Originally located on West Cotton Street, this structure dates to the late 19th century. It was first used as a laundry, then from 1906-1922, it was Walter F. George‘s law office. From 1922-1976, it was home to several different businesses.
It has been moved a couple of times but retains its defining characteristics.
Vienna Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Near this location on the Sansavilla Bluff* of the lower Altamaha River, circa 1737, it is believed that Coosaponakeesa operated a trading post in proximity to an early frontier garrison of Georgia Rangers known as Fort Mount Venture. Coosaponakeesa, known by her English name, Mary Musgrove (c. 1700-c.1763), was the most important woman in the early history of the colony, her assistance to General Oglethorpe integral to its very existence. Her English and Creek heritage uniquely positioned her for work as a translator and entrepreneur, bridging the gap between the Native American world and European settlers. Andrew K. Frank suggests…As Pocahontas was to the Jamestown colony and Sacagawea was to the Lewis and Clark expedition, so was Musgrove to the burgeoning Georgia colony.
Native American history is an evolving field and new discoveries continue to alter and improve long-held narratives. While they may seem contradictory, I have linked various sources in this post, to show the changing scholarship. I encourage you to visit them for more information.
*-Sansavilla Bluff is a geographical feature which follows the south bank of the Altamaha from the Paradise Fishing Camp through the Sansavilla Wildlife Management Area to Altamaha Regional Park at Everett.
With nearly a million views, these are our most popular posts of 2022. Thanks for traveling with me and for making all this possible.
#1- House Creek Boils, Wilcox County
#2- Apartment Houses, St. Simons Island
#3- Peches Stand, Putnam County
#4- Elizabeth Durden House, 1840s, Emanuel County
#5- Hunter’s Cafe, 1951, Shellman Bluff
#6- Package Store, Jeff Davis County
#7- Best Biskits by a Dam Site, Hartwell
#8- Flint River Diving Trees, Meriwether County
#9- Amanda America Dickson House, 1871, Hancock County
#10- Stonewall J. Williams Plantation, 1880s, Screven County
This mural, completed in 2018, imagines a young girl’s hope for a better tomorrow and is the highlight of Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument Park, at the gateway to downtown Dublin.
Located across from the First African Baptist Church, it honors Dr. King’s first speech and the roots of the Civil Rights movement that sprung from it. It is the work of Atlanta artist Corey Barksdale.
It’s a small park, but packs a lot of history and art into the space. An audio program can be activated, telling the story of King’s important visit to Dublin.
A beautiful sculpture by Mr. Barksdale, Freedom Ascension, is also located in the park.
A nice photo mural by Randall Gearhart features the interior of the church.
In addition to the work in the park, a sculpture by Dublin resident Juan Lleras honoring the architecture of First African Baptist Church and hopeful for a new generation to carry Dr. King’s legacy forward, is located across the street in the churchyard.
Footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Trail
Tomochichi (c.1644-1739) was the mico, or chief, of the Yamacraw Indians at the time of the colonization of Georgia by James Oglethorpe in 1733. His cooperation with the British made the creation of modern Georgia possible. In 1735, he accompanied Oglethorpe to England to report on the progress of the colony and was received as an ally and representative of all native people of the colony.
Tomochichi was already an old man when Georgia was colonized and he died on 5 February 1739. His life was honored by a British military funeral and his grave was marked with a pyramid of stones collected nearby. The first memorial was removed in the 1880s and replaced by this large boulder of Georgia granite, placed near the original gravesite in Wright Square by the Georgia Society of Colonial Dames in 1899.
Savannah National Historic Landmark District
The Andrew Low Carriage House*, at 330 Drayton Street, was the site of the first meeting of the troop of eighteen Girl Guides who would soon come to be known as the Girl Scouts. Juliette Magill Kinzie Gordon was born into an influential Savannah family on 31 October 1860. Her grandfather was the first president of the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia, and her father, William Washington Gordon II, was a Confederate captain, brigadier-general in the Spanish-American War, and a Georgia legislator. She attended boarding schools in New Jersey and Virginia, and a French finishing school in New York City.
After completing her education, Juliette married William Mackay Low in 1886. Low was the son of Andrew Low, a wealthy cotton factor of Scottish origin who owned homes in Savannah and the United Kingdom. The young couple spent most of their time in England and Scotland. The union turned sour when Juliette discovered that William had moved his mistress into their home. In 1902 she filed for divorce, but William’s health was deteriorating and before the action could be finalized, he died in Wales, in 1905.
