A comprehensive review of the history of McIntosh County on the Georgia coast from 1526 to the present, with special emphasis on the sea islands of Sapelo and St. Simons and the tidewater communities of Darien, Brunswick, Harris Neck, and lower Liberty County. The story includes rice plantations of the antebellum period, barrier island cotton and sugar cane cultivation, the post-Civil War timber and lumber industry, the 20th century commercial shrimping and oyster industry, and the preservation of the sea islands by the influence of northern capital which laid the groundwork for future conservation efforts.
Author Buddy Sullivan's "Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater: A New Revised Edition" represents a complete recasting of a book issued under the same title in 1990, and reprinted five times. Sullivan is a prominent coastal Georgia historian and lecturer with nineteen titles to his credit. This new edition of "Early Days" incorporates all the material in the original version, in addition to considerable new information based on the author’s recent research. Additionally, the new "Early Days" has been reformatted to reflect improved chapter sequence and content to provide a smoother, more continuous narrative flow than that of the original edition. In essence, the revised edition is a completely new book that will be of improved utility to researchers, students, and the general reader. "Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater" is a comprehensive history of Sapelo Island, Darien and McIntosh County, Georgia, as well as a general overview of the history of coastal Georgia, focusing on Glynn, Liberty and Bryan counties, Savannah, and St. Simons and St. Catherines islands. It covers the full scope of coastal history: Guale Indians, Spanish missionaries, and early settlement by English colonists; the rice and cotton economy during the plantation era built upon the labors of enslaved peop≤ Civil War events, including the controversial burning of Darien; the timber industry, and the associated shipping activity that made Darien a leading center for the export of pine lumber for forty years; the emerging commercial oyster and shrimping fisheries; and the impact of millionaires, scientists and resident African Americans on the 20th century history of the region, especially Sapelo Island. Significantly, the new edition of "Early Days" relates the story of the area’s African American communities, particularly the developing Geechee settlements at Sapelo, Harris Neck and Darien in the years from the end of the Civil War through the 20th century. The author’s thematic approach is that of establishing the important connection between the ecology of the area with its history. This recurring theme will be apparent throughout the book in an analysis of just how people utilized the environmental circumstances unique to their region and adapted them to virtually every aspect of their lives and livelihood for 300 years. "Early Days" is thus essentially a story of land use and landscape: soils, tides, salt marshes, river hydrology, weather, and how these conditions impacted the agricultural, commercial and social development of the region. Of equal significance is the use people have made of the tidal waterways and fresh-water river systems, giving the new edition a distinctly maritime flavor. "Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater" is documented through source notes and an expanded index, and includes photographs of places and people, and localized maps that provide the geographical context necessary for an understanding of the economic, maritime and cultural dynamics of the coast.
Georgia's past has diverged from the nation's and given the state and its people a distinctive culture and character. Some of the best, and the worst, aspects of American and Southern history can be found in the story of what is arguably the most important state in the South. Yet just as clearly Georgia has not always followed the road traveled by the rest of the nation and the region. Explaining the common and divergent paths that make us who we are is one reason the Georgia Historical Society has collaborated with Buddy Sullivan and Arcadia Publishing to produce Georgia: A State History, the first full-length history of the state produced in nearly a generation. Sullivan's lively account draws upon the vast archival and photographic collections of the Georgia Historical Society to trace the development of Georgia's politics, economy, and society and relates the stories of the people, both great and small, who shaped our destiny. This book opens a window on our rich and sometimes tragic past and reveals to all of us the fascinating complexity of what it means to be a Georgian. The Georgia Historical Society was founded in 1839 and is headquartered in Savannah. The Society tells the story of Georgia by preserving records and artifacts, by publishing and encouraging research and scholarship, and by implementing educational and outreach programs. This book is the latest in a long line of distinguished publications produced by the Society that promote a better understanding of Georgia history and the people who make it.
