By the end of 1865, not long after General William T. Sherman’s famous march through Georgia, history records, but for a few exceptions, all the freed Geechee slaves and their families returned to their homes on Sapelo Island, one of Georgia’s storied barrier islands abandoned shortly after the war broke out. The Last Laird of Sapelo offers a historically accurate, dramatic story shedding light on the Spalding family’s near-forgotten legacy on the once prosperous island and why four-hundred freed Geechee with the help of the Spalding family thrived during the challenging decades that followed.