OSSABAW ISLAND — Spurred by a clothes-iron-ignited fire about 100 years ago, the future Eleanor “Sandy” Torrey West escaped from her family’s burning winter retreat at age 10 by jumping with her nurse from the second floor of the Thunderbolt mansion outside Savannah.
That is how the future heiress from Michigan and her family leapt into the history of Ossabaw Island’s inhabitants, which stretches back at least 5,000 years and includes hunter-gatherers, indigenous people, Spanish missionaries, colonial landowners, enslaved Africans and their freedman descendants, as described by Ossabaw Island Foundation officials and historical records.
Located south of Skidaway Island in Chatham County on Georgia’s coast, the island’s past continues to be unveiled by archeologists and researchers. Teams from the University of Georgia and Penn State are currently conducting excavation work next to tabby structures that housed enslaved individuals up to the Civil War’s end and the freedman who came after.
There are also plans afoot to rehabilitate Ossabaw Island’s century-old, ornate “Torrey West House” so that it can hopefully be enjoyed by another century of visitors.
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
It was after the Greenwich Plantation in Thunderbolt burned down that West’s parents, Dr. Henry Norton Torrey and Nell Torrey, the latter an heir to the Pittsburgh Plate Glass fortune, purchased Ossabaw Island in 1924.
The couple constructed what would become their new seasonal home on the 26,000-acre barrier island, where West, along with her filmmaker husband Clifford West, later established the Ossabaw Island Project in the 1960s. The project enabled writers, artists and scientists to research the island’s past and put their creativity to use up until 1983, when the money to support the programs ran out.
“It’s not lucrative when you let everyone come for free,” said Elizabeth DuBose, executive director of the Ossabaw Island Foundation.
Credit: Katelyn Myrick/AJC
Credit: Katelyn Myrick/AJC
The foundation holds a series of day trips throughout the year for anyone interested in visiting the island, which is only accessible by boat, in addition to group trips reserved by other organizations.
As students and professors discovered buried buttons, smoking pipes and pottery shards about a mile away on a recent Friday, DuBose discussed West’s part in the island’s narrative while walking the halls of West’s pink-stucco covered Spanish Revival-style home. West and her deceased brother’s children sold the island to the state of Georgia in 1978 for $8 million, half its assessed value. As conditions of the sale, development was prohibited, and the island’s natural resources were to be preserved for research, educational and cultural activities. West also retained a life estate that included the 20,000-square-foot mansion.
DuBose noted the fire hoses embedded in the walls on each floor, amid the artwork and photos.
“This is supposed to be a fire-proof house,” DuBose said.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
At age 103, West left the island in 2016 as her health declined. She died five years later in Garden City on her 108th birthday. The island home has been in decline for years and is in need of rehabilitation work.
After West’s death, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the foundation took control of the 23-acre estate and began seeking funds to repair the three buildings there. That work paid off this year, when the state legislature approved $7 million towards renovating the “Torrey West House,” along with the nearby “Little Torrey House” writers’ retreat constructed in the 1950s, where authors, including Ralph Ellison and Olive Ann Burns, once stayed. A former garage once used as an art studio in the rear of the property will also be renovated.
The project is expected to begin in late fall and take about two years. The main house’s renovation will include painting and repairing deteriorated plaster, mechanical work and air and heating systems, with the aim of preserving as much of the structure’s historic character as possible, DuBose said.
“We’re not gutting it,” she said. “We’re not going to change the shape of the rooms, so no sledgehammers here.”
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
The funding comes about four years after Georgia lawmakers introduced legislation that would have allowed the state to sell up to 15 acres at heritage preserves such as Ossabaw to private developers. The bill introduced failed after the foundation, former President Jimmy Carter and others opposed the measure due to concerns it would allow developers to buy up such sites in unlimited chunks.
The renovated home will be used to house groups that come to the island to write, create, study and research, as West wanted. The funds raised by those visits will go towards the foundation’s yearly operating budget, which DuBose said is currently about $400,000, and will be used to help maintain the buildings once they are renovated.
Meanwhile, the descendants of donkeys West bought for her children in the 1960s continue to roam the property, among the wild pigs, alligators and sea turtles, as archaeologists search for evidence of what came way before West arrived and writers imagine what could come next.
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Among those who visited the research sites recently was Hanif Haynes, a retired electrician who lives on Pin Point across from Skidaway Island. Haynes’ ancestors were enslaved on Ossabaw and moved on to establish the waterfront community he calls home.
Haynes said he intends to be among those to help tell Ossabaw’s story by writing a book about it.
“I’ve got several stories in my head,” he said. “I just got to get them out.”
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
The burning of the Greenwich Plantation in 1923 and, more recently, the Huston House at Butler Island to an alleged arsonist in late June serves as a reminder that historic properties can be lost at any time. The failed Georgia house bill, HB 906, was reported to have sprung from a request in 2018 to use the Huston House as a distillery, with Department of Natural Resources officials seeking legislation allowing limited sales on heritage preserves.
State Rep. Jesse Petrea, whose district includes Ossabaw, said he is not aware of a new move on a similar bill, but he was very supportive of the DNR funding for the West property and advocated for it.
“I have visited the site and believe it is a very worthwhile site to preserve and protect for the ongoing operations on Ossabaw,” Petrea said.
State Rep. Darlene Taylor, who sponsored the original 2018 bill, said she did not have any intention of bringing the legislation back up.
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Want to visit Ossabaw Island?
The easiest public access is through the Ossabaw Island Foundation’s public use and education program, a series of day trips held throughout the year.
The next trip, the Lift Every Voice African American history tour of Ossabaw Island and Pin Point, is on Aug. 10.
Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/ossabaw-trips-through-2024-1239979?aff=ebeseadeeplink
While most of the trips in 2024 are sold out, the foundation anticipates uploading trips for 2025 in the next couple of months.
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
Credit: Katelyn Myrick
