Mountains

She was one of the first prominent white Southerners to denounce segregation, and she was a controversial figure all her life. Lillian Smith was born in Florida in 1897 and moved to Georgia as a teenager. After a stint in China, she began to speak out against Jim Crow, calling segregation “spiritual lynching.” From her […]

Peaches, peanuts, poultry: Georgia has a lot of all of them. But Pickens County has the most crystalline marble of any place in the world. One of the most highly prized minerals, it’s in 60 percent of the monuments in Washington D.C. Native Americans used north Georgia marble hundreds of years before it was first […]

Martha Berry dedicated her life to education but had only one year of formal schooling herself.  Berry was born in Alabama and moved to Rome, Georgia as a baby. Home-schooled by a governess, Martha Berry attended finishing school in Baltimore for less than a year. Back home in northwest Georgia, a chance encounter with two […]

He was known as the Cherokee Moses, the man who fought against the removal of Cherokee Indians from north Georgia. Though Chief John Ross was only one-eighth Cherokee, he grew up steeped in Cherokee culture. He was born in 1790 at Turkey Town, on the Coosa River, near present–day Center, Alabama. As a young man, […]

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 […]

It was the first time that African-American soldiers fought in the Civil War in Georgia. On this day in 1864, the 14th United States Colored Troops, mostly former slaves, fought off a Confederate cavalry attack near Dalton. Later, the 44th U.S. Colored troops were protecting the railroad through Dalton. Confederate General John Bell Hood attacked, […]

Only Gettysburg was bloodier than the Battle of Chickamauga that ended in northwest Georgia on this day in 1863.  Three months earlier, the Union Army had begun a strategy to capture Chattanooga, a major railroad hub and gateway to the Deep South.  General William Rosecrans' U.S. Army of the Cumberland, and General Braxton Bragg's Confederate […]

It cost three men their lives and provided the legal basis for the Trail of Tears, the forcible removal of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia. The Treaty of New Echota was signed on this day in 1835, ceding Cherokee land to the U.S. in exchange for compensation. The treaty had been negotiated by a Cherokee […]

The beginnings of the infamous Cherokee Trail of Tears could well be traced to a Lawrenceville courtroom.  During the 1820s, Governor George Gilmer made Cherokee removal a top priority. But in 1827, the Cherokee Nation established a government and declared themselves sovereign.  In response, furious Georgia leaders abolished Cherokee government, and annexed Cherokee land.  Meanwhile, […]

It was October and the trees were golden…and not just the trees. Benjamin Parks was walking through the woods of north Georgia when he kicked a stone. There were lots of stones in the woods, but the color of this one caught Parks’ eye. It turned out to be gold. Five other people claimed to […]