Originally named St. James after a square of the same name in the City of Westminster in London, Telfair Square was unique in commemorating a place rather than a person. On the northwest trust lot stood Government House, home of the royal governor James Wright (1760–1782). In 1883, the square was renamed for the prominent local Telfair family, who lived on the northwest trust lot from the early nineteenth century until 1875, and by the early twentieth century it was frequently called Telfair Place. The family patriarch, Scottish-born Edward Telfair, was a successful colonial merchant, Revolutionary War patriot, signer of the Articles of Confederation, and Georgia governor (1786–1787 and 1789–1793). Telfair and his wife, Sarah Gibbons Telfair, had seven children, including Thomas Telfair, who served in the U.S. Congress (1813–1817). Youngest son Alexander Telfair became head of the family following the deaths of his three older brothers. Mary Telfair, the last of the Telfairs, died in 1875. From 1877 to 1946 streetcar tracks crossed the square in line with Barnard Street. It was relandscaped by the Garden Club of Savannah in 1962 following a 1935 design by the city’s landscape architect, Paris-born Georges Bignault, who had been sent by the French government in 1908 to study the cultivation of Sea Island cotton in Beaufort, South Carolina, but chose to settle in Savannah after visiting the city later that year. During the 1930s, his firm authored plans for the beautification of most of Savannah’s squares, but it is unclear how many were implemented.