William Jasper

Savannah’s Irish have persistently claimed William Jasper as their countryman, though evidence of his heritage is scant. Dorothy Stewart, author of a history of Savannah’s monuments, declares it a mystery as to how Savannah’s Irish ever formed the opinion that Jasper was their compatriot.

Historical sources suggest that he was instead a native of either Germany or South Carolina. One Savannah historian discovered a John William Jasper, then aged 16, among the immigrants landing in Philadelphia in October 1767, traveling from the German Palatinate aboard the Minerva. His name is believed to have been an anglicized interpretation of his original name, Johann Wilhelm Gasper, Jasper having been illiterate and unable to sign his own name.

By this account, Jasper completed the several years of indentured servitude required as a condition of his passage to America, thereafter moving south to seek land. He joined the military to earn money for his wife-to-be to move southwards with him, she having stayed behind in her native Pennsylvania.

Other, genealogical, records suggest that Jasper was born in coastal South Carolina, north-east of Charleston, on September 11 1757, to John Jasper, a blacksmith native to Virginia whose ancestral heritage appears to have been English.

Regardless of his origins, William Jasper is known to have enlisted in the Second South Carolina Continental Regiment at Halifax, GA on July 7 1775, when he was around 20 years old. He married Mary Wheatley, of Pennsylvania, in Charleston around 1776. They lived on Sullivan’s Island, and Mary bore Jasper three children (two, twins, surviving) before his untimely death only a few years later (as neither child went on to have any offspring of their own, Jasper has no known direct descendants today).

Several incidents from Jasper’s short-lived military career gained him lasting fame. The first, on June 28 1776, was his recovery of his regiment’s flag during a British attack on Fort Moultrie (then known as Fort Sullivan) at Sullivan’s Island.

The flag, whose design, by request of the colonial government, was Jasper’s own, had been shot down by enemy fire. Jasper recovered the flag and held it in place upon a temporary staff, all the while under fire, until a replacement could be found. Bolstered by Jasper’s act, the regiment were able to hold the fort, and the city of Charleston, against the British.

Governor John Rutledge offered Jasper a military commission in recognition of his bravery. Jasper declined the commission on the grounds that his illiteracy disqualified him as an officer, accepting instead Rutledge’s gift of his own sword.

On another occasion, Jasper and another soldier, John Newton, rescued a group of American prisoners after overpowering their British captors. This story, in particular, taken up and embellished by the writer Parson Weems, became widely known. Many places chose to memorialize Sergeant Jasper after reading Weems’ inspiring tale, often commemorating Newton too.

Jasper was killed on October 9 1779 during the Siege of Savannah, while participating in an assault on the British forces who then held the city. In a story similar to that told of his pursuits at Fort Moultrie, three years earlier, he was said to have again heroically rescued his regiment’s flag, this time while fatally shot.

The Siege, which also claimed the life of General Casimir Pulaski (memorialized in Monterey Square), was not a success for the American side, and Savannah remained under British control until 1782.

History Of The Jasper Monument

In the years running up to and surrounding the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, commemorative spirit in America ran high. In 1876, the city of Charleston, Savannah’s rival and close neighbor, erected a monument to the Revolutionary War defenders of Fort Moultrie, of whom William Jasper was one.

Around that same time, prominent Savannah citizens began to call for their own monument to Jasper, including many Irish citizens eager to celebrate a presumed-Irish hero fighting for American Independence at a time their home country was itself attempting to rid itself of British colonial rule.

Local citizens, most of them Irish, formed the Jasper Monument Association to pursue the construction of a memorial. They specifically stated that this was to be a monument to Irish valor. They also felt that the monument should be principally an Irish effort, hoping to raise the money for its construction from Irish people across the United States, with subscriptions of between $1 and $100.

Sergeant Jasper had long been a popular figure in Savannah, with one call to erect a monument to his honor at Jasper Spring, where he and another soldier had rescued several American prisoners, coming in the early 1840s.

Nothing came of it at the time, but much later, that memorial was built, a plaque erected in Jasper Spring Park, on the outskirts of Savannah, in memory of William Jasper and John Newton. Jasper may also have inspired the name of the Irish volunteer militia company the Irish Jasper Greens, founded in 1842.

In 1879, the Monument Association requested permission to place the monument in either Chippewa or Madison Square, the latter located in Jasper Ward. Permission was granted to place it in Madison Square, and the cornerstone for the monument was laid that year on October 9, the centennial of Jasper’s death at the Siege of Savannah. Around this time, the Jasper Greens began their St Patrick’s Day custom of firing a three-shot volley over the spot.

By 1881, the Monument association had drummed up donations from across the country to the amount of a little over $5000, around half of the estimated $10,000 the monument would cost. By fall of 1883, the sum had risen to $7000, and by 1886, it had finally reached the required $10,000.

The largest single donation toward the monument came from Eugene Kelly, an Irish businessman from New York, one of the founders of the Southern Bank and an investor in Savannah. He donated $500. Another donation was received from General William Sherman.

The statue was designed by the well-known New York sculptor Alexander Doyle (1857-1922), creator of numerous other public monuments. Doyle’s works include the statue of Horace Greeley in New York’s Greeley Square; the Soldier’s Monument in New Haven; the Henry Grady statue in Atlanta; and in New Orleans, a statue of the philanthropist Margaret Haughery, remarkable for being the first public monument erected to a woman in the United States.

The Jasper Monument consists of a granite pedestal and base with a fifteen foot bronze statue of Jasper, depicted in his heroic recovery of his regiment’s colors whilst fatally shot. Doyle came up with the design for Jasper’s face himself, as there was no image of his real-life appearance to work from.

The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts cast the bronze statue, which took them three months.

Three bronze panels on the sides of the pedestal depict Sergeant Jasper’s battle scenes: rescuing the colors at Fort Moultrie; recovering American prisoners at Jasper Spring; and Jasper’s death scene, attended by an army surgeon. A fourth panel bears the memorial’s inscription.

The completed Jasper Monument was unveiled on February 22 1888. A substantial ceremony, known as the Jasper Festival, was planned for the monument’s unveiling. It included boat races, a military parade, speeches, and a fireworks display, given in the lower half of Forsyth Park to a crowd contemporaries claimed to be as high as 20,000.

President Grover Cleveland was invited to participate in the ceremonies. His visit, however, en route to the Sub-Tropical Exposition at Jacksonville, was disappointingly brief, consisting only of a drive around the city before he continued his journey southwards. He did not attend the unveiling.

The festival itself cost almost $6000, again raised mostly by subscription. The remaining balance from the festival was turned over to the Oglethorpe fund, toward the erection of a proposed monument to Georgia founder James Oglethorpe.

References

Dorothy H Stewart, 1993, The monuments and fountains of Savannah: a report on an internship for the Savannah Park and Tree Department

More Savannah Monuments & Memorials

– African-American Monument
– William Washington Gordon Monument
– Nathanael Greene Monument
– Haitian Monument
– James Oglethorpe Monument
– Olympic Yachting Cauldron
– Casimir Pulaski Monument
– Tomochichi Memorial
– Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial
– Waving Girl Monument
– John Wesley Monument
– World War II Monument

See also:
– Museums in Savannah
– Guided tours of Savannah
– Black history sites in Savannah
– Historic house tours
– Historic District squares and parks