1 NOVEMBER 2007

"AUGUSTA’S LT. COLONEL JIMMIE DYESS WAS TWICE A HERO DURING HIS LIFETIME"

How many people in the United States have won both the Carnegie Medal for civilian bravery and the Medal of Honor awarded by Congress for military heroism?

One.

And he was from Augusta, GA.

Among our fall celebrations, Veterans Day is a special public holiday designated to reflect on the sacrifices of our military. Long known as Armistice Day because Germany accepted the terms of the armistice offered by the Allied Forces on November 11, 1918, the name was changed to the more comprehensive Veterans’ Day to honor those who made sacrifices in World War II and Korea. Those who were in Vietnam and later conflicts are also remembered.

Our program in November will be a documentary about the one man, the Augustan, who earned both the highest medals awarded in our nation. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Dyess was a hero in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific in February, 1944 when he saved the lives of four men in his battalion during combat before being killed by enemy fire the next day. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in July, 1944.

Receiving the Medal of Honor is a remarkable achievement in itself, but Dyess differs from all the other recipients because sixteen years earlier, while an undergraduate at Clemson University, he had been awarded the Carnegie Medal, the highest award for civilian bravery, for saving the lives of two women who would have drowned in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Jimmie Dyess Sullivan’s Island near Charleston, SC.

Neither the Carnegie Commission nor the Medal of Honor Society was aware that anybody had ever won both awards until research by Major General Perry Smith in the 1990s revealed the unique situation. Smith is married to Dyess’ daughter, Connor Dyess.

Young Jimmie Dyess was over six feet tall, a high-spirited red-haired athlete who enjoyed sports, especially football, but was not the most outstanding player. He also enjoyed Boy Scouts, horseback riding, military drill, and marching and marksmanship competitions. During his childhood in Augusta in a strict Presbyterian family and during his years in attendance at Richmond Academy and Clemson, he developed his strong work ethic, commitment to his team, a sense of justice, and an ebullient love of life that was contagious to those around him.

The Marine Corps in which he was to distinguish himself later was not his first career choice. He majored in architecture at Clemson, but his graduation in 1931 coincided with the deepening of the Depression, and he went to work for his father‘s business, the Augusta Lumber Company, and joined the Army Reserves

While still in college, Dyess had become interested in the field of aviation but could not become an aviator because of imperfect vision. All his life he recalled the thrill of his first experience in an airplane. He and a buddy, Campbell Vaiden, were taken up for a ride by Frank Hulse, then the young manager of Daniel Field in Augusta and later the president of Southern Airways. Hulse strapped them in the front cockpit, a tight squeeze for two young men, and himself in the rear cockpit. The bi-wing plane with open cockpits provided the feeling of exhilaration as they soared from the sod runway into the air toward the Savannah River. Hulse decided to provide acrobatic entertainment—flying upside down, performing loops and rolls, and finally diving toward the ground and sharply pulling out before going back to land at Daniel Field. Dyess loved the excitement, but Vaiden was terrified, according to the story Vaiden told for a biography of Dyess written over forty years later by his son-in-law, Major General Perry Smith.

Smith wrote A Hero Among Heroes and the documentary Twice A Hero, which we will see at our November program. After a thirty year career in the U.S. Air Force, General Smith became an internationally known author and speaker, a military commentator for CNN, and president of Visionary Leadership of Augusta which has conducted seminars on strategic planning and ethics for hundreds of organizations, including Microsoft, Texas Instruments, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Harvard’s Kennedy School.

When General Smith, a member of the Augusta Genealogical Society, spoke to us at a program last December, he recounted his experiences as a child living at Pearl Harbor during the attack in 1941 and also addressed his involvement with the work of the Medal of Honor Society. His admiration for the father-in-law he never met inspired the research about Lt. Colonel Dyess, and the decade he spent interviewing Dyess’ family members, survivors from the 4th Marine Division, and many others enlightened his discovery of the depth of the character of his subject.

