Georgia was an original Crown Colony and contained the entire Southeast in 1732. In 1733 James Oglethorpe and 35 other families settled what is Savannah. It became a Crown Colony in 1752. In 1788 it became the Fourth State covering everything south of North Carolina and then west to the Mississippi River. It's current boundaries were set in 1802.
Land Lotteries in the first part of the 1800s opened great opportunities for free land and a great many came down from the Carolinas to settle. They ran from 1803 through 1832. Several members of the Massachusetts family settled in the Savannah Area and then into Putnam County, named for either the General Israel or Dr. Benjamin Putnam who settled there in about 1801. The 1820 census is the first census that remains.