Lying at the confluence of Georgia’s rich land and its vibrant sea, Laurel Island was originally home to the Timucuan Indians.  In the year 1767 a crown grant signed by King George III of England bestowed Laurel Island and its surrounding marshlands upon Jermyn and Charles Wright Esq., brothers of Georgia then-governor Sir James Wright.  The prominent Oxley Family subsequently cultivated the property’s marshland for rice, indigo, and sea island cotton.  Today, having lain dormant the past century, Laurel Island answers its call to flourish once again.

Extending beyond Laurel Island itself, the area is suffused with a long, rich human history, ranging from the era of the Native American Indian to the era of the great American industrialists of the early 20th century.  During this period, many of the most elite and powerful Americans acquired much of the prized land on the Georgia coast.  Cumberland Island was bought in the 1890’s by Thomas Carnegie, the brother of famed industrialist Andrew Carnegie, with Thomas and his wife, Lucy, then building the grand Dungeness mansion on the site of Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene’s original Dungeness House.  The Carnegies then built the Greyfield, Stafford, and Plum Orchard mansions, all still standing, for several of their adult children.  During this same Gilded Age, the elite of Newport, Rhode Island bought Jekyll Island and there established the ultra-elite Jekyll Island Club, with their Millionaires’ Village, as it is known today, now carefully preserved by the State of Georgia.  In 1925 the renowned Henry Ford found his own paradise at historic Sterling Bluff plantation, with his classically elegant manor house and grounds still standing as a testament to his great love for the Georgia coast.  In 1934, tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds bought Sapelo Island from another titan of coastal Georgia’s rich past, Detroit businessman, Howard Coffin.  In 1926 Cofffin had bought a then obscure, isolated Glynn County barrier island known as Long Island, with Coffin later re-branding it as Sea Island, now home the internationally famous Cloister hotel.

In 1996, John Kennedy, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette were wed in a simple ceremony at the tiny African Baptist Church chapel on Cumberland Island, with Thomas and Lucy Carnegie’s heirs graciously hosting the Kennedys and their guests, at the elegantly grand Greyfield Inn.