Cold Sassy Tree, a coming of age tale set in turn of the century Georgia, was inspired by some bad news. Olive Ann Burns was a writer for the Atlanta Constitution in 1975 when she was diagnosed with cancer. She walked out of the doctor’s office determined to write a novel. Born in Banks County […]
Getting the stuff to do it yourself got a lot easier on this day in 1979 when the first two Home Depots opened. Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank started a chain of large home improvement warehouses that would stock more products, often at lower prices than any competitor or hardware store. Employees knew what was […]
His companies, and the money they made, impact Georgia to this day. William Clark Bradley was born in 1863 on an Alabama cotton plantation. He moved to Columbus in 1885 to work for a cotton factor. He and his brother-in-law bought the company soon after and in 1888 started the two Columbus banks that in […]
Build it and they will come. Atlanta Stadium was the city’s field of dreams, the brainchild of Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr., who promised in his 1961 mayoral campaign to bring major league sports to Atlanta. With financial support from C&S Bank president Mills B. Lane, Jr., they chose a 62-acre site that had been a […]
Fannin County in north Georgia is named for Georgian James Fannin, who fought in the Texas independence movement. Having attended West Point, Fannin was commissioned a colonel in the Texas Regular Army and raised the Georgia Battalion, primarily volunteers from Macon and Columbus. In 1836 at the Spanish fort at Goliad, on the banks of […]
This Connecticut “carpetbagger” turned out to be mighty welcome. Henry Tift was born in 1841 in Mystic, Connecticut. After the Civil War, he came to Albany, Georgia to manage his uncle’s manufacturing firm. He liked what he saw, and stayed for the next 50 years. Tift started a lumber business in nearby Berrien County and […]
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” So said James Madison, and after the revolution, Georgians realized the fledgling republic would survive only with educated citizens. In 1784, the General Assembly set aside 40,000 acres for a state […]
He took Coca-Cola from the drug store to Main Street, and endowed a great university. Asa Candler was born in Villa Rica in 1851. While working as a pharmacist in Atlanta in 1887 he bought the rights and formula for Coca-Cola from John Pemberton for $2,300. Candler thought the concoction’s future was a soft drink […]
A theology degree from Yale led to chaplaincy in the Army for New England-born Abraham Baldwin. After the war, he followed his friend Nathanael Greene to Georgia, to settle in Augusta, practice law, and start his stellar political career. As a state legislator, Baldwin staunchly believed that education was the key to Georgia’s future. When […]
On this day in 1735, a group of Scottish Highlanders sailed from Inverness, Scotland, aboard the Prince of Wales, bound for Georgia. They disembarked on the northern bank of the Altamaha River, where they founded New Inverness – later named Darien – 60 miles south of Savannah. The Scots were among the finest soldiers in […]
