19th century

July 22, 1864

Battle of Atlanta

General William Sherman and his army were set to take Atlanta in July, 1864. General Joseph Johnston’s Confederate army had fought them since May. But they could only slow Sherman down, not stop him. The citizens of the Confederacy’s major railroad hub were justifiably worried. So was Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Fearing Atlanta would fall […]

July 21, 1861

Francis Bartow

Francis Bartow had it all—a law career, a senator for a father-in-law, wealth in plantations and slaves, political rank and military ambitions. But he risked it all on the battlefield and became the first high-ranking Georgian to be killed in the Civil War. Bartow was born in 1816 in Savannah. His marriage to the daughter […]

July 15, 1854

George Towns

Political flip-flopping is nothing new. George Washington Bonaparte Towns began his political life as a staunch Unionist. Born in 1801 in Wilkes County, Towns’ career followed a familiar path in the antebellum South: lawyer, militia officer, and representative in the Georgia House and Senate, where he opposed the states rights politics of South Carolinian John […]

July 13, 1890

John C. Fremont

Abraham Lincoln was not the first Republican presidential candidate. It was Georgia native John Frémont who ran four years before Lincoln. Born in Savannah in 1813, Fremont graduated from the College of Charleston. South Carolina diplomat Joel Poinsett got Fremont appointed to the Army’s topographical engineers, and his life’s work was set. Fremont surveyed and […]

June 28, 1863

W.C. Bradley

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 […]

June 27, 1864

Battle of Kennesaw Mountain

Since early May 1864 U.S. General William Tecumseh Sherman had been moving south from Tennessee toward Atlanta, with Joe Johnston’s Confederates blocking his path. Every flanking move Sherman made, Johnston countered, frustrating Sherman’s plans. Finally, Sherman’s patience snapped. No more flanking. He would attack Johnston head on and destroy his army. It would be the […]

June 24, 1840

Mary Latimer McLendon

Prohibition and voting rights for women: they were the twin passions of Mary Latimer McLendon. Mary Latimer was the younger sister of outspoken suffragist Rebecca Latimer Felton. She was born in DeKalb County in 1840 and graduated from the Southern Masonic Female College in Covington. After the Civil War, McLendon became active in the Women’s […]

June 23, 1865

Stand Watie

He was the highest-ranking Native American to fight for the Confederacy, but years before the Civil War, Stand Watie was nearly assassinated by fellow Cherokees for what they saw as betrayal. Watie was born near New Echota, in Georgia, in 1806. That’s the same place where he and three other Cherokees signed the Treaty of […]

June 19, 1877

Charles Coburn

He was one of those classic character actors from the golden age of Hollywood but you probably didn’t know his name. Actor Charles Coburn was born in Macon in 1877 and grew up in Savannah. At age 19, after working in local theater, he headed off to Broadway. When his first wife died in 1937, […]

June 15, 1826

Bill Arp

Missouri has Mark Twain. Georgia has Bill Arp, the pen name for Charles Henry Smith. Born in Lawrenceville in 1826, Smith moved to Rome in 1851 to practice law. After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, Smith wrote a letter under the pen name “Bill Arp” to President Lincoln in the humorous dialect favored by […]