Antebellum Athens And Clarke County Georgia

Published in 1974, Antebellum Athens and Clarke County, Georgia is a chronicle of sixty years of change in Clarke County and the city of Athens. In 1801, Clarke County, newly created from Jackson County, was virtually all Georgia farmland, and Athens was a portion of land set aside for the establishment of a state university. In those first years of the century, the university began with thirty or forty students. They received instruction from Josiah Meigs--president and faculty of the university--in a twenty-by-twenty-foot log cabin. By 1846, the population of the county was over four thousand, and the area prospered. Cotton mills dotted the banks of the Oconee River, the Georgia Railroad connected Athens with Augusta, numerous schools and churches had been established, and newspapers, banks, and small businesses were all part of the Athens scene. Antebellum Athens and Clarke County, Georgia is rich with detail. This historical narrative recalls not only the growth of industry, government, and education within Clarke County, but also contains many anecdotes of the early people who lived there. The chronology of dates and events and the comprehensive listing of public officials, professional men, planters, and businessmen found in the appendixes of Antebellum Athens and Clarke County, Georgia add to the value of this work of local history.

Athens, Georgia, seems the quintessential southern university town. With a geography chiseled over geologic time by its lifeblood, the slow-flowing Oconee River, Athens has developed a unique culture as the two-century-long home of the state's bustling center of learning and research, the University of Georgia. A multitude of influences have powered the emergence of Athens from its eighteenth-century rustic solitude to its current incarnation as a community striving to preserve the old while embracing the new. A Portrait of Historic Athens and Clarke County gives equal attention to Athens's natural and built environments and their coevolution into one of the modern South's most dynamic small cities. Starting with the town's beginnings, Frances Taliaferro Thomas emphasizes settlement patterns, key events, institutions, architecture, landscape, economics, and the highly distinctive personalities that have molded Athens into what it is today. This edition includes two new sections of color photographs as well as a comprehensive new chapter tracing the milestones that led town and gown into the twenty-first century. Topics include the emerging cultural importance of the Classic Center; restoration and revitalization of many historic sites; vast building projects under two presidents of the University of Georgia; the progression of the greenway along the North Oconee River; and initiatives to address rising poverty rates within the county. Blending scholarly research with archival materials, official data, newspaper accounts, interviews, and personal letters and diaries, A Portrait of Historic Athens and Clarke County is the definitive account of a place that makes history each and every day.

This first of two volumes extends from the founding of the colony of Georgia in 1733 up to the Progressive era. From the beginning, Georgia women were instrumental in shaping the state, yet most histories minimize their contributions. The essays in this volume include women of many ethnicities and classes who played an important role in Georgia’s history. Though sources for understanding the lives of women in Georgia during the colonial period are scarce, the early essays profile Mary Musgrove, an important player in the relations between the Creek nation and the British Crown, and the loyalist Elizabeth Johnston, who left Georgia for Nova Scotia in 1806. Another essay examines the near-mythical quality of the American Revolution-era accounts of "Georgia's War Woman," Nancy Hart. The later essays are multifaceted in their examination of the way different women experienced Georgia's antebellum social and political life, the tumult of the Civil War, and the lingering consequences of both the conflict itself and Emancipation. After the war, both necessity and opportunity changed women's lives, as educated white women like Eliza Andrews established or taught in schools and as African American women like Lucy Craft Laney, who later founded the Haines Institute, attended school for the first time. Georgia Women also profiles reform-minded women like Mary Latimer McLendon, Rebecca Latimer Felton, Mildred Rutherford, Nellie Peters Black, and Martha Berry, who worked tirelessly for causes ranging from temperance to suffrage to education. The stories of the women portrayed in this volume provide valuable glimpses into the lives and experiences of all Georgia women during the first century and a half of the state's existence. Historical figures include: Mary Musgrove Nancy Hart Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston Ellen Craft Fanny Kemble Frances Butler Leigh Susie King Taylor Eliza Frances Andrews Amanda America Dickson Mary Ann Harris Gay Rebecca Latimer Felton Mary Latimer McLendon Mildred Lewis Rutherford Nellie Peters Black Lucy Craft Laney Martha Berry Corra Harris Juliette Gordon Low

