Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

122 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
antiquity, from outward appearances at least, is sufficiently great to
embrace the period of Georgia's early settlement, and several generations
sleep within the quiet enclosure over which it stands sentinel. From the
outstretched limbs of the old oak trail the pendant mosses, giving it an
appearance of great solemnity and beauty and making it the picturesque
embodiment of the austere memories which cluster about the sacred spot.
The present chapel is comparatively new and thoroughly modern in every
appointment, but it occupies the site of one which was quite old, and
on the parish register are the names of the earliest residents of St.
Simon's Island.
WESLEY OAK, A FOREST GIANT UNDER WHOSE BOUGHS THE FOUNDER OP
METHODISM ONCE PREACHED IN GEORGIA
"When Charles Wesley accompanied Oglethorpe to this place, opposite
the mouth of the Altamaha, it was an infant settlement and the walls of
Fort'Frederica were just beginning to rise as a bulwark against the pow
erful encroachments of the Spaniards. Says Doctor Lee-.* "Of this
settlement, Charles Wesley, now in holy orders, took the spiritual charge.
But he failed to make a success of his work. Benjamin Ingham was with
him, a man of sincere piety but of doubtful judgment. Even before the
close of the first month he had come to loggerheads with the people and
was finding his duties as secretary an intolerable burden. His congrega
tion had 'shrunk to two Presbyterians and a Papist,' and the physical
* "Illustrated History of Methodism," by Bev. James W. Lee, D. D., St. Louis,
1900, pp. 69-70.