Habersham, James

HABERSHAM, JAMES. (c. 1712–1775). Merchant, planter, colonial official. Georgia. Born in Beverly, Yorkshire, England, James Habersham left a mercantile career in London and emigrated to Georgia in 1737. Arriving with his friend George Whitefield, the evangelist, Habersham opened a school for destitute children and later cooperated with Whitefield in establishing the Bethesda Orphanage (one of the first in America). He was in charge of that institution from 1741 to 1744. In 1744 he resigned and organized Harris and Habersham, the first and, for many years, most important commercial enterprise in Georgia. He then developed large farming interests, and in 1749 he took the lead in getting the colonial trustees to consent to the importation of slaves. This saved the economy of the colony, converting its agriculture from grapes and silkworms to the profitable cultivation of rice and cotton.

Now the leading merchant and trader, and one of the largest planters, Habersham became president of the colonial council in 1767. A close personal friend and political supporter of royal Governor James Wright, he helped the latter maintain British authority in the province during the Stamp Act crisis and was acting governor during Wright's absence in England from 1771 to 1773. His first-generation brand of loyalism helped delay Georgia's revolutionary movement. Overburdened with work and distressed by the now inevitable revolutionary trend in Georgia, he traveled north for a change of climate and died 28 Aug. 1775 in Brunswick, New Jersey.

Habersham had three surviving sons who were educated at Princeton. Two of them, John and Joseph, became prominent Patriot leaders, and the other was also a Patriot. Their mother was Mary Bolton, whom he wed on 26 December 1740 in a marriage ceremony performed by Whitefield.

SEE ALSO Habersham, John; Habersham, Joseph; Wright, Sir James, Governor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coleman, Kenneth. Colonial Georgia: A History. Millwood, N.J.: KTO Press, 1989.

Lockley, Timothy James. Lines in the Sand: Race and Class in Lowcountry Georgia, 1750–1860. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 2001.

                                    revised by Leslie Hall