The Isle of Hope and Wormsloe

The Isle of Hope is one of the many islands that make up greater Savannah. The Spanish called the native people who lived here the Guale; after that group relocated to Skidaway Island in the seventeenth century, French Huguenots fleeing persecution settled here, on what they called “L’Isle Desperance”—the Island of Hope. During the colonial era, the Isle of Hope helped guard the approach to British Savannah from Spanish Florida, and in the middle of the eighteenth century it was settled by James Oglethorpe’s surveyor, Noble Jones (who took up residence at Wormsloe), as well as by Henry Parker and John Fallowfield. Jones was involved in laying out Savannah’s famous plan, and held a variety of important positions in the colony. In 1737 and 1738 he took possession of approximately five hundred acres on the island, formalized as a King’s grant from the Georgia Trustees in 1748, and over time amassed more than eight hundred acres. After the prohibition on slavery ended in 1751, he acquired up to fifty slaves. Parker, Georgia’s colonial “president” in 1751–1752, officially received his plantation as a King’s grant in 1753. In the eighteenth century the journey to the Isle of Hope necessitated either a ferry crossing at high tide or a slow ride over a rickety wooden causeway.

Wormsloe Plantation, an intact, colonial-era landscape, is one of the oldest and most complex historic sites in the coastal Georgia region. It uniquely spans the evolution of the Savannah area, highlighting a wealth of social, architectural, archaeological, and landscape features. It also provides a rare glimpse into the region’s plantation culture, since most of the major plantations that fronted the Savannah River have been lost with the development of the port.

In contrast to Wormsloe, Parker’s plantation was divided into five large lots by his family in the early nineteenth century, when the island was accessible via Shell Road from Savannah. During this period a small village known as Parkersburg appeared; the remnants of Parker’s plantation were completely subdivided by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Now called Isle of Hope, the community’s unusual planning derives from the curved shape of the subdivisions along the bend of Skidaway Narrows rather than the grid that dominates most coastal Georgia communities of this era.

In 1871 the railroad reached the Isle of Hope, ending at Barbee’s Pavilion (now the site of the marina), where Savannah residents could escape the heat of downtown from the turn of the century through the 1920s to enjoy a zoo, bands, and other leisure activities. Thereafter, suburban neighborhoods filled in the open areas of the Isle of Hope throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. The predominantly residential architecture on the island ranges from small homes to large mansions and displays a wide variety of styles and forms. Most of the dwellings are raised off the ground on brick foundations and include a porch, a typical adaptation for the local coastal climate.