Sea Islands

Settled by indigenous cultures thousands of years ago, the islands were selected by Spanish colonists as sites for founding of colonial missions. Historically the Spanish influenced the Guale and Mocama chiefdoms by establishing Christian missions in their major settlements, from St. Catherine's Island south to Fort George Island (at present-day Jacksonville, Florida).[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?path=/HistoryArchaeology/ArchaeologyandEarlyHistory/EarlyHistory/SpanishMissions&id=h-2479 "Mission Santa Catalina de Guale"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606112320/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?path=/HistoryArchaeology/ArchaeologyandEarlyHistory/EarlyHistory/SpanishMissions&id=h-2479 |date=2011-06-06 }}, New Georgia Encyclopedia, 2008, accessed 13 May 2010

Both chiefdoms extended to the coastal areas on the mainland. The Mocama Province included territory to the St. Johns River in present-day Florida.{{cite book|author1=Charles M. Hudson|author2=Carmen Chaves Tesser|title=The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qNZgglBKi8AC&pg=PA280|year=1994|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-1654-3|page=280}} The mission system ended under pressure of repeated raids by English South Carolina colonists and Indian allies.{{cite book |last1=McEwan |first1=Bonnie G. |title=The Spanish missions of La Florida |date=1993 |publisher=Gainesville : University Press of Florida |isbn=978-0-8130-1231-5 |page=xx |url=https://archive.org/details/spanishmissionso0000unse_m1o6/page/n21/mode/2up}} Spain ceded its territory of Florida to Great Britain in 1763.{{cite book |last1=Raab |first1=James W. |title=Spain, Britain and the American Revolution in Florida, 1763-1783 |date=2007 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-3213-4 |pages=15–16 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eCc8BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA15}}

After 18th-century European-American settlement of Georgia and Florida, planters purchased and enslaved Africans for labor. Many were used to work the labor-intensive cotton, rice, and indigo plantations on the Sea Islands, which generated much of the wealth of the colony and state. The Sea Islands were known historically for the production of Sea Island cotton.{{cite journal |last1=Stephens |first1=S. G. |title=The Origin of Sea Island Cotton |journal=Agricultural History |date=1976 |volume=50 |issue=2 |pages=391–399 |jstor=3741338 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3741338 |issn=0002-1482}} The enslaved workers developed the notable and distinct Gullah culture and language which has survived to contemporary times.{{cite web|author1=Joseph A. Opala|title=The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection|url=http://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection|publisher=Yale University|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151006082735/http://glc.yale.edu/gullah-rice-slavery-and-sierra-leone-american-connection|archive-date=October 6, 2015|date=2006}}

During the American Civil War, the Union Navy and the Union Army soon occupied the islands. The white planter families had fled to other locations on the mainland, sometimes leaving behind their slaves. The slaves largely ran their own lives during this period. They had already created cohesive communities, because planter families often stayed on the mainland to avoid malaria and the isolation of the islands. Large numbers of slaves worked on the rice and indigo plantations, and had limited interaction with whites, which enabled them to develop their own distinct culture. During the war, the Union Army managed the plantations and assigned plots of land to slaves for farming.{{cite book |last1=Inscoe |first1=John C. |title=The Civil War in Georgia: A New Georgia Encyclopedia Companion |year=2011 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-4138-5 |pages=177–178 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FtDQxwTUFw8C&pg=PA177}}

After President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation became effective on January 1, 1863, more than 5,000 slaves on Union-occupied islands obtained their freedom.William Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865 (NY: Viking Press, 2001), p. 234 After the war, although the freedmen hoped to be given land as compensation for having worked it for so many years in slavery, the federal government generally returned properties to the planters returning from their refuges or exile. Many of the freedmen stayed in the area, working on their former plantations as sharecroppers, tenant farmers or laborers as the system changed to free labor.

The area was home to multiple plantations; in 1863 Fanny Kemble published Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 about her experience on her husband's plantations in St. Simon's Island and Butler Island.{{Cite web |title=Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839 |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/journal-residence-georgian-plantation-1838-1839-kemble-fanny |access-date=2022-07-05 |website=Encyclopedia.com |archive-date=2022-07-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220705190739/https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/journal-residence-georgian-plantation-1838-1839-kemble-fanny |url-status=live }}

After President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation became effective on January 1, 1863, more than 5,000 slaves on Union-occupied islands obtained their freedom.William Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865 (NY: Viking Press, 2001), p. 234

In 1893, a deadly major hurricane struck the Sea Islands.{{cite journal |last1=Stephens |first1=S. G. |title=The Origin of Sea Island Cotton |journal=Agricultural History |date=1976 |volume=50 |issue=2 |pages=391–399 |jstor=3741338 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3741338 |issn=0002-1482}}

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• Bird Key Island
• Bull Island
• Capers Island
• Dewees Island
• Edisto Island (also in Colleton County)
• Folly Island
• Isle of Palms
• James Island
• Johns Island
• Kiawah Island
• Morris Island
• Seabrook Island
• Sullivan's Island
• Wadmalaw Island
• Yonges Island

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• Bear Island

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• Bay Point Island
• Cane Island
• Cat Island
• Coosaw Island
• Dataw Island
• Daufuskie Island
• Distant Island
• Fripp Island
• Gibbes Island
• Harbor Island
• Hilton Head Island
• Horse Island
• Hunting Island
• Lady's Island
• Morgan Island
• Parris Island
• Port Royal Island
• Pritchard's Island{{cite web |url=http://www.uscb.edu/a/Academics/Undergraduate/Research/Pritchards_Island/ |title=University of South Carolina Beaufort - Pritchards Island |website=www.uscb.edu |access-date=12 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060902045353/http://www.uscb.edu/a/Academics/Undergraduate/Research/Pritchards_Island/ |archive-date=2 September 2006 |url-status=dead}}
• St. Helena Island
• St. Phillips Island
• Spring Island

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• Tybee Island
• Little Tybee Island
• Cockspur Island
• Wilmington Island
• Talahi Island
• Whitemarsh Island
• Oatland Island
• Skidaway Island
• Isle of Hope
• Williamson Island
• Dutch Island
• Burnside Island
• Wassaw Island
• Ossabaw Island

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• St. Catherine's Island
• Isle of Wight
• Hampton Island

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• Blackbeard Island
• Sapelo Island

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{{Main|Golden Isles of Georgia}}

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• Jekyll Island
• Little St. Simons Island
• St. Simons Island
• Sea Island

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• Cumberland Island

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• Amelia Island *Little Tiger Island

• Big Talbot Island
• Little Talbot Island

• Sea Island Creole English (Gullah)
• Sea Island cotton
• Carolina Gold rice
• Sea Island red peas

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book|last1=Gibson|first1=Count D.|title=Sea Islands of Georgia—Their Geologic History|date=1948|publisher=University of Georgia Press|location=Athens, Georgia|isbn=9780820334943|url=http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/ugapressbks/do-pdf:ugp9780820334943|access-date=3 July 2019}}

• [http://www.beaufortcountylibrary.org/htdocs-sirsi/sea.htm Sea Islands: Erosion Remnant Islands and Barrier Islands -- Beaufort County Library]

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Category:Barrier islands of the United States

Category:East Coast islands of the United States

Category:Islands of Florida

Category:Islands of Georgia (U.S. state)

Category:Islands of South Carolina

Category:Southeastern United States

Category:South Carolina in the American Civil War

Category:Lists of islands of the United States

Category:Cultural regions of the United States