Evidence of human presence extends for at least 4,000 years based on pottery shards unearthed from the island's numerous oyster shell middens. It was inhabited by the
Guale Indians at the time of the Spanish exploration of the Georgia coast in the early 16th century. Throughout the Spanish mission period the Guale alternately supplied and fought with the Spanish. When English occupation of the area replaced the Spanish in the 1730s, the Guale had moved inland possibly in response to disease and coastal marauding under the Spanish. The earliest English treaties reserved the island as hunting and fishing grounds for the
Creek Indians. In 1758 a group of Creek leaders was persuaded to convey the island to King George II of Great Britain. In 1760 Henri Bourquin claimed ownership of the island. He later sold it to his son-in-law,
John Morell. Morell used enslaved people to farm and timber the island. At his death, the island was divided into four plantations. Morell's will includes 155 enslaved people, whom his three living sons inherited. After 1916 it was used as a hunting retreat while owned by a group of wealthy businessmen until it was purchased in 1924 by Dr.
Henry Norton Torrey and his wife Nell Ford Torrey, of Detroit, Michigan. In 1961 The Ossabaw Foundation created by
Eleanor Torrey West and Clifford B. West launched the Ossabaw Island Project as an artistic and scholarly retreat. Over the years the island's solitude and natural beauty served as the setting for notable visitors including composers
Aaron Copland,
Samuel Barber; writers
Ralph Ellison,
Annie Dillard,
Olive Ann Burns, and
Margaret Atwood; sculptor
Harry Bertoia; and scientist
Eugene Odum. The Ossabaw Foundation was also host to The Genesis Project, scientific research and public use and education programs on the island. In 1978, no longer able to subsidize the artistic, educational, and scientific activity on the island, and eschewing lucrative offers of resort development, Mrs. West and her brother's children chose to sell the island to the State of Georgia as a Heritage Preserve with the understanding that Ossabaw would "be used for natural, scientific and cultural study, research and education, and environmentally sound preservation, conservation and management of the Island's ecosystem." == Ossabaw today ==