Jekyll Island’s modern history is among the most storied in the South. Since General James Oglethorpe colonized it in 1733, the island has experienced four distinct periods: the Colonial Era, the Plantation Era, the Club Era, and the State Era. During the Colonial Era, Oglethorpe and his men successfully fought off invading Spaniards to form the Georgia colony and learned to grow acres of indigo and barley in the sandy coastal soil. The island’s Plantation Era, from 1792 to 1862, was filled with attacks from British ships, with soldiers raiding homes and stealing enslaved plantation workers. It’s also marked by the arrival of the infamous slave ship, the Wanderer, in 1858. The Jekyll Island Club Era lasted until the 1940s, and during that period, Jekyll was known as the most exclusive, inaccessible Gilded Age retreat in the world. It served as the winter home of some of America’s best-known millionaires, including the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Pulitzers, and Morgans. Finally, the contemporary State Era was ushered in after World War II, when the State of Georgia took over Jekyll as the club fell on hard times.
Some of Jekyll Island’s most transformational figures from these last three centuries have faded into the background, seemingly hidden among the island’s moss-draped oaks. But the echoes of their lives reverberate everywhere, from grand historical homes to winding bicycle paths to the shy red deer that still roam the island. Here’s a look at six people from the past who played major roles in creating the Jekyll Island now enjoyed by more than 3 million visitors a year.
Illustration by Michael Frith
Major William Horton, Colonial Era
Historians credit William Horton, General James Oglethorpe’s righthand man, with fiercely protecting the new colony from invading Spaniards sailing up from St. Augustine. But beer connoisseurs have another reason to toast the major: In 1747, Horton became Georgia’s first microbrewer, planting fields of barley and boiling his harvested mash in a great copper pot. The native Englishman was well acquainted with the social pleasures of hoisting a mug of English ale, but Jekyll Island’s first brewery also served a practical purpose: “Cholera was rampant in those days,” says Patrick Carmody, educator for Mosaic, the island’s historical museum. “Because the brewing process involves boiling water, beer was a lot safer for Horton’s soldiers to drink than fresh water.” And while General Oglethorpe had issued a strict ban on spirits to ensure his men would stay sharp to ward off marauding Spaniards, beer-making was permitted.
Photo by Gabriel Hanway
For Horton, defending Oglethorpe’s new colony during the conflict known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear came at a price. In 1742, before retreating to Florida, revenge-driven Spaniards crept ashore and burned Horton’s home to the ground. Horton and his family escaped injury, and by the end of 1743, Horton had rebuilt on the foundation of the original house. The ruins of the rebuilt Horton House are one of the island’s few remaining tabby structures, created from local lime, sand, and shells. Visitors can tour these remains and those of his brewery as well. Each year, Mosaic’s Jekyll Beer of Yesteryear event teaches visitors about Horton’s illustrious history as Georgia’s first microbrewer as they sip English ales inspired by the major’s techniques. Explore more: Tours of the Horton House depart from the Mosaic museum daily.
Courtesy the Jekyll Island Museum
Ward Lee, Plantation Era
More than a century after his death, Ward Lee remains an enduring symbol of resilience and independence. In 1858, Lee (then known as Cilucangy), a native of the African village of Cowany and a skilled basket weaver, was taken captive by white slave traders. Along with 500 others, he was chained and placed into the hold of the Wanderer, a retrofitted slave ship masquerading as a yacht. When the Wanderer finally landed six weeks later on Jekyll Island, Lee and his fellow prisoners were among the final people sold into slavery in the United States—an illegal act, since the importation of slaves had been outlawed for more than 40 years. (While the Wanderer’s slave traders were tried three times for their crimes, they were acquitted each time by all-white Savannah juries.)
Renamed Ward Lee, the young man was sold to a plantation owner near Aiken County, South Carolina, where he worked in the fields. In 1863, he was freed and given a tenant house, a small wage, and a plot of land on which to garden.
By Warren Shephard, 1901, courtesy the Jekyll Island Museum
The Wanderer Memory Trail, located on St. Andrews Beach at the south end of Jekyll Island, is a free, interactive experience dedicated to telling the story of Cilucangy and others forced into bondage. The trail, located where the Wanderer originally ran aground, highlights the life of Umwalla, a young African boy, and his journey from his kidnapping and the six weeks he endured chained underdeck on the Wanderer to his eventual freedom. “It’s a very emotional experience,” says Mosaic curator Andrea Marroquin.