Twice A Hero will be shown at our meeting on Thursday , 1 November, at 7 p.m. at the Augusta Museum of History, which has a well-lighted parking area and entrance. The program is free and open to the public. The museum has a permanent exhibit of the life and career of Lt. Colonel Dyess in an area located next to the theater in which the film will be shown. It contains the two special medals, the Carnegie and the Medal of Honor—be sure to see them while you’re there for the program.

4 OCTOBER 2007

"BILL BAAB SPEAKS OF AUGUSTA ON GLASS"

Bill Baab, former Outdoor Editor of The Augusta Chronicle and current editor of the sports page that features a weekly fishing column, will speak in October on his hobby of collecting bottles and other forms of glassware. He is the author of Augusta On Glass, a volume that captures in photos and text over thirty-five years of research and collecting in Augusta and in other GA and SC locales.

The program will consist of a slide presentation of vintage photos of businesses, advertisements and the glassware from the book followed by a question-and-answer period for those interested in this hobby. The subtitle is “Drops of history from pottery containers used by soda water manufacturers, whiskey distilleries, brewers, mineral water sellers and patent medicine men in and around Augusta, Georgia.” The stories of where Baab found his treasures—from the drained Augusta Canal to some less savory structures —- and the tales of the people involved in the manufactures -- offer a humorous approach to a subject that is a huge and growing subject among collectors and archaeologists.

A native of Glenside, PA, Baab came to the South as a small child when his father’s job in sheet metal products transferred him to Atlanta and then to Augusta in 1940. He attended Monte Sano and Richmond Academy with a buddy who became another avid collector, Joe Lee, our speaker in September. But Baab was not to graduate from the Academy as Lee did. Being in the first co-ed class in 1950 contributed to what he calls his “ruin’ when he failed both math and Latin. His father enrolled him in Boys Catholic High School, where he was graduated in 1953. Two years later, he joined The Augusta Chronicle as a copyboy and “worked his way up” to the sports desk.

He worked for the Georgia Game and Fish Department, now the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and at the Thomasville (GA) Times-Enterprise but by the mid-1960s was back in Augusta as outdoor editor and sports writer for the Chronicle until retirement in 2000.

His wife, Bea, has helped with the Augusta On Glass book by printing and binding the self-published, print-on-demand book. Baab is currently working on other books about bottle collecting as well as a biography of a sportsman named George W. Perry, who set the record for catching a largemouth bass in 1932 in Montgomery Lake off the Ocmulgee River in Telfair County, GA.

The program is free and open to the public at 7 p.m. at the Augusta Museum of History.

6 SEPTEMBER 2007

"THE SAGA OF FLETCHER’S CASTORIA"

So does the headline evoke childhood memories of being chased through your home until a parent finally caught up with you? And then forced a tablespoon of that putrid brown liquid through your tightly clamped lips?

That was my reaction when I met Joe Lee on the Sunday afternoon of Homecoming in August at the Adamson Library, and he explained what he had in mind for his September presentation to AGS. Joe laughed at my surprised expression, one he’s become used to when he starts telling one of his numerous tales about local history. More about the Castoria saga later. Joe has been researching, collecting, presenting, publishing, and sharing his discoveries for years. The last time he spoke to AGS was in the fall of 2005 when he took us on a visual tour of Augusta’s past through a slide presentation that emphasized the destruction of much of the historic architecture of the city and the drastic changes in the late twentieth century caused by highway construction. Time ran out when he got to the neighborhoods on the outskirts of Summerville-- the Daniel Village and Daniel Field areas, and at the time we hoped to have Joe back to complete the story.

Joseph Lee III grew up in Augusta, attended Monte Sano Grammar School, and explored most of Augusta by bicycle and on foot, always curious about the artifacts and relics of the past that he found in a city whose history dates back to the colonial period. A graduate of the Academy of Richmond County, the Junior College of Augusta (now Augusta State University), and Georgia Tech, he used his engineering skills as Deputy Director of the Roads and Drainage Department in DeKalb County, GA. He and wife Virginia have two adult sons and several grandchildren.

Since retirement, Joe has enjoyed spending more time with his hobbies relating to genealogy, history and photography. He is the author of Augusta in Vintage Postcards (1997) and Augusta and Summerville (2000) which contain hundreds of stereoviews, photographs, and postcards from his vast collections, and he is often consulted by researchers and writers who appreciate his expertise in photographic preservation.

