The plantation was established in April 1765 by
Samuel Bowen, who bought of land in
Thunderbolt, which he named Greenwich. The following year, Bowen received a patent from the British government for his "new invented method of preparing and making sago, vermicelli and soy from plants growing in America, to be equal in goodness to those made in the East Indies". According to the 1805
The American Universal Geography, Bowen also introduced tea from China to Georgia. These activities likely brought Bowen to the attention of the
American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, which elected him to membership in 1769. Upon his death in 1777, ownership transferred to Bowen's wife,
Jane, daughter of Savannah customs collector William Spencer. She hosted two officers from the fleet of
Charles Hector, comte d'Estaing, at Greenwich during the
Second Battle of Savannah. She supervised the burial of Polish general
Casimir Pulaski, who was killed during the battle, "between her mansion and the river". Jeanie Bowen sold the plantation in 1797 to her daughter's new husband, British army surgeon Samuel Beecroft. a
naval-stores magnate, bought it outright in 1896. (Shotter also owned
Shadowbrook in
the Berkshires of Massachusetts between 1905 and 1912, but was still a resident of Savannah.) In 1898, Shotter began building a
Beaux-Arts mansion which had double
colonnades, 28 columns on three sides, each measuring 28 inches in diameter and more than twenty feet tall. and partly by Ingle and
Almirall, the mansion had extensive gardens containing expanses of lawn,
boxwood hedges, imported plants and decorative pools. Shotter lost his fortunes (and was jailed for three months) after becoming embroiled in an
anti-trust lawsuit and sold the property to Dr.
Henry Norton Torrey, a brain surgeon from
Detroit. Torrey was the owner between 1917 and 1923 and wintered there with his wife, Nell, and two children, William (1911–1958) and
Eleanor (1913–2021), On January 27, 1923, the three-storey, 40-room brick and marble plantation mansion burned to the ground. In 1933, the City of Savannah purchased the land that the plantation once occupied for $75,000 and named it the "Greenwich Addition to Bonaventure". with a collective price tag of $400,000. One item was kept because it was part of a set of two, the other part being on display at Telfair. The original fountain at Greenwich still exists, marking the former location of the mansion, as does the butterfly lake, which was traversed by an arched bridge. ==References==