There were already people on the high ground overlooking the vast expanse of marsh and islands stretching to the sea. A small Creek village, Yamacraw was established on the sandy blufff. Their chief or mico, Tomochichi, met Oglethorpe when he landed with the first settlers in February. Mary Musgrove, a Creek and her English husband John ran a trading house at the north end of the bluff. The first families to arrive with Oglethorpe included carpenters, sawyers, tailors, an apothecary, an engineer, a wheelwright, five farmers, a cloth workers, a stocking-maker, merchants, a baker, a gardener, a vinter,and even in this egalitarian settlement, nine servants.
Six months after the English settlers arrival a ship of 42 Portugese arrived at the new port. The passenger list included a physician and William Cox, the colonists' only docotr, had died of a fever that had taken more than 20 lives. Oglethorpe had been advised by the Trustees to turn the Jews away but ignored their instructions. Savannah is now the home to the third oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. Protestant evangelists John and Charles Wesley also arrived that year and both left disillusioned with the place.