Joe is a member of AGS, the Georgia Genealogical Society, and the Eighth Air Force Historical Society. His interest in military history was influenced by an uncle in Augusta, his mother’s brother, who was a B-17 pilot in World War II. William Fletcher—note the surname— trained at Daniel Field, which had been Camp Hancock during World War I. Fletcher and his crew carried out many missions over western Europe with the 100th Bomb Group in a B-17 plane they named Fletcher’s Castoria! Fletcher returned to civilian life after the war and became a veterinarian and the owner of Aidmore Animal Clinic. Later he opened a clinic in Athens, GA where he now lives in retirement.

At one time Fletcher and his crew went down in a Dutch village, Spaarndaam, which, incidentally, is the village where Hans Brinker is said to have put his finger in the hole in the dike to keep back the sea. The village has a statue there of little Hans Brinker. Perhaps of interest as well is that Holland is now documenting the crashes of over 6,000 aircraft in that country. Lee has photos of the bombings over Germany that he plans to display and photos of Spaarndaam that were made in the 1980s to compare the terrain to that of the 1940s. The crew went down in Holland on their 20th mission. They were not in Fletcher’s Castoria on that mission because it was being repaired for damage it received on a previous mission. The Castoria was repaired and flown by other crews until the war ended. The available evidence indicates that it was flown on a total of one hundred missions. The last eighty missions were flown by other crews while Fletcher and his crew were POWs. Lee has other intriguing World War II connections to explain, such as Fletcher’s meeting a German soldier in Holland who had once lived near Augusta, GA and knew people also known to Fletcher.

By now it’s clear that “The Saga of Fletcher’s Castoria,” as Joe has titled his latest presentation, equates with serendipity in the way that genealogists appreciate! To hear more, come to the program at the Augusta Museum of History at 7 p.m. on Thursday, September 6. The program is free and open to the public.

2 AUGUST 2007

"THE HARPER FAMILY FROM ANTRIM TO AUGUSTA "

Five years ago, Mikell Harper possessed an ancestry chart without substantiation and a family history written by an ancestor who lived in Philadelphia and Augusta in 1831. These were enough to pique his interest in his family’s roots, and after retiring from a career as an attorney often dealing with probate and real estate matters, he decided to pursue the field of genealogy, a hobby that has brought him much pleasure from his mountain home in Rabun Gap, GA.

His first adventure was a trip to Northern Ireland for several weeks of research at Queens University in Belfast, the Ulster Folk Park, and the Linen Hall Library. Just outside Belfast, he visited the family farm and Carmavy Cemetery. He discovered that not only his own ancestors but so many other residents of County Antrim in the late 1700s and early 1800s had fled harsh political and economic conditions for a better future in America. Many of them settled in Augusta, GA, and the city became Harper’s next stop on his genealogical journey.

“My next piece of good fortune was to find the Augusta Genealogical Society and Carrie Adamson,” Harper wrote to me in July, 2005 after being invited to speak to AGS that summer. Since the trip to Ireland, he had worked at the Adamson Library and the Richmond County courthouse as well as other libraries and historic sites where Harper ancestors had left their mark, especially those in Confederate service during the Civil War. He had shown Mrs. Adamson a bulging manuscript which she shared with the AGS Council, and all agreed that he had material for several books. Putting his earliest native Scotch- Irish ancestors “on hold” and focusing on the Civil War participants, Harper completed The Second Georgia Regiment as told through the unit history of Company D: Burke Sharpshooters.

“From Antrim to Augusta” is the title of a Power Point presentation that Harper will show to AGS about his research in Northern Ireland and Augusta that introduced him to his early Irish ancestors, some of whom are buried in Augusta’s historic Summerville Cemetery. Some of the Harpers were described in Southern Echoes (Vol. XXVIII, Nr. 10, June 2007) after Harper presented AGS a large framed ancestral chart. The chart may be read in the Family History area at CS 71 .H259 H7. Many early Augusta surnames are represented during the eras when families were large and nearby cousins and friends intermarried and spawned generations of similar given names and affectionate nicknames. The men in the Harper family were Augusta business entrepreneurs and civic leaders in such projects as the early factories, bridges, canal, and railroads. Their wives and daughters led societies and charity drives.

