A bit about George Town taken from Insight Guides-Bahamas-The Exumas: “Stretching in almost a straight line for some 90 miles, the Exumas Cays, which lie in a southeasterly direction from Nassau, are perhaps the most tantalizing of the Bahamas’ island groups. …known for their beauty, the amazing colors of the sea around them & their interestingly quaint people…The largest single mass of the Exumas is Great Exumas. …Visitors to these cays will soon notice that fully half of the residents
George Town as seen from the harbor
go by the name Rolle…There is a very significant connection. During the latter part of the 18th Century the British Crown granted an Englishman name Denys Rolle a total of 7,000 acres on Great Exuma Deny Rolle brought slaves & cotton seeds to the island & set to work building up 5 plantations…His son Lord John Rolle followed in his footsteps, & by the time of emancipation in 1834, he had some 325 slaves…Legend has it that when cotton proved to be a dismal financial failure & the prospect of emancipation loomed, Lord Rolle generously deeded all his lands to his slaves. The slaves, following a custom of the day, all adopted their master’s surname….no such deed has ever been found, & Rolle’s will, written 3 years after emancipation, asks his executors to sell all his lands in the Bahamas…the Rolle slaves effectively maintained their claim to the land . Both the land & the name 
Straw Market
have been passed down to their descendants since…George Town, Exumas’s main settlement, where there are no traffic lights & where, under a gigantic tree at the center of town, a half dozen ladies are likely to be found displaying their handmade straw goods …a few yards away is the town’s largest building, the pink & white Government Admin. Building which was modeled on Government House in Nassau…Elizabeth Harbour, a large natural harbor protected by long, narrow Stocking Island which lies about 1 mile offshore. Their fabulous harbor has prompted some Exumians to speculate that perhaps Columbus’s first landfall in the New World was in the Exumas - not San Salvador as currently believed -
Peace & Plenty
because he ebulliently described in his journal a harbor that could hold “All the ships in Christendom”…Club Peace & Plenty, the oldest hotel in the Exumas was a sponge market before the buildings were converted to a hotel in the late 1950’s…St. Andrew’s Anglican Church…a lovely, fresh white 150 year-old
building is an active place of worship today…”
Back of Peace & Plenty & the Church
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