Lee married and had four children, eventually selling woven baskets at the South Carolina State Fair. But the man originally named Cilucangy never stopped dreaming of returning home. In 1908, he had a flier printed: “Please help me . . . I am trying, if God be with me, to go back to Africa. I beg anyone who will help.” Although he died in 1918 without achieving his dream, a copy of Lee’s public plea resides at the Smithsonian Institute. Explore more: Visit the Wanderer Memory Trail.
Illustration by Michael Frith
William and Almira Rockefeller, Club Era
In the late 1800s, William Rockefeller helped his brother John start Standard Oil, making them two of America’s most renowned multimillionaires. With his wife, Almira, William purchased a Jekyll Island vacation “cottage” in 1905 that had been built by fellow Northerner Gordon McKay. The Rockefellers expanded and remodeled the original seven-bedroom home and named it Indian Mound. The completed 12,000-square-foot winter retreat had nine bedrooms, nine baths (including a master bath with heated towel racks), and a seven-room servants’ wing. “They never arrived at Jekyll Island alone,” says Mosaic curator Andrea Marroquin. “They were always surrounded by a host of relatives, friends, and staff. To them, Jekyll Island was a family reunion. Indian Mound was always stuffed to the gills with people.”
Photo by Jeff Holt
As nature enthusiasts, William and Almira loved exploring the island’s maritime forests, salt marshes, and seashore. William imported red deer from Europe, and lucky visitors can still spot their descendants today. He was also a devoted bicyclist, and after cars arrived on the island (making biking and horseback riding increasingly dangerous), he contributed the funds to establish the Rockefeller Bicycle Path, some parts of which are still in use. Explore more: Tours of Indian Mound, preserved in its 1917 post-renovation splendor, depart from the Mosaic museum daily.
Courtesy the Jekyll Island Authority
Charlie Hill, Club Era
Legend has it Charlie Hill helped row the first prospective investors to Jekyll Island’s shores in 1889 when they were considering a possible locale for what would become the Jekyll Island Club. He would spend the next half century living and working there, primarily for the Maurice family, who hired him in 1891 as a coachman and caretaker. Charles Maurice, one of the country’s pioneering bridge builders, relied so heavily upon Hill, he had a house built for him a few yards away from his family’s own abode, Hollybourne. When not working for the Maurice family, Hill helped oversee the development of Red Row, Jekyll Island’s Black community, which consisted of a series of red tarpaper-roofed homes, a 75-seat church, and a small schoolhouse. “Charlie became a trusted central figure throughout the island,” says Marroquin. “He was a patriarch who oversaw the growth of the island’s African American community. His network was vast.”
Photo by Brian Austin Lee
With his substantial $25-per-month salary, Hill was able to send his daughter Anna to Atlanta to attend Spelman College. Anna returned to Jekyll in the 1930s to educate its Black children in the Red Row community. Charlie Hill became such a pivotal part of the island’s Club Era, novelist Pamela Bauer Mueller drew from archives, interviews, and personal histories to make him a character in her historical novel, Splendid Isolation. While Hill officially retired when the last of the Maurice family departed the island, his former employers arranged a pension for him that was paid until his passing. Hill lived to be 99, and his 1974 Brunswick News obituary noted that, even as an advanced senior citizen, “he could be seen on most days, making his brisk walk to town and back.” Explore more: Visit the newly restored Hollybourne cottage on the “A Bridge to the Past” tour.
Courtesy Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum
Tallu Fish, State Era
Tallulah “Tallu” Fish, a native of Waycross, Georgia, is heralded as the matriarch of Mosaic, Jekyll Island’s historical museum. Thanks to Fish’s curation efforts in the mid-1950s, countless island artifacts were saved, cataloged, and preserved—including a painting of British barrister and island namesake Sir Joseph Jekyll that once hung in Horton House.
Fish, a former Louisville Courier-Journal columnist, was hired in 1954 to devise a marketing plan to launch the island’s tourism efforts. One of her first assignments? Create a museum inside Indian Mound, the former Rockefeller cottage, in less than 30 days to coincide with the opening of the Jekyll Island Causeway. Fish immediately began combing through the cobwebs and found guest registries filled with boldfaced names, sterling silver Jekyll Island–engraved coffee services, and monogrammed China. Fish also created her own original metal map templates, which she would send off to the printer to be copied and later handed out to visitors. (And like any shrewd marketing maven, at the bottom of each map was her name and copyright.) To her great credit, the museum opened on time. “I love the early State Era because there was such an intentionality to bringing people here, and Tallu Fish was terrific at that,” says Faith Plazarin, Mosaic archivist.
