𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐃𝐀𝐘 March 14, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟎

On Saturday, the 14th of March, 2020, the Georgia Salzburger Society (GSS) will hold the annual Landing Day meeting at Ebenezer. All descendants of the Salzburger community
and all friends are invited to
Jerusalem Lutheran Church, at Ebenezer,
to mark the 285th anniversary of the landing of
the first transport of Salzburgers in Georgia.

☞ HISTORY FOR THE MARCH GATHERING ☜

“And we vowed to have a yearly thanksgiving in His honor, on which we would use our diary to bring back to their memories the trials of the wondrous Divine Guidance.”
~ Detailed Reports of the Salzburger Emigrants who settled in America, edited by Samuel Urlsperger, Volume I, page 55

☞ SCHEDULE ☜

The annual Landing Day meeting is held on the Saturday closest to the 12th, and, in this 286th anniversary year, the meeting falls on Saturday the 14th.
● Following the 11:30 “Greet and Reminisce,” we will gather at noon for a meal of ♨ Good Rice Soup ♨ in the Old Parsonage, to commemorate the Salzburgers’ first breakfast in Georgia. In addition to hearty chicken with rice soup, we will have bread, and deserts (donation of $5). We will then adjourn to the church.
● At 2 PM, our meeting begins in the church. The program includes a worship service, followed by our business meeting which includes election of new GSS board members and hearing brief committee reports.
● At 3 PM, we’ll adjourn to a Reception in the Old Parsonage to honor new and outgoing GSS board members.
● At 3:30 PM we will caravan to a tour of Bethany Cemetery, guided by our guest speaker, Norman Turner, Historian.

What a great way to remember our ancestral links at our Landing Day celebration!

☞ GOOD RICE SOUP ☜

On Tuesday, the 12th of March, 1734, aboard the ship Purysburg, Salzburgers first sailed up the Savannah River, and were welcomed by “nearly all the inhabitants of City of Savannah,” many of whom had founded the British Colony of Georgia only thirteen months earlier. “They fired several cannon and shouted with joy, and they were answered in the same manner by the sailors and the rest of the Englishmen on our ship.”
In Savannah the next morning, Wednesday the 13th, Benjamin Sheftall and his wife Perla (Ashkenazi Jews who spoke both German and English, and who had arrived only eight months earlier) generously presented the 50 or so weary travelers with a breakfast of “a good rice soup.”
~ based on Detailed Reports of the Salzburger Emigrants who settled in America, edited by Samuel Urlsperger, Volume I, pages 59-60

Note: The Museum will be open ONLY during 1-2 PM (current society members receive a 10% discount on purchases in the Museum gift shop). The Loest Research Library will be closed.

Note: At the Salzburger immigrants’ first worship service on dry land, the scripture reading was from the second chapter of Sirach (from the Apocrypha), and their hymn was Herr Gott, dich loben wir (Lord God We Praise Thee, Martin Luther’s 1529 German paraphrase of the Te Deum). Additionally, these new Georgia colonists shared other selected Bible verses of comfort remembered from their long journey.

Note: The image is an illustration of the ships The London Merchant and The Simonds passing the Isle of Wight (England) as the third transport of Salzburgers set sail for Georgia in the fall of 1735 (arriving in February of 1736). Baron Philip Georg Friedrich von Reck (1710-1798), who was aboard both the first and third Salzburger transports, sketched the illustration of the ships sailing past the row of prominent “Needles” west of the Isle of Wight at Alum Bay; they were named for the very slender formation shown left of center, which was known as Lot’s Wife (and which was, however, not made of salt, but of chalk). Today, the three largest of the four “Needle” formations remain, but Lot’s Wife collapsed in a storm in 1764.
Incidentally, the passengers of the accompanying vessel, the Simonds, included General James Edward Oglethorpe, the Wesley Brothers, John and Charles, their associates Benjamin Ingham and Charles Delamotte, along with 26 Moravian immigrants.

Author: John Robert Peavey