5 JULY 2007

"SHOW AND TELL CONTINUES IN JULY "

The spontaneity of our traditional July program allows our own AGS members to express the ways they’ve expanded their genealogical research in their own unique ways and also to pass on some of their unique experiences. The program will be held at the Augusta Museum of History at 7 p.m. and anyone may participate. Just show up with your story and you’re guaranteed to be met by a friendly audience!

Stories in the past have been serious, entertaining, witty, incredulous, and diverse. Jerry Scott has told about her success in finding relatives in Vermont over the internet, and the group traveled together to Ireland and explored the villages and gravesites of their mutual ancestors. Elizabeth Dill and her sister found their grandmother’s village in Italy. Dan Crumpton used a “Show and Tell” program in 2005 to introduce his methodology for creating maps based on original Georgia land patents and plats in found in county courthouse records and the Georgia Archives.

Last July, Marguerite Fogleman showed us her compact portable filing system that allows her to carry abbreviated family group sheets with essential information needed for research, thus leaving the bulk of her voluminous work at home while she travels. David McNorrill explained his use of DNA testing to clarify his ethnic background. Mike Joyce told of his many hours of computer research to look for family names before having success at the Adamson Library, when a fellow AGS member suggested using PERSI, the subject index to articles published in periodicals. Mike didn’t find his ancestors at first, but he did find the name of a renowned English racehorse owned by one of them and from the information about the horse, he found his grandfather’s equestrian pursuits.

Other subjects in the past have included a presentation by Peter Hughes, who has researched the biography and business interests of Henry Shultz, an early nineteenth century entrepreneur in Augusta, GA and Hamburg. SC, and a report by Jule Rucker on the early historical records from the Richmond County, GA Probate Court.

The program is free and open to the public. The meeting is held on the second floor in the theater of the Augusta Museum of History, and parking is easily accessed from both Sixth and Broad Streets.

7 JUNE 2007

"The New Bordeaux French Settlement Was A Haven in Colonial South Carolina "

The struggles of the French Huguenots who migrated to America to found the New Bordeaux colony in 1764 -- the unprecedented brutality suffered by the Huguenots before leaving France, the tumultuous voyage across the Atlantic, and the obstacles that confronted them upon arrivals as refugees in a raw, pioneer environment in the backcountry of South Carolina -- will be discussed at our June program by author and preservationist Bobby F. Edmonds of McCormick, SC.

Edmonds retired in 1992 after 41 years with the South Carolina State Highway Department where he supervised the maintenance of 440 miles of roads and bridges. A writer, photographer, and book reviewer for the McCormick Messenger for many years, he is now the president and chairman of the board of McCormick Media, Inc., publisher of the weekly newspaper. He has purchased and restored six early twentieth century buildings for commercial and residential use and established and operated a seafood restaurant in McCormick for over five years. A prodigious writer and publisher during the past decade, Edmonds wrote The Making of McCormick County, the first published history of the county, in 1999, and McCormick County Land of Cotton in 2001. These books were followed in 2004 by Destiny of the Scots-Irish that tracks the people from their arrival in Pennsylvania to the Long Canes in South Carolina, and The Huguenots of New Bordeaux in 2005. He edited and published The Neglected Thread and The British Partizan in 2006 and most recently was the author of a biography, George McDuffie: Southern Orator.

Interests include preservation of historical records, sites, and buildings and conservation of soil and water, for which he has received numerous awards for outstanding service in these fields. He was recognized by the SC Historical Confederation as state winner of the Robert N. Pryor Volunteer Service Award in recognition for preservation of local history through publication and in 2006 by the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian award, which is presented by the Governor of the state. Other interests include photography and collecting Native American relics and handguns.