When automotive pioneer Henry Ford burst upon the scene in 1925, Ways Station was hardly more than an assemblage of modest residences, a store or two, and a post office. Spurred by the energies and vision of Ford, an army of agricultural, industrial, medical, and educational experts from Dearborn, Michigan, transformed the area into one of the most productive, vibrant communities on the southern tidewater. Ford employed hundreds of area residents to farm 85,000 acres along the Ogeechee River. He also established sawmills, lumberyards, and agricultural experiment stations. He provided the impetus for schools and educational programs and introduced 20thcentury medicine to the area. By 1941 and the eve of World War II, Ways Station had become Richmond Hill and had attained the peak of its renewed enterprise. Since that time, the community has been called "the town Henry Ford built."
The barrier islands of the south Atlantic coastline have for years held a deep attraction for all who have come into contact with them. Few, however, can compare with the mystique of Sapelo Island, Georgia. This unique semitropical paradise evokes a time long forgotten, when antebellum cotton plantations dominated her landscape, all worked by hundreds of black slaves, the descendants of whom have lived in quiet solitude on the island for generations. For more than 50 years of the twentieth century, two millionaires held sway on Sapelo, and it is their story, interwoven with that of the island's residents, that unfolds within the pages of this book. Almost 200 photographs provide testimony to the dynamic forces and energies implanted upon Sapelo by two men, Howard E. Coffin, a Detroit automotive pioneer, and Richard J. Reynolds Jr., heir to a huge North Carolina tobacco fortune. Beginning with a photographic essay about Sapelo's antebellum plantation owner, Thomas Spalding, Sapelo Island moves into the primary focus of the story, the years from 1912 to 1964, an era of grandeur that has left a rich photographic legacy.
"Thomas Spalding was one of the leading agrarians in the antebellum South and his Sapelo Island cotton and sugar cane plantation was among the region's most productive and efficiently managed. This book provides a review of Spalding's life, an assessment of his plantation and slave management philosophy, and a glimpse of the times in which he lived as owner and master of a large agricultural operation with hundreds of bondsmen in the early-ti-mid nineteenth century."--Page 4 of cover
• A New Republic Best Book of the Year • The Globalist Top Books of the Year • Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Non-fiction Particularly relevant in understanding who voted for who during presidential elections, this is an endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future. From the Deep South to the Far West, to Yankeedom to El Norte, Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) reveals how each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals and identities today, with results that can be seen in the composition of the U.S. Congress or on the county-by-county election maps of any hotly contested election in our history.
Sapelo, a state-protected barrier island off the Georgia coast, is one of the state’s greatest treasures. Presently owned almost exclusively by the state and managed by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Sapelo features unique nature characteristics that have made it a locus for scientific research and ecological conservation. Beginning in 1949, when then Sapelo owner R. J. Reynolds Jr. founded the Sapelo Island Research Foundation and funded the research of biologist Eugene Odum, UGA’s study of the island’s fragile wetlands helped foster the modern ecology movement. With this book, Buddy Sullivan covers the full range of the island’s history, including Native American inhabitants; Spanish missions; the antebellum plantation of the innovative Thomas Spalding; the African American settlement of the island after the Civil War; Sapelo’s two twentieth-century millionaire owners, Howard E. Coffin and R. J. Reynolds Jr., and the development of the University of Georgia Marine Institute; the state of Georgia acquisition; and the transition of Sapelo’s multiple African American communities into one. Sapelo Island’s history also offers insights into the unique cultural circumstances of the residents of the community of Hog Hammock. Sullivan provides in-depth examination of the important correlation between Sapelo’s culturally significant Geechee communities and the succession of private and state owners of the island. The book’s thematic approach is one of “people and place”: how prevailing environmental conditions influenced the way white and black owners used the land over generations, from agriculture in the past to island management in the present. Enhanced by a large selection of contemporary color photographs of the island as well as a selection of archival images and maps, Sapelo documents a unique island history.
Their songs insist that the arrival of the railroad and the appearance of the tiny depot often created such hope that it inspired the construction of the architectural extravaganzas that were the courthouses of the era. In these buildings the distorted myth of the Old South collided head-on with the equally deformed myth of the New South."