First published in 1977, A History of Georgia has become the standard history of the state. Documenting events from the earliest discoveries by the Spanish to the rapid changes the state has undergone with the civil rights era, the book gives broad coverage to the state's social, political, economic, and cultural history. This work details Georgia's development from past to present, including the early Cherokee land disputes, the state's secession from the Union, cotton's reign, Reconstruction, the Bourbon era, the effects of the New Deal, Martin Luther King, Jr., the fall of the county-unit system, and Jimmy Carter's election to the presidency. Also noted are the often-overlooked contributions of Indians, blacks, and women. Each imparting his own special knowledge and understanding of a particular period in the state's history, the authors bring into focus the personalities and events that made Georgia what it is today. For this new edition, available in paperback for the first time, A History of Georgia has been revised to bring the work up through the events of the 1980s. The bibliographies for each section and the appendixes have also been updated to include relevant scholarship from the last decade.

Their songs insist that the arrival of the railroad and the appearance of the tiny depot often created such hope that it inspired the construction of the architectural extravaganzas that were the courthouses of the era. In these buildings the distorted myth of the Old South collided head-on with the equally deformed myth of the New South."

From its small headwaters in Hall County, Georgia, the North Oconee winds nearly seventy miles, tumbling over granite outcroppings at Hurricane Shoals and on to Athens, where it meets the Middle Oconee. From there, the Oconee courses 220 miles through east-central Georgia to meet the Ocmulgee convergence near Lumber City, forming the Altamaha River, which flows to the Atlantic Ocean. As the Oconee’s importance as a recreational amenity has grown over the years, University of Georgia students and instructors, the Altamaha Riverkeeper, Georgia River Network, Upper Oconee Watershed Network, and the North Oconee River Greenway have worked together to create a plan for water trails and recreational trails along the river as it flows through Athens. In the Oconee River User’s Guide, both novice and experienced water sports enthusiasts will find all the information required to enjoy the river, including detailed maps, put in and take out suggestions, fishing and camping locations, mile-by-mile points of interest, and an illustrated guide to the animals and plants commonly seen in and around the river. Daytrippers will enjoy Joe Cook’s fascinating description of the cultural and natural heritage of this richly diverse waterway. The Oconee River is home to seventy-four species of fish, including the Altamaha shiner, found only in the Altamaha River basin, as well as thirty-seven species of salamanders and frogs and forty-three species of reptiles, including the American alligator, found in the lower Oconee downstream of Milledgeville. FEATURES: an introduction and overview of the river chapters describing each river section with detailed maps and notes on river access and points of interest a compact natural history guide featuring species of interest found along Georgia’s rivers notes on safety and boating etiquette a fishing primer notes on organizations working to protect the river

Through the Arch captures UGA's colorful past, dynamic present, and promising future in a novel way: by surveying its buildings, structures, and spaces. These physical features are the university's most visible--and some of its most valuable--resources. Yet they are largely overlooked, or treated only passingly, in histories and standard publications about UGA. Through text and photographs, this book places buildings and spaces in the context of UGA's development over more than 225 years. After opening with a brief historical overview of the university, the book profiles over 140 buildings, landmarks, and spaces, their history, appearance, and past and current usage, as well as their namesake, beginning with the oldest structures on North Campus and progressing to the newest facilities on South and East Campus and the emerging Northwest Quadrant. Many profiles are supplemented with sidebars relating traditions, lore, facts, or alumni recollections associated with buildings and spaces. More than just landmarks or static elements of infrastructure, buildings and spaces embody the university's values, cultural heritage, and educational purpose. These facilities--many more than a century old--are where students learn, explore, and grow and where faculty teach, research, and create. They harbor the university's history and traditions, protect its treasures, and hold memories for alumni. The repository for books, documents, artifacts, and tools that contain and convey much of the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of human existence, these structures are the legacy of generations. And they are tangible symbols of UGA's commitment to improve our world through education. Guide includes 113 color photos throughout 19 black-and-white historical photos Over 140 profiles of buildings, landmarks, and spaces Supplemental sidebars with traditions, lore, facts, and alumni anecdotes 6 maps