Edmonds was born at Cedar Hill, his family’s “century farm” in McCormick County, where he continues to live with his wife Kathryn. Other family members are his daughter and son-in-law and two grandchildren. As the owner and operator of Cedar Hill Farms, a 345-acre tree farm, he has seen great changes since his birth during the depression in a two-room cabin on the farm. He is now on several boards and in organizations concerning farming, cattle, and forestry and combines his business interests with his love for historical preservation and writing. He is a member of the McCormick County Soil & Water Conservation District, Library Board, Forestry Association and charter member and past president of the McCormick County Historical Society.

5 APRIL 2007

"AUGUSTA IS A CASE STUDY FOR SOUTHERN HISTORY"

Georgia Public Broadcasting collaborated with several organizations in Augusta during 2006 to produce a six-part series entitled American History Through Southern Eyes. The episodes are “Living the American Revolution,” “Living the Civil War,” “King Cotton,” “The Road to Civil Rights,” “Making a Modern South,” and “World War I and the South.” The first two were shown at our February meeting, and the segments “King Cotton” and “The Road to Civil Rights” will be shown in April. Our members reacted favorably to the program in February, and one viewer expressed the opinion that “we can all use a refresher course in American History. Some of us haven’t been to school in fifty years!” AGS is grateful to Historic Augusta, Inc. for providing us with a copy of the DVD to show to our members.

The production was funded by the U. S. Department of Education Teaching American History Grant Program administered locally by the Richmond County Board of Education. Local organizations provided narrators, historical re-enactors, artifacts, period artwork, and archival photographs. Among the narrators are Dr. Edward Cashin, Professor Emeritus of History, Augusta State University, and currently Director of the Center for the Study of Georgia History based at the university, Dr. Michael Murray of Augusta State, and Dr. LeeAnn Caldwell, an Augusta resident and history professor at Georgia State University at Milledgeville.

The Augusta Museum of History, Historic Augusta, the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History, the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta’s historic homes and buildings , and the Living History Park in North Augusta provided settings for the narrators and also permitted artifacts, paintings, and maps from their collections to be photographed for the series.

The series examines our national history in a chronological format, but uses the events and personalities of the South that affected this region’s development. Augusta was chosen as a case study to represent the southern perspective of the national story. The Department of Education has gone to other cities to present regional perspectives as well as the Southern one, making the new study of American History an opportunity for viewers to go beyond descriptions in books to see actual settings where historical events occurred. The idea is not unlike the series of books produced under the umbrella Images of America that uses photographs to depict an in-depth history of a city or region.

The program to be held at 7 p.m. at the Augusta Museum of History, 560 Reynolds Street, is free and open to the public. If you have guests in Augusta during Masters Week, or if you are a visitor to the city, AGS invites you to attend the program and to visit the Augusta Museum of History, which not only has its permanent exhibit of Augusta’s Story and other displays, but also a special exhibition on golf and the Augusta National during April.

1 MARCH 2007

"THE WILHENFORD     FIRST CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL IN GEORGIA AND THE SOUTH"

Dr. Lois Ellison, Medical Historian in Residence at the Medical College of Georgia, will speak on “The Wilhenford First Children’s Hospital in Georgia and the South” on Thursday, 1 March, at 7 pm at the Augusta Museum of History.

The Wilhenford opened in 1810 with funding provided by Mrs. Grace Shaw Duff, a New York resident who vacationed in winter with her husband at the fashionable Bon Air Hotel on the “Hill.” Mrs. Duff was grateful for the kindnesses shown by Augustans during her husband’s death and during her own illness while in the city. Her wish to show appreciation melded with a need that had long been recognized by the women of Augusta, a medical facility for treating children apart from the treatment center for adults.

Children in the Victorian Era and early twentieth century, according to the social mores of the times, were to be “seen but not heard,” and they had few advocates. However, the pathetically ill children housed among the adult patients at Augusta’s City Hospital caught the attention of a group of affluent and sympathetic Augusta ladies. After years of procrastination and disappointments to their organization caused by both city and state politics and gender discrimination, the organization accepted Mrs. Duff’s generosity to build a children’s hospital. One of Mrs. Duff’s few strings was the desire to name the building.

