This imposing house, located on Orleans Square, was built with the labor of enslaved men for John Henry Morel (c. 1780-1834) circa 1818. Morel was a member of one of early Savannah’s most prominent families. His grandfather, John Morel, was born to Swiss immigrant Peter Morel, in the year Savannah was established. By the 1760s John Morel owned Ossabaw Island, where he established a large plantation, cultivating indigo and harvesting vast amounts of timber, through the forced labor of enslaved men and women. He eventually acquired and resided at Beaulieu Plantation, on the Vernon River. He served on Savannah’s Council of Safety, which was central to the patriot cause during the American Revolution and was active in local government. His myriad agricultural pursuits made him one of the largest slaveholders in 18th-century Savannah, owning 155 human beings at the time of his death in 1777.
John Henry Morel married Catherine Millen Waldberg, the widow of Jacob Waldberg, in 1803, and Waldberg’s plantation Cottonham, on the Great Ogeechee Neck in Bryan County, was transferred to Morel upon their marriage. Catherine presumably died circa 1811 and Morel married Sarah Martha DeVeaux Alger. In the first two decades of the 19th century, legal proceedings indicate that Morel didn’t have his family’s economic sensibilities. He was sued multiple times for unpaid taxes and other charges, though his vast inheritances appeared to protect him from the worst of outcomes.
In 1816, he purchased the lot on which the Morel-Gilbert House was built. That same year (1818), he was appointed U. S. Marshal for Savannah. In that position, he presided over the case of the slave ship Antelope. Considering that his family’s prosperity was wholly dependent upon the institution of slavery, he was ill-suited for the case, but that was to be its trajectory. The Antelope was brought to Savannah in June 1820 after being seized by the revenue cutter Dallas off the coast of Florida for being Spanish-flagged. The 280 Africans on board were placed in Morel’s custody for seven years as the case languished in the courts. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court heard the case but with four slave-holding members on the bench at the time, was ambiguous in its ruling. They deferred to the 1808 act prohibiting the importation of slaves, but only to a point. 93 of the captives, who had already been accounted for, were condemned to slavery, while 120 were freed and sent to Liberia, establishing the colony of New Georgia. The disposition and handling of the case brought criticism from Francis Scott Key, John Quincy Adams, and Savannah’s own Richard Habersham and was an early national debacle regarding this vile institution.
After Morel’s death, the house was sold at public auction. I haven’t been able to document other owners until 1869, when it was purchased by Gilbert Butler (1797-1875). Butler, a prominent Savannah builder and architect, also served as a city alderman and fireman, and in 1853 crafted the iron fence that still surrounds Johnson Square. The house was extensively renovated during Butler’s ownership and remains an icon of Orleans Square.
Savannah National Historic Landmark District, National Register of Historic Places
