It was a rainy morning but I made my way to Gascoigne Point, Epworth by the Sea. The minute you drive through the archway that marks the entrance to this peaceful place you feel a shift in energy. This is the site of the Arthur J. Moore Methodist Museum that houses a vast collection of books and artifacts about the founders of the Methodist Church, John and Charles Wesley. You can actually walk in the footsteps of John and Charles as they preached the word of God throughout the Coastal Georgia area. Both brothers worked as missionary’s on St. Simons Island. Charles was appointed chaplain for the settlement at Fort Frederica and John had charge of the religious affairs of the colony. During Plantation Days, James Hamilton built a large Tabby home at Gascoigne Point where he became a millionaire in the cotton trade. The home burned in 1890 leaving only the tabby cottage that housed the plantation’s slaves. The cottage was completely restored in 1995 by Epworth. Located on St. Simons Island, the remains of this antebellum plantation contain two surviving slave cabins, originally a set of four built before 1833. Among the better surviving slave cabins in the South, they are made of tabby, a cement consisting of lime, water, and crushed oyster shells. The cabins have built-in windows and a central chimney. James Hamilton Couper, namesake of the owner and manager of the plantation, was an architect and a builder. He designed and built the cabins to house the slaves who served in the plantation’s main house. Utilizing a duplex plan to house more than one family, the cabins were originally part of a planned community of slave dwellings. Constructed of tabby, the cabins were divided in the center by a fireplace, thus creating two rooms that housed two families. Glass windows and wooden outside doors indicate that these cabins were probably living quarters of slaves that were high in the privilege hierarchy. Cassina Garden Club began meeting in these cabins in 1932 and was deeded the property in 1950. As owner of this beautiful historic site, the Cassina Garden Club has carefully restored and preserved the integrity of the cabins and displays many artifact and graphical histories. Lots of history can be found here regarding Hamilton Plantation, slavery and the surrounding area Lovely Lane Chapel is the oldest standing church on the island. Gascoigne Bluff is a bluff next to the Frederica River on the western side of the island of St. Simons which was a Native American campground, the site of a Franciscan monastery named San Buenaventura, and the site of the Province of Georgia’s first naval base. It was named for Captain James Gascoigne of the sloop-of-war, HMS Hawk, which lead the first British settlers to the coast of Georgia. Timber harvested from 2,000 Southern live oak trees from Gascoigne Bluff was used to build the USS Constitution and the five other original US Navy frigates under the Naval Act of 1794. The Constitution is known as «Old Ironsides» for the way the cannonballs bounced off the hard live oak planking.