The perseverance and dedication to the negotiations concerning the hospital by Mrs. Mary G. Cumming, member and officer in the Children’s Hospital Association for over fifty years, was acknowledged by the use of her photograph as a two-year-old child on the seal of the hospital. The Cumming family had been dedicated to the city for many decades, with the patriarch, Thomas, providing the land for Summerville Cemetery and his son, Henry Cumming, conceiving the idea for the Augusta Canal. Civic responsibility was a family virtue passed to future generations.

How appropriate that the story of the Wilhenford has been preserved by another woman who loves children---and the medical profession! Dr. Lois Ellison’s biography is saturated with many successes but tempered by a huge setback that she overcame as a young woman. Completing her B.S. degree in Chemistry and Zoology in only three years at the University of Georgia, she was accepted into the Medical College of Georgia in 1943, studying insatiably until forced by the illness of pulmonary tuberculosis to take a leave of absence shortly after her marriage in 1945 to Robert Ellison, then a young resident at MCG.

In the 1940s, tuberculosis was not rare among physicians, and its cause and program of treatment were still being explored. Lois Ellison fought the illness for about four years with the determination of an athlete. This young woman had been the captain of her high school basketball and tennis teams and played extramural athletics in college. With her health restored, she completed her requirements and graduated as an M.D. from MCG in 1950. Her post-doctoral training was with Dr. William S. Hamilton in Cardiopulmonary Physiology between 1951-1954.

The Ellisons worked as a team in pulmonary and cardiac research, and they also became the parents of five sons born between 1955-1959. Academic appointments, administrative responsibilities, major committee assignments, memberships in scientific and professional societies, publications, and presentations spanned over five decades. The Ellisons were among the pioneers in open-heart surgery. She was the first Director of the MCG Cardiopulmonary Laboratory.

Dr. Robert Ellison has been deceased since January, 2006. In the year before his death, he and Dr. Lois Ellison were recipients of the MCG President’s Award, the Vessel of Life.

Currently, she holds the rank of Provost Emeritus, Professor Emeritus of Medical Surgery and Graduate Studies, and Associate Professor of Physiology at MCG. She is one of two women graduates from this institution who are subjects in an exhibit developed by the National Library of Medicine, the American Library Association, and the National Institutes of Health that is appearing in 61 libraries across the United States between 2005-2010 to honor women physicians across two centuries. The Website www.nlm.hih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine contains the biographies as well as the itinerary of the traveling exhibit, which was in Georgia last year, but may be in a city near our out-of-state readers between 2007-2010.

Dr. Ellison’s title of Medical Historian in Residence has allowed her to write and speak on many subjects, but it only took her a few seconds to decide on one of her favorites for our AGS meeting. She asked me if I knew how the Wilhenford got its name and seemed delighted that I knew. My address for her to confirm the date and subject for the program brought renewed enthusiasm as she explained that her “best friend” and tennis partner in college was Clifford Lewis from Waynesboro GA.

“I was a good player, but we won the matches because of her. Clifford was the best!” A lifetime of achievement, teamwork, competitiveness, humor, and humility are in the statement.

The modern Children’s Center at the Medical College of Georgia is known internationally, but the start of quality treatment for children in Augusta and the South sprang from humble roots in the Wilhenford. The story---and the story-teller---are both remarkable.

1 FEBRUARY 2007

"AMERICAN HISTORY THROUGH SOUTHERN EYES"

Erick Montgomery, Director of Historic Augusta, Inc. and a member of the Augusta Genealogical Society, recently sent the Society a six-part documentary series in DVD format entitled American History Through Southern Eyes. The Society is grateful for this generous gift and has chosen to share it with the membership. Each 25-minute disk in the series examines our nation’s past from a Southern perspective by describing events and characters of the region through art, artifacts, archival photographs, and current views of historical locales.

Augusta is used as a case study where local historians describe and interpret events. Many local sites form the background for the narrators and for reenactors in period clothing and settings.

