​Savannah has her tainted history. The Weeping Time: a reference to the time when more slaves than ever were sold, the Wanderer: a slave ship that some prominent leaders of Savannah sponsored to import slaves to the state after the law prohibited this, and Alice Riley. Alice Riley’s story is remembered primarily through the ghost tours found in Savannah. But it is a horrid story of how some indentured servants were treated. She came to America at the age of fifteen looking for a new and better life. But to pay for her trip she had to agree to serve as a servant for a period of time to pay for her passage. So the young Irish Catholic girl disembarked from the boat to be immediately put into servitude.

Showing no regard for her as more than a servant she was placed with a man whom the colony had already decided was of bad character, William Wise. It was said that on the voyage over he was accompanied by a woman who passed as his wife but apparently was a prostitute. Because he was in constant quarrels with other colonists Oglethorpe had sent him across the river to Hutchinson Island to raise cattle for the colony. He was now ailing and needed some assistance. So they assigned Alice to be his servant. She was to assist with the livestock and the task of bathing him. Alice, still a teenager, was forced to pick the knots out of his hair, wash it, and bathe him.

As could be expected he beat her and treated her in horrid ways. It is said she fell in love with another indentured servant named Richard White. What happened next is not exactly known but it ended with William Wise’s death in the bath tub in which Alice was forced to bathe him. One account reports that he was beating Alice and her screams overcame White and he ran into the house and killed Wise. But more than likely they planned the murder.

Most accounts read like this: They waited until Wise called Alice in for his regular bath. Once his head was leaned back into the bucket of water, Alice and Richard allegedly held him under until he drowned. The two then dumped the body into the Savannah River in hopes that this would hide the body for eternity. But instead the current is said to have simply floated the body across the river and it washed up on the shores of the city of Savannah.

They were found and arrested for his murder. At the trial Alice said Richard had committed the murder. Many believed that Riley acted under the influence and direction of White. Although given the situation she probably did not need a lot of coaxing. In the end they were both convicted of murder and scheduled to hang.  They hanged Richard White first. But it was discovered that Alice was pregnant. As to who the father was, it was more than likely William Wise himself. Her hanging was delayed until the baby was born eight months later. Alice was hanged on January 19, 1735. This made her the first woman to be executed in Georgia. Alice maintained her innocence until death. Riley’s baby, James, died two weeks after his mother was hanged.

Why was Alice not shown any mercy? It is believed the fact that she was Irish Catholic influenced the verdict and punishment. The Irish were considered lower class and only a little above blacks in the caste system of America. Catholics were not allowed to worship in the Colony. Georgia's founders feared that Catholic settlers might be sympathetic to the Spanish. A point in fact is that in a letter to Oglethorpe (who was in England at the time) explaining the situation, the fact she was Catholic is mentioned as if to explain why she and White might commit such a deed.

She was hung in Wright Square. Wright Square was often referred as the ‘hanging square”. Today, it is believed by paranormal enthusiasts that her ghost can be found looking for her baby in the Square. Michael Ching, a composer, was commissioned to write three operas about Savannah, chose her story for the first opera of the trilogy.

Alice Riley’s spirit transcends from the early days of the colony to now. It is a most tragic story that leaves a stain on the history of Savannah. And maybe even on some nights leaves a ghost behind.

​ Here is the youtube address to the lullaby sang by Alice to her baby the night before she was to be hanged:
​https://youtu.be/Wdt3oQB5Pfc

​The Chinese in Savannah have been here in force ever since 1889 when the first Chinese ‘settler’ Chung Ta-Ping came by way of San Francisco. Since then the Chinese have been doctors, teachers, and business leaders in Savannah. The Savannah Chinese population has produced one poet of note, Gerald Chan Seig, whose works were published in the New Yorker among other places. But one of the most famous of Savannah’s Chinese population was Dr. K. C. Wu. He was the former Mayor of Shanghai and the former Chairman of Taiwan Provincial Government. He spent most of his life in China striving for a more democratic country.

He was born in Beijing. He went to High School and then Tsinghua University in China. He earned, in 1923, a master's degree in economics from Grinnell College followed by doctoral degree in political science from Princeton University. Upon his return to China he would marry Edith Huang in 1931 and become Mayor of Hankow the next year. He would prove his mettle as Mayor in 1936 by overseeing a large dike system that would prevent the Yangtze River from flooding the city.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Wu and his family fled to Chungking. In 1939, Chiang Kai-shek appointed him as mayor of Chungking, a position he held until 1942. He served as vice minister of Foreign Affairs from 1943-1945. He, with his former high school classmate Zhou Enlai, were part of a united front against the Japanese.

Proving his patriotism in time of war led to his appointment as mayor of Shanghai in 1943 and he served in that role until the Chinese Communists conquered the city in 1949. Wu, who was part of the Nationalist government, fled to Taipei where he served as Governor of Taiwan from 1949 to 1953. Wu, the constant reformer, attempted to bring a greater degree of self-governance to the Taiwanese people, allowing for the election of certain local officials by popular vote.

