carolina. Why were these industries chosen over others? And what role did morality play in determining the creation of the settlement's economy?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Yeah, good. Good question. So the Trustees mindfully did not want to reproduce South Carolina's economy. It was based on plantation slavery. And they were quite clear that they didn't want that. Right. Because they thought that built a society of extreme wealth and extreme poverty and the wealthy just sit around and do nothing and live off the work of others. So the Trustees fished around for economic ventures that could sustain the colony and also contribute to the British Empire. There's no reason to have a colony unless it can contribute to the empire, right. To the motherland. So cattle was a natural one. You needed it. Columbus brought cattle to America on his second voyage. So by the time. By the 1730s, there were feral cows all over the American Southeast that the feral descendants of the cattle that the Spanish had brought. So. And some of the first things that were given to the Salzburgers to help them settle were cows. Because, of course, European culture and diet is really tied to cows, especially if you live in the Alps and you eat a lot of cheese. So. So cattle was really a natural thing for them. And. And I. I don't think they thought of it so much as, you know, we're. When they started, I don't think they began thinking this is our great economic venture. I think it was just part of living there. Right. And then they realized they could invest in buying more cows and it would help them. The lumber and the silk production were mindful choices. They were encouraged by the Trustees. The Trustees didn't want them compete with South Carolina. And so the lumber in particular ended up being a supplier to the plantations of the Caribbean and to South Carolina. So both of those places needed. London especially needed lumber, especially the Caribbean. Right. Small islands, they need some lumber. So. And the Salzburgers are living in a place with lots of really tall pine trees, you know, good Southern pine trees, right. So that was a natural thing. Boltzius wanted communal economic activities beyond just subsistence farming. And he latched onto this as something that could bring money into the community. Because if you're just subsistence farmers, you never bring any money into the community. So having a sawmill, doing lumber would bring money into the economy and be good industry. The silk, or sericulture, was heavily incentivized by the Trustees. As I write in the book, silk was widely viewed as a morally good industry because you could, the poor, the weak, disabled, women and children could do the work. They believed it wasn't as physically demanding, although I disagree. They had to feed the worms every two hours and they had to pluck a lot of mulberry trees. But silk was an expensive luxury product. And the best economic thinking of the day in Europe was that if you import goods, you weaken your economy. So you know, it had all these benefits behind it. The Trustees paid, the settlers of Georgia paid paid experts to come to Georgia to teach silk. And early settlers were required by contract to plant mulberry trees, which was the food needed to grow silkworms. So the Trustees were heavily incentivizing silk production. That's true for all of Georgia. But the Salzburgers jumped on. It is a little bit more complex. Boltius wanted these economic projects that would benefit the whole community. He convinced the Trustees, the SPCK and the German pietists to really support the effort. So they built a lumber mill with donated money. They built a silk factory with donated money. Silk needs, you need copper bowls, you need all kinds of stuff for it. And it was all donated to them. And he latched onto it as a way that the elderly and poor could contribute, you know, and feel like they're valued members of the community. I think it helped also that his wife, Gertrude, who was a Salzburger, so he, he was single when he went over there. He was not a Salzburger, but he was single and he married a Salzburger. His wife and her sister led the effort to, to sort of organize communal level scale silk production in Ebenezer. They collectively bargained for wages and for the bounty that the Trustees paid, for example. And so it was definitely a real communal effort. And you have to remember that lumber and silk production you need. The argument was that you could grow silk on your own, on your own small farm, but really you need a lot of people. One family on a farm outside of Savannah, you know, in Savannah would be disadvantaged to the collective work of a bunch of people in Ebenezer who are organized and like I said you have to feed, you have to feed the worms every two hours and pick the leaves and all that kind of stuff. One family, it's really hard. So it's morally good. Industry includes everybody. You can work. The trustees are paying big bonuses and it brought in real money to the community.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

