People Places and Environments

August 27, 1893

Georgia Hurricane of 1893

A hurricane with the same destructive force as Katrina hit the Georgia coast on this day in 1893. Known as the “Sea Island Storm,” it killed nearly 2,000 people. The hurricane first hit the coast, passing over Georgia’s Sea Islands, before churning its way north 100 miles with a 16–foot storm surge. The hurricane made […]

July 9, 1936

Chattahoochee National Forest

Anyone who has ever taken a walk in the woods in north Georgia knows that the Chattahoochee National Forest is one of the state’s great treasures. But it wasn’t always so. At the turn of the 20th century, the forest had been abused and overused, the victims of hydraulic mining, overcutting and poor land and […]

July 11, 1733

First Jewish Settlers in Georgia

They were originally banned from the Georgia colony, but when 42 Jewish immigrants from Europe arrived in Savannah on this day in 1733, James Oglethorpe welcomed them. The migrants arrived onboard the ship William and Sarah on a trip financed by members of a London synagogue. Of the 43, 34 were Sephardic Jews, of Spanish […]

June 30, 1785

James Oglethorpe Died

The colony he founded is now the largest of the United States east of the Mississippi. James Edward Oglethorpe was born in 1696 in London and was educated at Oxford. He gained valuable military experience in the Austrian army fighting the Turks. Oglethorpe chaired a parliamentary committee charged with prison reform. It inspired him and […]

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 18, 1927

George Heery

As was said of the great architect Christopher Wren, if you wish to know his legacy, look around you. George Heery was born in Athens in 1927. After a stint in the Pacific theater in the Navy during World War II, he earned an architectural degree at Georgia Tech. George and his father founded the […]

June 9, 1732

Georgia Charter Issued to Trustees

Georgia began as an idea, the brainchild of James Oglethorpe and several other Englishmen who wanted to establish a new British settlement between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers, on land claimed by both South Carolina and Spain. The new colony needed official blessing, and Oglethorpe and his associates—who became the Georgia Trustees—petitioned the Privy Council, […]

May 29, 1866

General Winfield Scott

When the Cherokees were removed from Georgia along the infamous Trail Of Tears, the man in charge was General Winfield Scott. The man known as old “Fuss and Feathers” was the foremost American soldier between the Revolution and the Civil War. Born in Virginia in 1786, Scott served as a general in three wars. He […]

May 27, 1991

Ed Dodd

He combined the two great loves of his life into a comic strip that taught an entire generation about the great outdoors. Ed Dodd was born in Lafayette in 1902. A true outdoorsman, Dodd worked at a Pennsylvania boys’ camp, as a Gainesville scoutmaster and physical education teacher, at a Wyoming dude ranch, as a […]

May 26, 1936

Fort Frederica

Long before the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” in Jacksonville, Georgia has always kept an eye on Florida. Georgia founder James Oglethorpe built Fort Frederica and the surrounding town on St. Simons Island in 1736 to defend the three-year-old colony from the Spanish in Florida. The fort at the mouth of the Altamaha honored King […]