In a half century of teaching, Moses Waddel taught some of the most influential and important statesmen of the 19th century. Born in North Carolina in 1770, he began teaching at age 14. He moved to Georgia briefly but left to attend Hampden Sydney College in Virginia and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. After […]
Morehouse College and Atlanta University each once had a white president. John Hope changed that. Hope was born in Augusta in 1868 to a white father and free-born black mother. After graduating from Brown University, Hope taught first in Nashville. He married future black activist Lugenia Burns and moved to Atlanta to teach at Atlanta […]
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 […]
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 […]
Can you imagine Saturday afternoons in autumn without college football in Georgia? It almost happened. On this day in 1897, UGA player Richard Von Albade Gammon was fatally injured in a game with the University of Virginia. There had been a nationwide call for a ban on the violent sport, and Von Gammon’s death galvanized […]
The rock of tradition versus the hard place of progress is an old Southern dilemma. John Donald Wade, born in Marshallville, knew it well. Wade’s deep Georgia roots ran back to his great grandfather, John Adam Treutlen, Georgia’s first governor. Teaching at Vanderbilt in the 1920s, Wade helped create one of the seminal books in […]
Its beautiful campus has hosted more than 20 movies and TV shows. It opened in 1889 as the Decatur Female Seminary. As Agnes Scott College, it's become a preeminent institution of women's higher education. In 1888, Frank Gaines became pastor of the Decatur Presbyterian Church. With church support, he founded the seminary the next year […]