The silk business was now on the irretrievable decline, though it still maintained a nominal existence, and received the encouragement of Parliament. The special bounty which had hitherto been paid on cocoons, over and above their merchantable value, was suspended, and by a statute of 9 Geo. III., c. 38, a premium of twenty-five per cent. from the 1st of January, 1770, to the 1st of January, 1777,--of twenty per cent, from the 1st of January, 1777, to the 1st of January, 1784,--and of fifteen per cent. from the 1st of January, 1784, to the 1st of January 1791, on the ad valorem value of all silk produced in America and imported into Great Britain in vessels regularly navigated by law, was substituted in its place.
The inhabitants of Ebenezer resumed the culture, which with them had long been dormant, and its revival at that time was principally owing to the influence of a very worthy man and magistrate, Mr. Wertsch, who, sanguine himself of ultimate success, had imparted to the Germans a portion of his own enthusiasm.
In 1770, they shipped two hundred and ninety-one pounds of raw silk, the result of their own industry, and as the filature at Savannah was discontinued in 1771, the Earl of Hillsborough, ever anxious to advance the produce, warmly commended the zeal of the Saltzburgers, and directed President Habersham to distribute "the basins and reels that were left in the public filature, to such persons as Mr. Wertsch shall recommend to be proper objects of that bounty;" and in the same letter he promised that he would endeavor to procure for them, this year, "a small sum from Parliament, to be laid out in purchase of utensils for the assistance of the poor sort of people in your province." This promise he redeemed.
So popular had the silk business become at Ebenezer, that Mr. Habersham, in a letter dated the 30th of March, 1772, says, "some persons in almost every family there, understand its process from the beginning to the end." In 1771, the Germans sent four hundred and thirty-eight pounds of raw silk to England, and in 1772, four hundred and eighty-five pounds, all of their own raising. They made their own reels, which were so much esteemed that one was sent to England as a model, and another taken to the East Indies by Pickering Robinson. The operations at Savannah were now totally discontinued, though Mr. Ottolenghe still styled himself "Superintendent of the Silk Culture in Georgia," and in consideration of his long and faithful service in that office, received an annuity of 100_l_.