Fish’s fascination with the island dated back to her girlhood, when she would stare out across the river from Brunswick with her mother and imagine the lives of the privileged few who lived there. Decades later, Fish’s 13 grandchildren served as tour guides in the summer months, memorizing monologues about the Rockefellers with which to regale visitors. “Even today, if you go anywhere in the historic district, you will hear about Tallu Fish,” says Plazarin. “She was a legend.” Explore more: Visit Mosaic, the Jekyll Island Museum.
Illustration by Michael Frith
Cormac McGarvey, State Era
Architect Cormac McGarvey didn’t live to see today’s midcentury modern craze, but some of his acclaimed structures on the island have enjoyed renewed attention as a result of the style’s resurgence. After studying architecture in France and taking particular interest in the works of “mid-mod” master Frank Lloyd Wright, McGarvey, a Brunswick native, decided to bring his talents home. While many of his early designs in the 1940s were traditional Cape Cod–inspired brick residences, by the time the Jekyll Island Causeway opened in 1954, he had shifted to a style that reflected his architectural hero.
“A highlight of one of his privately owned masterpieces features a marsh view in each room,” says Taylor Davis, a Jekyll Island preservationist and self-described McGarvey aficionado. “Most of his midcentury homes feature his trademark concrete breeze-block courtyard and a carport, flat roof, and center-anchoring fireplace chimney.”
Photo by Kristin Karch
Constructed out of cinderblock, McGarvey’s homes were built to last—even on hurricane-prone coastal Georgia. “They’re very elegant bunkers with lots of glass windows,” Davis says. Explore more: Get tickets for the Midcentury Modern Jekyll presentation, held at the Mosaic museum.
Ties to the Past
Five ways to immerse yourself in Jekyll Island’s history
Stay at Jekyll Island Club Resort
Dating back to 1888, the resort’s iconic clubhouse is where the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Pulitzers once enjoyed lavish meals and legendary parties. Play croquet on the lawn, enjoy the year-round pool, and sup like a captain of industry in the historic Dining Room. Or, if you prefer, live like financier J.P. Morgan and book a room at Sans Souci, his 1896 luxury apartment building. Originally divided into six units, the Victorian-style property is considered one of the country’s first condominiums and offers a more secluded, private stay.
Visit Mosaic, Jekyll Island Museum
Housed in the former Jekyll Island Club horse stables, the museum showcases more than four centuries of island history through in-depth and interactive exhibits, including an opportunity to (virtually) try on the wardrobes of some of Jekyll’s wealthiest families. Through the end of 2025, The Civil Rights Movement on Jekyll Island exhibition marks the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and explores “pivotal moments in the island’s journey toward equality.”
Play a round of golf
The game dates back to 1898 on the island, but thanks to a multiyear, $20 million transformation of two of Jekyll’s courses, golf lovers will have more options than ever. The island’s historic 18-hole Pine Lakes course has been re-turfed, but the grand finale is scheduled to debut in late 2025: The nine-hole, Walter Travis–designed Great Dunes course will repurpose nine holes from the former Oleander course, creating an 18-hole showstopper where golfers can make birdies from the forest to the beach.
Bike the island
Pedal your way across 24 miles of picturesque paths and trails, some of which were financed by William Rockefeller (who once pedaled his adult tricycle down these same trails). The Historic District Loop takes bikers past the island’s cottages and the club resort, while the North Loop offers maritime forest, marsh, and oceanfront views. Along the South Loop, cyclists can enjoy views of St. Andrew’s Beach and stay cool under a canopy of live oaks.
Dine at the Wharf
Watch the sunset on the dock and enjoy dinner and craft cocktails at this restaurant situated at the historical wharf that was once the island’s main entry point. Many diners still arrive by boat, tying up where the Astors’ yacht Nourmahal and the Vanderbilts’ Valiant once disembarked. Fresh-catch seafood options include the popular Lowcountry boil, oysters on the half shell, and peel-and-eat shrimp.
This article appears in the Fall 2025 issue of Southbound.