In 1911, Juliette Gordon Low met Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, and got involved with a troop of Girl Guides in Scotland. She brought the movement to Savannah and the first troop of eighteen Girl Guides met in the carriage house of the Low family mansion on 12 March 1912. The name was changed to the Girl Scouts in 1913. Low’s association with the Girl Scouts continued in various capacities until her death in 1927. The organization has served over 50 million girls in its long history and while it may be best known for its annual cookie sales, has enriched the lives of those who have been associated with it.
The carriage house has served various purposes within the Girl Scouts organization over the years and is presently a museum. It was the first structure in Savannah to receive National Historic Landmark status.
*-Designed by architect John Norris to complement the adjacent Andrew Low House, circa 1848-1849, this structure originally served as the carriage house and living quarters for domestic slaves. Thomas “Tom” Milledge (1818-1886) was the most entrusted of the domestic slaves and after emancipation, remained in the employee of the Low family as a butler. He lived in the carriage house with his wife Mosianna (1844-1909) and their children.
Juliette Gordon Low Historic District, Savannah National Historic Landmark District
News of the death of Vince Dooley came at particularly tough time, as fans were beginning preparations for the big Georgia-Florida game weekend. Coach Dooley was revered for leading the Bulldogs to their legendary National Championship season in 1980 and transforming the program into a powerhouse, and there is plenty of information to be found about that online and in print. But he was much more than a sports personality and this a personal appreciation.
When I met him, by chance, at the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame ceremony in Athens in 2015, he was talking with some of that year’s inductees about their work. His genuine interest in arts and culture came as somewhat of a surprise to me but it was easy to see that this was just a part of who he was. Though he was often the center of attention when on the UGA campus, he came to events like this to celebrate others. He had no air of self-importance about him whatsoever. I was honored to be able to meet and photograph him.
After a tour in the Marines, while coaching at his alma mater, Auburn, Dooley obtained a master’s degree in history. This all happened before he began his storied career at Georgia, in 1964. His interest in history never wavered and in 2011 he was named a Trustee of the Georgia Historical Society, serving as chairman of the board from 2016-2018. In addition to this work, and tireless fundraising for a wide variety of causes, he found the time to be a master gardener.
He will be greatly missed but he leaves an amazing legacy.
Officially known as Union Memorial Cemetery, Strangers Cemetery gets its unusual name from those interred here. Former slaves (and their descendants) who toiled on the island’s plantations prior to Emancipation were buried on those properties. The original “strangers” were freedmen who came to the island after the Civil War and worked primarily in sawmills along the Frederica River. Many remained for generations in three thriving black communities: Harrington, Jewtown, and South End, and some were interred here, as they weren’t allowed to bury on the former plantation lands. While most marked graves are in very good condition, a large number of unmarked graves exist, as well.
Among later “strangers” is Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Sampson Jones (8 February 1902-4 September 1984). She was born in Smithville (Lee County) and never knew her biological father. Her mother moved to an uncle’s farm in nearby Dawson when Bessie was a baby and while there married James Sampson, who was a father figure to Bessie. Of her childhood, she wrote: “I never has went to school a whole term and I didn’t get past the fifth grade; every school day I had to keep other people’s babies and sometimes I had to work in the fields.” Music was always present in Bessie Jones’s childhood. Her mother Julia played the autoharp and James Sampson played numerous instruments by ear. Her grandfather, Jet Sampson, was an accordionist. He was enslaved, along with five brothers, around 1843 and died in 1941 at the age of 105. Listening to his stories and songs, Bessie gained many insights that would inform her later work.
In 1914 a very young Jones gave birth to her first child, Rosalie. The child’s father, Cassius Davis, was a native of the Georgia Sea Islands and had come to the Dawson area seeking farm work. After World War I Bessie lived briefly in Milan and Fitzgerald. Cassius died in Brunswick in 1926. For the next seven years she lived in Florida. In Okeechobee she married George Jones and in 1933 they moved to St. Simons Island. They had two sons: George L. Jones (1935) and Joseph (1937). George died in 1945. After his death Bessie got involved with the Spiritual Singers of Coastal Georgia, perhaps the first group to formally attempt to preserve and perform the slave songs and spirituals of the Sea Island Gullah and Geechee people. It was a great honor for Bessie to have been invited to join the group, as she was not a native of the islands.