Wu, during this time as Governor of Taiwan, came into direct conflict with Chiang Kai-shek’s son. This conflict is thought to be at the core of an April 1952 alleged assassination attempt on Wu’s life. Having already offered his resignation to Chiang Kai Shek he offered it again in 1953 and this time Shek accepted it.  After his resignation was accepted he went on a ‘lecture tour’ as a premise to get his family and himself out of the country. Wu was charged with corruption after his departure and his associates were removed from office. That same year, Wu wrote an article in Look magazine entitled "Your Money is Building a Police State in Taiwan."

The United States at that time was trying to develop an alliance with the new Taiwanese government. They were not interested in challenging it. This caused Wu to realize his voice was not going to be heard. He immigrated to the United States and became professor of Chinese history at Savannah’s Armstrong State University.

Wu never gave up his advocacy for Taiwan. He continued to call on the Chinese Nationalist Assembly to enact reforms such as an end of one- party rule in Taiwan, and the establishment of greater guarantees of individual rights. He did this primarily through his writings, including a detailed analysis on Chinese culture in the context of mythology and early history in his book The Chinese Heritage.

Dr. Wu would teach at Armstrong State University for over twenty-five years. While teaching at Armstrong he was the second recipient of the H. Dean Propst Award in 1971. The Propst award is given by the students to a professor who exemplified good teaching. He died in 1984 in his home here in Savannah.

Wu is one of the many folks who came to Savannah in the final years of their lives. He also was one of the many Chinese who have contributed to the cultural and intellectual environs of our city. 


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Savannah has had many great writers. We have had two Pulitzer Prize Winning writers: Conrad Aiken and James Alan McPherson, and one National Book Award winner Flannery O’Connor. We have had one record breaking New York Times Bestseller writer John Berendt of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame. These four writers stand at the top of the pantheon of Savannah writers. Yet there is another writer who won awards too and even wrote a book about the sultry side of Savannah. This was the writer Harry Hervey. His book The Damned Don’t Cry is the original book about the dark side of Savannah.

Harry Hervey was born November 5, 1900. He graduated from the Georgia Military Academy in Atlanta. After completing school he became a reporter for the Atlanta Constitution. He wrote his first novel called Caravans By Night, a romance of India in 1922.  He planned to leave America and travel the world as a cruise director in 1923. But before he left, he came to Savannah to see his mother who was working as a manager of The Desoto Hotel. It was on this Savannah visit he met Savannahian Carleton Hildrith. Carleton Hildreth would be his lifelong love. Carleton was working for the Savannah Morning News. They would live together as a couple and would collaborate on many projects. Hildreth worked as typist, co-writer, and researcher for many of Hervey's novels, travel books, plays and screenplays with him, and acted in at least one of their productions on Broadway. Hildreth was his travel companion going with him to Southeast Asia and the Orient in the mid- 1920s.They would together live in many different places besides Savannah such as Hollywood and Charleston.

After his sojourn with his mother and his partner in Savannah he went with Carleton to search for the lost Khmer city in Southeast Asia on a trip sponsored by McCall’s magazine. This would be the first of many trips to Asia to inform his novels and travel logs. Upon their return to America they lived with his mother at the Desoto Hotel. From 1926 to 1932 they spent summers in New York City and returned to either Savannah or Charleston.

Hervey was a prolific writer with a body of work surpassed by few. In his book The Iron Widow he explores gay life and issues. For a book written during the Depression it was well ahead of its time. The book was popular enough for a second printing but for some reason has never had a place in the LGBTQ literary history.

But what may be considered one of his greatest novels was The Damned Don’t Cry. It is a novel of a Savannah girl who struggles in the wild lands of Savannah to stay loyal to who she is and maintain her integrity. She eventually marries into the elite Savannah culture. The book has murder, trials, wealth, class wars and deception. It shows the underside and southern nature of Savannah. The book of course was very controversial because it did not necessarily show Savannah at its best.

An excerpt follows : "...above the votive fires of the azaleas. Row upon row of them pile along the lanes. Pink, magenta, salmon, cerise and white, ragged exultant hedges, flaunting their carnal vividness in the celibate glooms. Their profligacy was gloriously obscene. It mocked the dreary prophecies of vaults and tombs. They were eternal flowering out of the groin of the earth -- they were flames out of skulls. Zelda felt awed by this pagan exaltation in the midst of orthodox seclusion." -- "The Damned Don't Cry.

Hervey would write fourteen books and fifteen screenplays.Hervey was one of the most highly sought screenplay writers of the first half of the 20th century and was praised by critics of literature, stage and screen. His screenplay the Road to Singapore was the first of a series of road movies in which Bing Crosby and Bob Hope would star. Other actors who would star in his movies included Tallullah Bankhead, Marlene Deitrich, Joseph Cotton, Claudette Colbert, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr..
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 In 1938 Hervey moved back to Savannah where he would live for the rest of his life with Carleton. In 1951 Hervey’s star and health had faded. He would die on August 12, 1951, from throat cancer. Hildreth died on March 12, 1977, and is buried at Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia, with Hervey. Theirs is one of Savannah’s great love stories. Hervey is one of Savannah’s renowned forgotten writers.