Sunday, March 03, 2013

Ebenezer, GA

 First off, I LOVE my coworkers at Wormsloe. They totally rock. Oddly I don't have pictures of us from today though. We had an awesome adventure but I was an idiot and forgot to bring my spare camera battery so the pictures of us are on another camera. But I'll start at the beginning...

Till now I have been working at Wormsloe on Fridays. I leave Statesboro after my only class ends at 10am and I'm usually there by 11:30. That gives me a good five and a half hours to work before the park closes at 5. Then I usually hang out in Savannah for a few hours, shopping or doing homework, before heading home. The only problem with only working Friday's is I generally always work with the same people and these people are not Paula. She and I have worked together a few times including at the Faire and we've been chatting a lot on Facebook. She's awesome and we decided this week that I'd switch my day to Saturday so we could work together (John doesn't really care, I'm just an extra body anyway so I can come, or not, whenever I want). This weekend we also had another reason. We decided to go find the site of the colonial settlement of Ebenezer on the Savannah River.

So we worked together on Saturday and then I went and stayed at her place over night so we could go on our adventure on Sunday. It was fun to just hang out an chat. We made dinner and drank wine and watched the history channel while talking. Sunday we picked up Jeri, another Wormsloe employee who I've hardly spent any time with, and the three of us headed up to Rincon/Ebenezer. The museum at Ebenezer doesn't open until 3 so we weren't really in a hurry. Because of that we stopped at the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge for awhile. Paula and Jeri are both photographers so they had a blast with the birds and swamp lands. Like I said my camera battery was low and it was COLD out (somewhere around 40oF) so I stayed in the car but I still enjoyed the peacefulness of the place.

Then we headed northeast. Well...more north than east. I don't know what happened (and I had the maps) but we overshot our destination but about ten miles and then had to backtrack. It was really odd but I blame it on the not well labelled roads in the middle of nowhere. (it certainly wasn't MY fault, although they did blame the Canadian ;)) We arrived just as the museum people were opening the church for viewing. The congregation at this church has been meeting continuously since the Salzbergers arrived in 1734, the year after the first group of colonists arrived and settled the Colony of Georgia. The church was finished in 1769.
During the Revolution the church was used as a horse stable and the weather vane was actually shot by a British gun. The current weather vane is a reproduction but they shot it to make it look authentic!

We toured all around the site which still includes some of the original cabins, even though they haven't been occupied for almost a hundred years and took our time going through the museum. The two volunteers that were working were so excited that three younger girls, and history nerds from another site, were there that they ended up staying open an extra half hour because we kept asking questions.
 This cabinet is FULL of German language family bibles that have been donated to the site. There was lots of interesting artifacts and displays. I combed through them to find things that apply to the midterm I will be writing on Tuesday for Georgia History. That way it counts as studying right? ;)

Mostly it was just fun to spend the day with people who are as excited about history and exploring as I am. I hope we get to have some more adventures before I finish here!!!


No comments: