It was a comeback tour for the man who had been Confederate president. Jefferson Davis lived quietly at his Mississippi home in the decades after the Civil War. But in 1886, he laid the cornerstone for a Confederate memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Henry Grady, the enterprising editor of the Atlanta Constitution, invited Davis to Atlanta […]
Two things stood between U.S. General William Sherman and Atlanta in the spring of 1864: Kennesaw Mountain and Confederate General Joseph Johnston’s Army of Tennessee. Johnston, fighting a defensive campaign, slowed and frustrated Sherman as he tried to move south. Twenty miles northwest of Atlanta, Johnston set his army in a strong line along Kennesaw […]
On this day in 1825, 200 Creek warriors set fire to a plantation house, and shot and stabbed the owner to death. The owner was William McIntosh, a Creek Indian chief killed by his own people. McIntosh was born around 1778 to a white Scotsman and a Creek woman. Though raised among the creeks, he […]
$162 million. That’s the economic impact that Dobbins Air Force Base brings to Marietta. Not bad for what started out in 1941 as a small airstrip called Rickenbacker Field, as America prepared for World War II. Then, during the war, it became Marietta Army Air Field when the Bell Bomber plant was located there. With […]
His namesake college in north Georgia is small. Its effect has been anything but. Young Loftin Harris was born in Elbert County around 1812. He became a lawyer, judge, and state representative, but he made his money in the insurance business. Harris joined the Southern Mutual Insurance Company in 1849. Over a 45-year career, he […]
She was the first woman and first African-American to lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol rotunda. Coretta Scott was born in 1927 in Alabama and studied music education at Antioch College in Ohio. After graduation she enrolled in The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she met a young Boston University […]
When Georgia had its first showdown with the federal government in the 1820s, Washington blinked. George Michael Troup had faced down the president. Originally from Alabama, Troup served in the Georgia Legislature, and the U.S. House and Senate, before his election as Georgia governor in 1823. In 1825, determined to drive the Creek Indians from […]
“Remember the Maine” – three simple words that helped propel the United States into a major conflict with Spain. And Georgians played an important role in it. The Spanish-American War grew out of American support for Cuba’s rebellion against Spain. After the American battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, Americans clamored for war. Georgia […]
The largest state sports hall of fame in the country is here in Georgia. The Georgia Sports Hall of Fame began in 1956, when the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association established the Georgia Prep Sports Hall of Fame, which honored high school administrators, coaches and players. The organization dropped the word “prep” in 1963, honoring collegiate […]
He was the architect of one of the most remarkable logistical feats in history — and one of the most humane. Lucius Clay was born in Marietta in 1897, the son of U.S. Senator Alexander Stephens Clay. He graduated from West Point in 1918 and was assigned to the engineers. During World War II, Clay […]
