Ogletorpe, JAMES EDWARD, founder of Georgia, was born in London, 21st December 1698, the son of Sir Theophilus Ogletorpe, of Godalming in Surrey. After studying awhile at Oxford he joined the Guards before he was twenty, and served on the Continent with Prince Eugene. From 1722 to 1754 he represented Haslemere in parliament. Meanwhile he projected a colony in America, where the debtors then languishing in English gaols might start life afresh, and which should be also a refuge for the persecuted German Protestants (see SALZBURG). Parliament contributed £10,000, George II. gave a grant of the necessary land, after him called Georgia; and in 1733 Ogletorpe went out with a company of 130 persons and founded Savannah. In 1735 he took out 300 more, including the two Wesleys; and in 1738 he was back again with a regiment of 600 men, raised in anticipation of a war with Spain, from whose neighbouring colony of Florida he had already received annoyance. War was declared by the mother-countries in 1739, and in 1741 Ogletorpe invaded Florida and unsuccessfully attacked St Augustine (see his own account, published 1742); the next year he repulsed a Spanish invasion of Georgia. In 1743 he left the colony for the last time, to meet and repel before a court-martial the malicious charges of one of his own officers. He was again tried and acquitted after the Forty-five for having failed, as major-general, to overtake Prince Charles's army. The charter of his colony he surrendered to the British government in 1752. His later years were spent at Cranham Hall, his seat in Essex, where he died 30th January 1785. His intimate friends included many of the most eminent men of the day. Pope's couplet is well known:
Or driven by strong benevolence of soul,
Will fly, like Ogletorpe, from pole to pole.
Dr Johnson urged him to write his life, and even offered to do it himself; and Boswell made a few, but insufficient, notes with the same object.
See Lives by Harris (Boston, 1841), Wright (Lond. 1867), and Bruce (New York, 1890).