Karen Auman, "The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

Nov 20, 2025

Dr. Karen Auman, an assistant professor and genealogist, dives into the fascinating history of the Salzburgers, early settlers in Georgia. She illuminates how their success challenges the narrative that only slavery could sustain Georgia’s economy. Auman highlights the Salzburgers' unique community bonds forged through exile and shared religious beliefs, their adaptations to local environments, and the moral complexities underlying their economic endeavors. This discussion not only reframes Georgia's colonial history but also explores themes of philanthropy and community resilience.

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INSIGHT

Salzburgers Challenge Georgia's Standard Story

The Salzburgers complicate the standard narrative that Georgia only prospered after adopting slavery.
Karen Auman argues their success shows non-slave economies could sustain early Georgia communities.

ANECDOTE

Exile Created Deep Social Bonds

Being exiled from Salzburg bound the settlers together through trauma and shared purpose.
They left behind children and possessions, which made religious freedom their central motivation to emigrate.

INSIGHT

Trustees' Plans Met Local Adaptation

The trustees provided high-level support but could not control on-the-ground adaptations.
Ebenezer settlers modified land distribution and shared good soil to survive instead of following London plans strictly.

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The Good Forest: The Salzburgers, Success, and the Plan for Georgia (U Georgia Press, 2024) explores some of Georgia’s earliest settlers, the Salzburgers.

Georgia, the last of Britain’s American mainland colonies, began with high aspirations to create a morally sound society based on small family farms with no enslaved workers. But those goals were not realized, and Georgia became a slave plantation society, following the Carolina model. This trajectory of failure is well known. But looking at the Salzburgers, who emigrated from Europe as part of the original plan, provides a very different story.

The Good Forest reveals the experiences of the Salzburger migrants who came to Georgia with the support of British and German philanthropy, where they achieved self-sufficiency in the Ebenezer settlement while following the Trustees’ plans. Because their settlement comprised a significant portion of Georgia’s early population, their experiences provide a corrective to our understanding of early Georgia and help reveal the possibilities in Atlantic colonization as they built a cohesive community.

The relative success of the Ebenezer settlement, furthermore, challenges the inherent environmental, cultural, and economic determinism that has dominated Georgia history. That well-worn narrative often implies (or even explicitly states) that only a slave-based plantation economy—as implemented after the Trustee era—could succeed. With this history, Auman illuminates the interwoven themes of Atlantic migrations, colonization, charity, and transatlantic religious networks.

Guest: Dr. Karen Auman is an assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University and a certified genealogist. She studies Germans during the colonial period in the Atlantic World, religion on the frontiers of America, migrations, and families.

Host: Lucy Smith Biemiller is an intended M.A. History student at the University of Georgia. She studies 18th and 19th material culture in the American South primarily as it relates to classical culture.

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