Brunswick, Georgia

Brunswick ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Glynn County in the U.S. state of Georgia. As the primary urban and economic center of the lower southeast portion of Georgia, it is the second-largest urban area on the Georgia coastline after Savannah and contains the Brunswick Old Town Historic District. At the 2020 U.S. census, the population of the city proper was 15,210; the Brunswick metropolitan area's population as of 2020 was 113,495.

Established as "Brunswick" after the German Duchy of Brunswick–Lüneburg, the ancestral home of the House of Hanover, the municipal community was incorporated as a city in 1856. Throughout its history, Brunswick has served as an important port city; in World War II, for example, it served as a strategic military location with an operational base for escort blimps and a shipbuilding facility for the U.S. Maritime Commission. Since then, its port has served numerous economic purposes.

Brunswick supports a progressive economy largely based on tourism and logistics, with a metropolitan GDP of $3.9 billion as of 2013. The Port of Brunswick, one of Georgia's two seaports, handles approximately 10 percent of all U.S. roll-on/roll-off trade—third in the U.S., behind the ports of Los Angeles and Newark. The headquarters of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is located north of the central business district of the city and is adjacent to Brunswick Golden Isles Airport, which provides commercial air service to the area. Brunswick is also home to the College of Coastal Georgia, enrolling over 3,000 students.

Brunswick is located on a harbor of the Atlantic Ocean, approximately north of Florida and south of South Carolina. Brunswick is bordered on the west by Oglethorpe Bay, the East River, and the Turtle River. It is bordered on the south by the Brunswick River and on the east by the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway in the Mackay River, which separates it from the Golden Isles.

History

The Mocama, a Timucua-speaking people, lived in and cultivated the lands in what is now Brunswick. The Spanish established missions in Timucuan villages beginning in 1568. During this time, much of the Native American population was depleted through enslavement and disease. When the Province of Carolina was founded in 1663, the British claimed all lands south to the 31st parallel north, but little colonization occurred south of the Altamaha River as the Spanish also claimed this land. Three years after the Province of Georgia was founded at Savannah in 1733, James Oglethorpe had the town of Frederica built on St. Simons Island, challenging Spaniards who laid claim to the island. The Spanish were driven out of the province after British victories in the battles of Bloody Marsh and Gully Hole Creek in 1742; it was not until the Treaty of Paris of 1763 that Spain's threat to the province was formally ended, when all lands north of the St. Marys River and south of the Savannah River were designated as Georgia.

The area's first European settler, Mark Carr, arrived in 1738. Carr, a Scotsman, was a captain in Oglethorpe's Marine Boat Company. Upon landing, he established his tobacco plantation, which he called "Plug Point", along the East and Brunswick rivers. The Province of Georgia purchased Carr's fields in 1771 and laid out the town of Brunswick in the grid plan akin to that of Savannah, with large, public squares at given intervals. The town was named for the duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg in Germany, the ancestral home of George III and the House of Hanover. Brunswick was a rectangular tract of land consisting of . The first lot was granted on June 30, 1772; 179 lots were granted in the first three years. However, at Iabout this time Brunswick lost most of its citizens, many of whom were Loyalists, to East Florida, the Caribbean Basin, and the United Kingdom for protection during the American Revolutionary War. From 1783 to 1788 a number of these lots were regranted and there collected in Brunswick a few families who desired proper education for their children. By the act of the General Assembly on February 1, 1788, eight town commissioners were appointed and Glynn Academy was chartered, the funding of which was to come from the sales of town lots. Brunswick was recognized as an official port of entry in 1789 by an act of the United States Congress. In 1797 the General Assembly transferred the seat of Glynn County from Frederica to Brunswick.

At the end of the eighteenth century, a large tract of land surrounding Brunswick on three sides had been laid off and designated as Commons. Commissioners were named in 1796 to support these efforts. The General Assembly authorized them to sell of Commons, one-half of the proceeds to go to the construction of the courthouse and jail and one-half to the support of the academy. In 1819 the commissioners erected a suitable building for school purposes on the southeastern corner of Reynolds and L streets. This was the first public building in Brunswick. It was abandoned four years later, but a new building was erected on Hillsborough Square in 1840 using Commons proceeds. A courthouse and jail were built around this time.

The town was officially incorporated as a city on February 22, 1856. It was at this time that state representative Jacob Moore in conjunction with others conspired to control the Commons, and any proceeds that might be had from sales. Moore managed to persuade the Georgia General Assembly to pass legislation giving him control over significant amounts of local real estate. This precipitated a period of strife, pitting the powerful interests, headed by Rep. Moore, against the common citizenry. It was into this turmoil that Carey Wentworth Styles appeared, in 1857, when he moved his family to Brunswick from Edgefield, South Carolina. Styles, an attorney, was attracted to the area by news of the civil strife. As one observer later wrote, the citizens of Brunswick were in "need of a defender".

Styles quickly became embroiled in the dispute, siding with the citizenry. He announced his intention to run for mayor, and organized a mass protest rally for the evening of December 24. In spite of bad weather, a crowd gathered at the protest point, where Styles delivered an impassioned speech against the powerful interests, and the legislative act giving them the power to seize local property. Styles called the legislation "dishonorable", at which point Moore (the bill's sponsor and beneficiary) jumped to his feet and shouted at Styles, calling the accusation a "falsehood". In the official testimony on file in the Glynn County courthouse, Styles is said to have yelled back at Moore, saying "You are a damned liar!", to which Moore replied "You are a damneder liar!". Gunfire ensued, resulting in the death of Moore. Witness accounts had Moore firing first, and though Styles was subsequently arrested for manslaughter, the charges were eventually dropped. On March 1, 1858, Styles was elected mayor of Brunswick. Some years later, Styles moved to Atlanta, where he founded ''The Atlanta Constitution''. In November 1879, nineteen years after he left, Styles returned to Brunswick, where he established the local weekly ''Seaport Appeal''. When that eventually failed, Styles moved to Texas, never to see Brunswick again.

By 1860 Brunswick had a population of 468, a bank, a weekly newspaper, and a sawmill which employed nine workers.

Brunswick was abandoned during the American Civil War when citizens were ordered to evacuate. The city, like many others in the South, suffered from post-war depression. After one of the nation's largest lumber mills began operation on nearby St. Simons Island, economic prosperity returned. Rail lines were constructed from Brunswick to inland Georgia, which stimulated a sawmill boom, said to average one mill every two miles, along with the new industrial corridor. In his book ''The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860–1910'' author Mark V. Wetherington states that from Eastman, former Quartermaster General Ira R. Foster "shipped lumber to Brunswick, where it was loaded onto timber schooners and transported to international markets like Liverpool, Rio de Janeiro, and Havana

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