In your last chapter, neighbors, I would like to know which of the Salzburger's neighbors do you think had the greatest impact on the settlers?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Oh, So I, I think the, the people who had the greatest impact on the Salzburger community were actually not their neighbors, but they were their supporters in Europe and Britain. They're the ones that kept them going, kept them spiritually and physically fed. They are the source of power and authority. And I think, I think they probably affected life more. Having said all that, like a lot of European settlers, they had some relations with Native Americans. Where the town of Ebenezer was, was right on the borders of Yamakra and Muskogee Yuchi territory. And I don't think they ever realized it. There's nothing that makes me think they even knew that. Right. But they did run into quite a few Native Americans. And at the beginning they, like a lot of early European colonists, they didn't know quite what to think of Native Americans, but they knew that they needed to convert them to Christianity. It didn't take very long for Boltzius and the Salzburgers to abandon that and to adopt very negative stereotypes and ideas about the Muskogee and the Yuchi and the, that they came across. They were poor enough that they weren't really, they didn't really have the things Indians wanted to trade for anyway. So, you know, it wasn't a big issue. The group that really shaped the path of the, of colonial Georgia and thus the Salzburgers were the Malcontents, the, the English speaking settlers who opposed Trustees policies, especially around Rand ownership and slavery. It seems the majority of the Salzburgers aligned with the Trustees on the issue of slavery. That's usually when they make a cameo into histories of Georgia is when it's about slavery and how these Salzburgers opposed it. And the division between the groups was quite rigid over time between the malcontent, the pro malcontent and the pro trustee side. Eventually the Malcontents won and the Trustees allowed slavery in 1750, which completely changed the economy of Georgia. And so it, it changed everything. Right. It's when people began to become large landowners or just poor workers, that kind of thing. I don't think that if you stopped a Salzburger on the middle of the street in Ebenezer in 1745, they would have said, yeah, those malcontents, they really affect my life a lot. But I think long term, they certainly did affect the settlement. So that would be my vote. They, sadly, they affected him in opposition. Right, so.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

So what do you think was more detrimental to the, to the decline of Ebenezer? The introduction of slavery to the colony, the death of Voltius or the American Revolution?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

They're all really significant factors. So Voltius seemed to be a pretty remarkable leader for the community, seemed to be the right person at the right time. And he held people, he held that community together even as they built satellite communities up and down the Savannah River. After he died in 1765, succeeding pastors just didn't have that. But one thing, they didn't have that experience of early settlement, but they just, they just didn't have that unity after that. The introduction of slavery in Georgia had a huge impact. This is, as I mentioned, this is when, this is when Georgia had a much higher stratifications, economic stratification. And you start to get wealthy people, some from South Carolina coming in and buying up land, bringing enslaved people, getting more and more wealthy. Well, the Salzburger communities, they were self sustaining, but they were not wealthy and they couldn't compete in that world. And you know, in 1750 when slavery was introduced, they were significant portion of the colony settlements. By the American Revolution they were a minority. There were a few Salzburgers who actually were not Salzburgers. They arrived much later who embraced slavery. They were Germans, but they embraced slavery and they became quite wealthy. And that economic division really sowed seeds, seeds of discord among the community, began to argue about who owned the mills and the silk filter, the factory. Those were communal projects held, you know, titular ownership was by Boltzius, but it was always understood to be for the community. But now they argued about it. So I think all three of them, the revolution, the town was occupied by British troops and then by American troops and then by British troops and then or British troops and Patriot troops, you know, and, and the community fractured along lines of loyalty. And so all three of those coming within relatively short couple decades is what ended the community, although their church is still there.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

So for my last question, are you currently working on any new projects or research or are, are there any other areas that you might be interested in exploring?

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Well, of course I am coming out of this. I've been working on a book on the intersection of philanthropy and empire and with possibly another variable in there of early capitalism. It's obviously influenced by the work of the philanthropist who supported the Salzburgers in Georgia. But I really got interested in this over the charity school movement in Pennsylvania for germans in the 1750. And the express purpose of it was to make better Englishmen out of all the German settlers. So they had support of Franke foundations and the Germans to do this, to turn them into better, better Englishmen. And it has some of the proud American tradition of not liking immigrants and all the fear mongering about Germans. They don't even speak our language and they're gonna go, you know, ruin our colony and all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, Benjamin Franklin and the other many other worthies started this movement to teach Germans to be more religious and better English people. So that is interesting to me because the whole purpose was not really to help the Germans, but was to protect the Empire. Because this is the run up to the Seven Years War and they're really concerned that the Germans are going to. That the Protestant Germans who live in Pennsylvania are all of a sudden going to join up with the Catholic French. So. So that's kind of what I'm working on. I'm working on that and I have a biography that I'm working on. But I. I kind of want to. Don't know, I don't want to say too much more about that.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

I'll be looking forward to reading those.

[Dr. Karen Almond]

Okay.

[Lucy Smith B. Miller]

Well thank you so much Dr. Karen Almond for your discussion today. If you would like to learn more about this interesting topic, you can check out her book the Good Forest, the Salzburger's Success and the Plan for Georgia. Wherever you find your books.