James Oglethorpe

He met and fell in love with Elizabeth Wright, a wealthy heiress, in the early 1740s and married her in September 1744. They had a happy and active life entertaining friends and socializing with other well-known members of the London society. The couple did not have any children.

James Oglethorpe lived a long life and died on June 30, 1785, following a brief illness. He was 88 years old.

Oglethorpe County and Oglethorpe University in Atlanta are named in his honor.

James Oglethorpe was born on 22 December 1696 in Godalming, Surrey, England, to Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe and his wife Eleanor Oglethorpe. His father was a soldier and Member of Parliament.

He joined Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1714 but did not study there for long as he joined the army of Prince Eugene of Savoy the same year.

He received a recommendation from John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough which led to his being selected the aide-de-camp to the prince. Young James then travelled to Austria and served with distinction in the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–18.

He returned home to England following the war. Keeping up with family traditions, he ran for the parliament and was elected Member of Parliament for Haslemere in 1722.

He had always been interested in humanitarian endeavors, and as a Member of Parliament he totally dedicated himself to bringing about positive changes in the society for the welfare of the underprivileged.

In the late 1720s, one of his friends, Robert Castell, was jailed in London’s Fleet Prison because of his debts. There Castell was forced to share a cell with a prisoner who had smallpox. As a result Castell too contracted the disease and died.

Deeply shocked by his friend’s death, Oglethorpe launched a national campaign to reform England's prisons. He was made the chairman of a parliamentary committee to investigate the jails and over the course of the investigation he became aware of the horrible conditions these prisoners were kept in and the tortures that were meted out to them. Oglethorpe began to question the ethics behind imprisoning and torturing people just because of indebtedness.

James Edward Oglethorpe is best remembered as the founder of the colony of Georgia in British America. Originally envisioned as a colony which would serve as a haven for debtors from London, it was the last of the thirteen original American colonies established by Great Britain in what later became the United States.