twenty-two persons under Oglethorpe's lead formed an association and
secured a charter from King George II. for a colony, which they called
Georgia. The territory granted lay between the Savannah and the
Altamaha rivers, and extended from their mouths to their sources and
then across the country to the Pacific Ocean. Oglethorpe had selected
this tract in order that his colonists might serve the patriotic purpose
of protecting Charleston from the Spanish attacks to which it was
then exposed.

Money for the colony was easily raised,[1] and in November, 1732,
Oglethorpe, with 130 persons, set out for Charleston, and after a short
stay there passed southward and founded the city of Savannah (1733). It
must not be supposed that all the colonists were poor debtors. In time,
Italians from Piedmont, Moravians and Lutherans from Germany, and
Scotchmen from the Highlands, all made settlements in Georgia.

[Footnote 1: The House of Commons gave £10,000.]

%53. The Thirteen English Colonies.%--Thus it came about that between
1606 and 1733 thirteen English colonies were planted on the Atlantic
seaboard of what is now the United States. Naming them from north to
south, they were: 1. New Hampshire, with no definite western boundary;
2. Massachusetts, which owned Maine and a strip of territory across the
continent; 3. Rhode Island, with her present bounds; 4. Connecticut,
with a great tract of land extending to the Pacific; 5. New York, with
undefined bounds; 6. New Jersey; 7. Pennsylvania and 8. Delaware, the
property of the Penn family; 9. Maryland, the property of the heirs of
Lord Baltimore; 10. Virginia, with claims to a great part of North
America; 11. North Carolina, 12. South Carolina, and 13. Georgia, all
with claims to the Pacific.