"...we hereby declare our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of Slavery in America..."
That line comes from the fifth of six resolutions adopted by the District of Darien, in what is now McIntosh County, on January 12, 1775. The full text runs in a scholarly collection of colonial association documents published by Göttingen University Press. The people who wrote it were Darien's neighbors. They met about eighteen months before the Declaration of Independence.
On Saturday, October 24, Fort King George holds its yearly "Echoes on the Altamaha" candle-lantern tour. According to the Darien-McIntosh Chamber listing, this year's tour focuses on "the history surrounding the 250th anniversary of the USA." Darien's own part in that history happened at a meeting house a few miles up US 17.
A Meeting House on US 17 and Six Resolutions
A Georgia Historical Commission marker put up in 1957 tells the setting. The "Old Meeting House" was built before 1750 for the Scottish Presbyterians of the District of Darien. It also served as the place where citizens of St. Andrew's Parish met "on important occasions." The marker's inscription, recorded on HMdb, says the "Darien Committee" met there on January 12, 1775. They chose delegates to the Provincial Congress at Savannah and adopted "the six Resolutions which are today among our treasured Revolutionary documents."
You can't go read that marker today. HMdb lists it as missing. It stood on the southbound side of US 17 in Ardick, 8.1 miles north of Darien.
The resolutions read like a list of grievances from a colony that was still new. The third objects to "Ministerial Mandates" that kept Georgia's elected representatives from passing laws suited to "this young Colony, where our internal police is not yet well settled." The fourth complains about too many royal officers paid from Britain. It pledges never to elect any officeholder, "his Deputy, Deputy's Deputy, or any expectant."
The fifth breaks from the rest. It calls slavery "a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties." It says building American liberty on slavery would lay "that liberty we contend for... upon a very wrong foundation." The committee resolved to work "for the manumission of our Slaves in this Colony."
The sixth looks north. It instructs the district's deputies to the Savannah congress, set for "the 18th instant," to try to send two Georgia delegates "to the General Continental Congress, to be held at Philadelphia next May." In that transcription, the delegates' names show up only as asterisks. Charles Spalding Wylly's 1910 history of the Georgia colony, reproduced on Glynn Genealogy, names Lachlan McIntosh and John McIntosh among the men linked to the document.
The Line Runs Back Past 1775
The fifth resolution didn't appear from nowhere. The ground the Highlanders stood on had already been a military outpost, and their community had raised this issue once before. Here is the sequence, using the New Georgia Encyclopedia and the Georgia Historical Society:
- 1721. Fort King George is built at the mouth of the Altamaha.
- 1726. The fort burns. It is rebuilt the next year.
- Early 1730s. The garrison leaves. Sources give slightly different end dates, and the encyclopedia says 1732.
- 1736. Scottish Highlanders brought by Oglethorpe found New Inverness on the Altamaha. The town is later renamed Darien.
- 1739. The Darien Scots protest the push to legalize slavery in Georgia. John McIntosh Mohr and Hugh Mackay are named as leaders of the Scottish settlers.
- January 12, 1775. The Darien Committee adopts its six resolutions at the Old Meeting House.
Seen in order, the 1775 document is a community saying in a revolutionary year what it had already said thirty-six years before. The fort is where the story starts, and the fort is where the lanterns go up Saturday.
Saturday Night at the Fort
Echoes on the Altamaha runs from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Saturday, October 24, at Fort King George Historic Site, 302 McIntosh Road SE. It costs $10 per person. Guides send groups of 20 out every 15 minutes on a candlelit walking tour of the grounds that lasts about an hour. To book, call 912-437-4770. Walk-ins are welcome but can expect to wait 10 minutes or more. The Georgia State Parks event page lists the same night and the same format.
The listing calls it a "one night only" event where you "speak with those daring folk who left their mark on the Georgia colony." The format isn't new. Last year's tour ran on Saturday, October 25, 2025, with the same groups of 20 leaving every 15 minutes. What's different this year is the 250th theme. News Now Georgia's September preview described interpreters playing people from Georgia's colonial past. Neither the park nor the Chamber has said which historical figures will appear. If you're hoping to hear from the Darien Committee, ask when you call to book.
Book ahead. The tour is one night only, groups are capped at 20, and that caps how many people can walk the grounds each hour. The time you pick when you call matters more than when you show up.
Next Door, and the Rest of the Fall
The fort shares a road with one of Darien's more distinctive dining rooms. The Canopy, at 306 Fort King George Drive, operates in the restored Brown House, built around 1875. The Chamber directory lists Milan Savic as owner and Megan Savic as executive chef. The restaurant's own site describes "a new take on traditional cuisine" built on local foods, with breakfast and lunch daily and dinner on weekends. The Chamber's hours list Tuesday as closed.
On the same weekend as the lantern tour, The Canopy is hosting "Terror in Transylvania," a 21-and-over murder-mystery dinner on October 23 and 24 with food and alcohol included. The listing's description says 6 to 9 p.m., but its header shows a different time span, so check with the restaurant before you plan a dinner and a 7 p.m. lantern slot on Saturday.
The fort's fall season doesn't end Saturday. These dates fall after this post goes up:
- Friday, October 30. Guided Autumn Tours of "Georgia's first fort" at 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Each runs close to an hour over about 200 yards of easy walking. Standard admission is $8.25 for adults, $6.25 for seniors 62 and up, $4.75 for ages 6 to 17, and free for ages 5 and under. Call ahead if you need a passenger cart.
- Saturday, November 7. The Darien Fall Festival and Classic Car Show at Vernon Square, 301 Franklin Street, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the Doggie Day Parade at 11 a.m.
- Friday and Saturday, November 13 and 14. The fort's annual Autumn Encampment, a colonial military reenactment covering Highlanders, British armies and Royal navies, with a black-powder battle demonstration Saturday at 2 p.m. only. Standard admission applies.
- Saturday, November 14. Second Saturday shopping and dining in the Broad Street Waterfront District, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the same morning as the encampment's second day.
The encampment is where the Highlander side of the story gets louder. The encampment listing welcomes reenactors portraying the 1720s through the 1770s. That range runs from the fort's first garrison up to the year the Darien Committee met. If you want to see how the fort's calendar shifts from summer into fall, our earlier piece on how the waterfront, downtown and Fort King George trade off picks up where this one leaves off.
I love that Darien's history sits this close to home, with a lantern-lit fort at the end of McIntosh Road and a 1775 meeting site a short drive up US 17. If the 250th has you curious about the town around your own front porch, Christal Clear Properties keeps up with Darien through every season, and I'm always glad to talk shop over coffee. Schedule a Free Consultation.
