Wright Square, one of the two largest of Brunswick’s original 14 squares, was named for Sir James Wright, Georgia’s last Colonial Governor, who served from October 13, 1760 until the end of the Revolution and under whose leadership the colony gained prosperity. Brunswick was established in 1771 near the colony’s southernmost boundary at a strategic site with an excellent natural harbor on plantation land bought from Captain Mark Carr, but unlike earlier colonial towns it received little support from the Crown, leaving life isolated, difficult, and lacking amenities for immigrants from Europe. Because the colony was already in unrest and nearing revolt, Brunswick’s Loyalist citizens abandoned the city during the Revolutionary War, and after the war ended in 1781 the departing British left unpaid debts to their Creek Indian allies, the over-hunting of white tail deer undermined the buckskin trade, and repeated Creek wars and raids followed as demands for land increased, so only a handful of families returned to begin again. Colonial women who came to Georgia faced frontier hardships, limits on inheriting land, and few legal rights in marriage, though families were encouraged by the Trustees and midwives had been provided free during the colonial period; after the Revolutionary War that benefit ended, and women in Brunswick who endured childbirth and frontier life became courageous but largely unsung pioneers. From 1771 until the mid-1800s, early citizens buried their dead in Wright Square, Brunswick’s first burial ground, then beyond the opened streets, but as the city expanded and other cemeteries were established its exact location was forgotten. In 1953 Glynn County Middle School was built on half of Wright Square, and because early records had been destroyed by fire, later work crossed the burial shafts without knowing a cemetery was there. After the school was demolished, excavations in 2012 carefully uncovered the outlines of 37 burial sites believed to be more than two centuries old, showing differing grave-digging skill, probable family groupings, few graves for children under 6, and coffin angles suggesting that most deaths occurred in summer months according to the Christian tradition of facing the rising sun. No coffins were excavated and no remains were disturbed; the shafts were covered again with native soil, and the identities of those buried there remain unknown as Brunswick honors them as its first citizens.