Bethesda Home, Savannah

Bethesda Home, Savannah, the first orphanage in America, was established by a grant of 500 acres from the Colony of Georgia in 1739.  The idea for the home originated with Charles Wesley and Governor Olgethorpe, but it was through the efforts of George Whitefield (1714-70) that the orphanage became a reality in March 1740.  Whitefield made repeated visits to Bethesda during his preaching tours of the Colonies, and was relentless in his fundraising for the orphanage.  Whitefield, who died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1770 while on a preaching tour of America, willed the orphanage to the Countess of Huntington, his wealthy English patron.  She spent considerable funds on repairing the buildings in 1773 and planned to build a Calvinistic Methodist college on the grounds patterned after her college at Trevecca, Wales, but the Revolutionary War postponed her plans.  The College finally opened in 1788, but after the death of the Countess in 1791, the property and control of the orphanage was assumed by the state of Georgia, but not without some difficulties. In January 1791, the Countess sent the Rev. John Johnson from England to operate the orphanage; Johnson would also serve as minister of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah.  After the Countess’s death, Johnson wished to maintain English control of the property; as a result, he refused to surrender the orphanage to the new trustees appointed by the state of Georgia, one of which was Sir George Houstoun.  On 6 January 1792, Johnson was presented with a letter from Houstoun, notifying Johnson that the state would take possession the following week.  A few days later Johnson defiantly wrote to Houstoun, “If you attempt it tomorrow, I wish you to understand, I would much rather open my breast to your fatal steel than act unworthy of my present trust.”  Johnson lost his battle with Houstoun and the state of Georgia, but his bitterness remained.  Not long after the takeover of the orphanage, Houstoun’s daughter died, and Johnson, exhibiting behavior unbecoming a minister, sent a note to Houstoun, informing him that the loss of his daughter was a “judgment of God for his conduct” toward Johnson.  The orphanage fell into a state of neglect and decay during the next ten years (as indicated by Mrs. Smith’s comment about the buildings being in a state of “ruins” by April 1793).  Eventually the orphanage was taken over by the Union Society of Savannah and continues to this day on its original site.  During the period of the Countess’s control of the orphanage, she donated a full-length portrait of herself, accurately described above by Mrs. Smith, painted by the prominent English painter, John Russell (1745-1806), for whom she posed on 20 October 1772.  Russell refused payment for the portrait, requesting that the painting be given to the orphanage in honor of Whitefield.  The portrait was removed at some point, but restored to the orphanage in 1851, where it remains to this day. See Lowry Axley, Holding Aloft the Torch: A History of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, Georgia (Savannah, 1958), 19-20; Edward J. Cashin, Beloved Bethesda:  A History of George Whitefield’s Home for Boys, 1740-2000 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2001), 106ff; also Savannah (Savannah: Federal Writer’s Project, 1937), 172.