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Trustee Georgia is the name of the period covering the first twenty years of Georgia history, from 1732–1752, because during that time the English Province of Georgia was governed by a board of trustees. England's King George II, for whom the colony was named, signed a charter establishing the colony and creating its governing board on July 7, 1732. His action culminated a lengthy process. Tomochichi was a Native American that resides along the Savannah River that allowed Oglethorpe to settle on the Yamacraw Bluff.
The charter was granted to the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America, a group formed by James Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe envisioned the province as a location for the resettlement of English debtors and " worthy poor", although few debtors were part of the organized settlement of Georgia. Another motivation for the founding of the colony was to create a "buffer state" (border), or "garrison province" that would defend the southern part of the British colonies from Spanish Florida and French Mississippi. Oglethorpe envisioned a province populated largely by yeoman farmers who would secure the southern frontier of British America; because of this, as well as on moral grounds, the colony's regulations prohibited slavery.
Oglethorpe's plan for settlement (now known as the Oglethorpe Plan) was founded on eighteenth-century country party philosophy and drew from principles of Roman colonial town design.