A History Of Columbus Georgia 1828 1928

Founded in 1828 as a planned city by the Georgia Legislature, Columbus prospered due to its location on the Chattahoochee River. Industry sprang up along the shores of the Chattahoochee and shaped Columbus's identity as one of Georgia's premier cities. Today a thriving metropolis, it is the Columbus of yesteryear that is illuminated within these pages. Early postcard views reflect the city from around 1905 to 1942, showcasing many of its businesses, neighborhoods, and parks. Included are places virtually unknown to citizens today--the Bell Tower, the City Market, North Highlands Park, and Wildwood Park--as well as those that were landmarks a century ago and landmarks still: the Iron Bank, the Springer Opera House, the Union Depot, the YMCA, and Fort Benning.

Columbus is the third-largest city in Georgia, and Red Clay, White Water, and Blues is its first comprehensive history. Virginia E. Causey documents the city's founding in 1828 and brings its story to the present, examining the economic, political, social, and cultural changes over the period. It is the first history of the city that analyzes the significant contributions of all its citizens, including African Americans, women, and the working class. Causey, who has lived and worked in Columbus for more than forty years, focuses on three defining characteristics of the city's history: the role that geography has played in its evolution, specifically its location on the Chattahoochee River along the Fall Line, making it an ideal place to establish water-powered textile mills; the fact that the control of city's affairs rested in the hands of a particular business elite; and the endemic presence of violence that left a "bloody trail" throughout local history. Causey traces the life of Columbus: its founding and early boom years; the Civil War and its aftermath; conflicts as a modern city emerged in the first half of the twentieth century; racial tension and economic decline in the mid-to-late 1900s; and rebirth and revival of the city in the twenty-first century. Peppered throughout are compelling anecdotes about the city's most colorful characters, including Sol Smith and His Dramatic Company, music phenom Blind Tom Wiggins, suffragist Augusta Howard, industrialist and philanthropist G. Gunby Jordan, peanut purveyor Tom Huston, blueswoman Ma Rainey, novelist Carson McCullers, and insurance magnate John Amos.

Columbus, Georgia, began as a rough frontier trading town in 1828. As its focus on the sale and shipment of cotton evolved into cotton manufacturing, massive textile mills grew up along the riverbank. Today the mills are closing, but Columbus, undergoing an economic and cultural renaissance, keeps one eye on its colorful past. As the city's oldest graveyard, Linwood Cemetery bears witness to the city's rich history. Graced by over 100 monuments signed by their 19th-century carvers, Linwood is more than a cemetery: it is a virtual outdoor museum. Historic Linwood Cemetery transforms the old gravestones into flesh-and-blood stories of the people who once walked the streets of Columbus. In these pages readers will meet a broad spectrum of former residents now resting in the hallowed soil of Linwood-stone carvers, founding fathers and mothers, military heroes, steamboat designers, past managers of the city wharf, builders of the town's first roads and railroads, and the town's best ice cream maker.

A thoroughly researched account of a memorable Civil War battle Columbus, Georgia, 1865 is a comprehensive study of the Easter Sunday, April 16, 1865, con?ict, which occurred in the dark of night and extended over a mile and half through a series of forts and earthworks and was ?nally decided in an encounter on a bridge a thousand feet in length. This volume offers the ?rst complete account of this battle, examining and recounting in depth not only the composition and actions of the contending forces, which numbered some three thousand men on each side, but meticulously detailing the effect of the engagement on the city of Columbus and its environs. Misulia’s study ?lls in an omission in the grand account of our cataclysmic national struggle and adds a signi?cant chapter to the history of an important regional city. In addition, Misulia takes on the long-vexing question of which encounter should be recognized as the last battle of the Civil War and argues persuasively that Columbus, Georgia, quali?es for this distinction on a number of counts.