John Mullryne

John Mullryne (died 6 January 1786) was a British Army colonel who established Bonaventure Plantation in Savannah, Province of Georgia, in 1761. A supporter of the Crown, he later drew the ire of the colonists after aiding (with the help of his son-in-law Josiah Tattnall Sr.) the escape of James Wright, the British royal governor of the Province of Georgia, through his property during the American Revolutionary War.

Early life Mullryne was born in Montserrat in the Windward Islands but emigrated to Beaufort, South Carolina, where he became a successful merchant. Their youngest daughter, Mary (1741–1781), married Josiah Tattnall Sr. They had another daughter, Catharine. (Lucian Lamar Knight, in his 1913 book Georgia's Landmarks, Memorials and Legends, states that Mary was the couple's only child.)

In 1762, around a year after purchasing the land that became Bonaventure Plantation, John Berendt wrote in his 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil that a formal dinner party, held by either Mullryne or Tattnall, was in progress when one of the servants informed the host that the roof was ablaze and that nothing could be done to stop it. The host "rose calmly, clinked his glass, and invited guests to pick up their dinner plates and follow him into the garden", where they ate the remainder of their meals in the glow of the flames. The house was replaced by a brick mansion. By the end of 1771, Mullryne and Tattnall owned around of land in Georgia.