Chica Arndt, President of the Coastal Georgia Archaeological Society (CGAS), will be speaking at the Tuesday, November 15th, 2011, meeting of the Hilton Head Chapter of the Archaeological Society of South Carolina. The meeting is free and open to the public, and will be held at the Coastal Discovery Museum at Honey Horn at 1 pm.

In early 2002 the CGAS was invited to visit the Mary Musgrove Site, and out of this visit grew the presentation. The first part of the talk will be a look at eyewitness accounts of Mary Musgrove given by James Oglethorpe, John Wesley, William Stephens, and others in the Georgia colony. Not only did Mary act as an agent and negotiator to Creek Nation, but she also owned three trading posts. The second part is the video Georgia Time Capsule, narrated by Chad Braley, archaeologist with Southeastern Archeological Services and in charge of the excavation. It describes work done at The Grange Site and how, by chance, they found the site of the 1735 Musgrove Trading Post. Chica has been “Musgrovin’” since 2003 because of continuing interest in the site, although now it has been covered over by the Georgia Ports Authority.

Chica is the Manager of the Savannah-Ogeechee Canal Museum & Nature Center. She moved to Savannah in 1977 from New Jersey and joined the Coastal Georgia Archaeological Society shortly after it was organized in 1981. In 1996, she began working at Wormsloe Historic Site until her employment at the Savannah-Ogeechee Canal in 2003.

Read more about Mary Musgrove in the New Georgia Encyclopedia online here.

Where to find it

Click above to go to a larger Google interactive map of the area.

Posted online on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011