Savannah's Boys of Summer

A marker on Broughton Street where Tondee's Tavern once stood

Most people know of the Boston Sons of Liberty. They made their mark on American history for staging the Boston Tea Party. But many people do not know most of the port cities had a group called the Sons of Liberty. They were responsible for helping to ensure boycotts were enforced and fomenting a spirit of revolution in the colonies. So it should be no surprise that Savannah had a group of the Sons of Liberty here. They were also known as the Liberty Boys.
 
The unique thing about or Sons of Liberty of Savannah were they represented a generational divide. As Noble Wimberly Jones, Joseph Habersham and others were patriots, their fathers were Loyalists. Other members were Archibald Bulloch, John Houston, George Walton, Peter Tondee, Edward Telfair, John Milledge, Joseph Clay, William Gibbons and Mordecai Sheftall. Because we were the youngest colony many of the first generation of settlers still felt a need for a connection and a protection from the motherland: England. But the American bug for liberty had captured the second generation and they created Savannah’s Sons of Liberty. 
 
On August 10, 1774, a historic meeting was held at Tondee's Tavern in Savannah. There were thirty men present. They debated their role in what was fast becoming an American Revolution. It had been nine months since the Boston Tea Party. The English, in response, had closed the Boston Harbor. There had been a clarion call for a meeting of the colonies so they could have a united front as more and more intolerable acts were undertaken by England. Although the Savannah Liberty Boys did not like taxation without representation and other British laws, they would not send a representative to the first Continental Congress. The young men were not quite ready to force rebellion on their fathers.


However when the news of the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts came, they could no longer withhold their rebellious spirits. They broke into the powder magazine in Savannah on May 11, 1775, and divided the powder with the South Carolina revolutionaries and sent some to Boston, the center of the Revolution at the time (After the war, when Savannah citizens were unable to support themselves by shipping Southern cotton, the generous people of Boston returned the favor, and shipped food and supplies to save the people of Savannah).
 
 Later in January Joseph Habersham, at the ripe age of eighteen, entered the royal governor’s mansion, interrupting a dinner, and placed Governor Wright under house arrest. Colonel Lachlan McIntosh (famed for his fatal duel which took the life of Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence) took over the charge of the defense of the city for the patriots. In response a British fleet blocked the Savannah River. What took place next has been called the Battle of the Rice Boats on March 2-3, 1776.  The British warships were not looking for battle but seized rice-laden merchant ships in the Savannah harbor. Royal Governor Wright and his chief councilors managed to hitch a ride to leave for England.

The Liberty Boys of Savannah left their mark with their various acts of bravery during the Revolution. Today Liberty Square, divided by a street named in their honor,sits right across from the Chatham County Courthouse and Jail. It was laid out in 1799. The only monument in Liberty Square is the American Legion Flame of Freedom. The Liberty Boys’ names can now be found in our street names and institutions.
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