Bessie met musicologist and folkorist Alan Lomax in 1959 and a couple of years later he recorded a series of songs, stories, and interviews with her at his apartment in New York City. In 1963, the Georgia Sea Island Singers were established. Lomax arranged a tour that took the group to colleges around the country and a decade of travel followed. They participated in the Poor People’s March in 1968 and appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Newport Folk Festival, Montreal World’s Fair, Central Park, and numerous Smithsonian Folk Life Festivals. In 1976, the Sea Island Singers performed at the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter. In 1982, Mrs. Jones received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, but died of leukemia later that year.
Peter Stone and Ellen Harold’s profile of Bessie Jones at the Association for Cultural Equity, from which this was condensed, is an excellent source for further reading.
The Major Archibald Willingham Butt Memorial Bridge [shortened to Butt Bridge, locally] is Georgia’s only monument to a victim of the sinking of RMS Titanic and is also one of the most unusual. In terms of sheer size it’s likely the largest such memorial in the nation. Four regal lions guard the corners of the bridge and bald eagles perch atop lighted globes on both sides. The pedestrian friendly structure is also a great place to view the historic Augusta Canal.
It is quite an ostentatious tribute and by nature a “living memorial”, carrying thousands of cars per day over the Augusta Canal at 15th Street. Nisbet Wingfield, the city engineer and commissioner of public works for the city of Augusta, was the engineer for the bridge; William Henry Deacy, who specialized in memorials, was the architect; and the W. W. Leland Company was responsible for the whimsical decorations. [The reinforced concrete bridge is 52.8′ at its largest span, has an overall length of 155.8′, and has a deck width of 55.8′. It is a T-beam, designed to look like an arch form]. By 1994, the future of the bridge was uncertain, but citizens rallied to save it, with the phrase “Save our Butt” a common refrain throughout Augusta. It took over 20 years for everything to fall into place, but in 2017 rehabilitation of the bridge was complete and the future of one of the city’s most unique monuments was insured.
Major Archibald Butt (26 September 1865-15 April 1912) was born to a once-prominent Augusta family who had fallen into poverty after the Civil War. While attending the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, Butt developed an interest in journalism, eventually editing the school newspaper. Before moving to Washington, D. C., Butt worked at the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Macon Telegraph. Upon arriving in the nation’s capital, he covered the government as a correspondent for a syndicate of newspapers in Nashville, Augusta, Atlanta, and Savannah. Through his skillful journalism, he made valuable connections with Washington’s high society and this ultimately landed him a job as the first secretary of the American Embassy in Mexico (1895-1897). Over the next few years Butt continued to write. He also served as a quartermaster in the Spanish-American War, noted for saving the lives of some 500 mules by turning down poor conditions in Hawaii and sailing on to the Philippines, where he remained until 1904. His logistical skills as a supply manager drew much praise, and he later served as Depot Quartermaster in Havana during America’s 1906 occupation of Cuba.
In March 1908, he began serving as the military aide-de-camp to President Theodore Roosevelt, and retained that position with the incoming Taft administration. The military aides-de-camp of this time were essentially protocol chiefs and had close working relationships with presidents. Taft considered Major Butt a close friend, and the Taft family, as a result, were fond of visiting Augusta.
Butt never married and was the housemate and companion of the American painter and sculptor, Francis Davis Millet. Millet had been peripherally associated with the salon of John Singer Sargent and knew many of the finest artists in America during his lifetime. In 1912, Butt took leave from his White House job when animosities flared between Taft and Roosevelt, and he and Millet had been vacationing in Europe, highlighted by an audience with Pope Pius X, before embarking for home on the Titanic. It was said that both men helped women and children onto lifeboats before losing their lives, though this may be apocryphal. Taft was known to have been deeply saddened by Butt’s death.
A fountain dedicated to the memory of Butt and Millet was placed in President’s Park at the White House in 1913. In April 1914, former-President Taft visited Augusta to pay tribute to his close friend, and spoke at the dedication of the Memorial Bridge.
Augusta Canal Industrial District, National Register of Historic Places + National Historic Landmark + Augusta Canal National Heritage Area
Though he is best known for establishing the Georgia colony and the city of Savannah, James Edward Oglethorpe was also the founder of Augusta. An imposing statue, on the Augusta Common, celebrates his association with the city and depicts him in civilian clothing around the time of the city’s founding. It was created by the noted husband and wife artistic team of Jeffrey H. and Anna Koh Varilla and dedicated on 6 February 2003. It is one of only two life-size tributes to General Oglethorpe in the state, the other being Daniel Chester French’s iconic 1910 Savannah statue, which depicts Oglethorpe in a British general’s uniform.
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 