Our February program will consist of the viewing of the first two segments about the American Revolution and the Civil War in this region of Georgia where many of our ancestors lived. The featured narrators are historians and authors Dr. Edward Cashin, Dr. LeeAnn Caldwell, and Dr. Michael Murray, and museum curators Gordon Blaker and Benjamin Baughman. Blaker is former curator at the Augusta Museum of History and the recipient of our AGS Arthur Award for his contributions to the Society. Baughman is the curator of the Ezekiel Harris House, a house museum from the late eighteenth century, that is located in Augusta. The viewer may recognize scenes from the Revolution that were filmed at the Colonial Living History Park in North Augusta, SC, where Lynn Thompson is Director and her volunteers have given this region a unique treasure for displaying colonial arts and crafts. Meadow Garden, home of the Declaration of Independence signer George Walton, is also shown in the film.

Augusta’s many ties to the Civil War era consist of reminders ranging from the Confederate Monument on Broad Street to the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers and monuments to generals in Magnolia Cemetery. The campus of Augusta State University was the location of a federal arsenal that surrendered to local Confederates when the war began. The Powder Works and factories on the Augusta Canal produced the gun powder, ammunition, fabrics for uniforms, and other military needs. Again, the narrators explain and interpret the events and personalities and use Augusta as a case study for an understanding of the war.

The documentary series was funded by the U. S. Department of Education through the Teaching American History Grant program. It is a valuable resource for helping people from high school students to the general public acquire a better understanding of regional history. One may read in a book about our ancestors with their large families who lived in their simple log cabins and about the conditions where soldiers camped in tents or slept on the ground between marches and battles. Visual documentation via the artwork of the periods and the structures used by the reenactors of events form more vivid impressions and reinforce the written works.

One would expect a project of this scope to involve many organizations that required the cooperation of many skilled professionals. Partners in the production were the Richmond County Board of Education, the Augusta Museum of History, Augusta State University, the Georgia Humanities Council, Georgia Public Broadcasting, Historic Augusta, Inc., the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History, and the Morris Museum of Art. The documentary has been aired by Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Additional programs in the series are King Cotton and The Road to Civil Rights, which will be shown at our program in April. The final two segments, Making a Modern South and World War I and the South, will be shown in the future on an appropriate date.

4 JANUARY 2007

"HENRY SHULTZ: GRATITUDE FOR KINDNESS, RESENTMENT FOR INJURIES"

AGS member and active volunteer Peter J. Hughes will speak on Thursday, 4 January, at the Augusta Museum of History on the exciting life and career of Henry Shultz, developer of enterprise on both sides of the Savannah River in the early nineteenth century. Shultz built bridges between Augusta and South Carolina and was a large stockholder in the early steamboat lines on the Savannah River.

Shultz was an eccentric and volatile man who broke traditional social customs in his personal life and threw caution to the wind in many of his commercial schemes. Considering himself slighted by some of the prominent businessmen in Augusta for trade on the river and tolls on the bridges, he decided to create a town to rival Augusta, a development he advertised in the newspapers of the day as Hamburg, named for his native city in Germany.

Hughes impersonates Shultz in his carefully researched presentation entitled “Henry Shultz: Gratitude for Kindness, Resentment for Injuries.” He allows Shultz to tell his story from a time that the developer “has worked through his recent financial difficulties and is once again able to offer opportunity for advancement in his town of Hamburg across the river from our fair city of Augusta. ”

That Hughes, a mechanical engineer with degrees from Georgia Tech and the University of Texas, would discover Shultz for biographical research is an interesting academic alliance. He has created a Web site that presents the life and times of Henry Shultz that grew out of an idea for a portfolio showing flooded rivers and swept-away bridges, natural disasters that Shultz would have witnessed in the early nineteenth century. Hughes decided that Shultz was a fascinating historical figure with a remarkable story.

“I couldn’t believe nobody had written a book – just articles repeating the same stories over and over,” Hughes said recently. He decided to search for more and has uncovered new facts to enlighten the biography.

“I seek hints and tips, access to documents, low gossip, artifacts, and anything else that leads to a ripping tale for all to enjoy! ”

One might speculate what Shultz would have thought about engineering positions in the 21st century. Hughes worked as a Product Development Engineer with Schlumberger Inc. in Houston and retired from a 25-year career in the energy industry. He has since held a position at Fort Gordon as an illustrator and internet multimedia expert creating training material for the U.S. Army.

The Hughes family moved from Houston to Augusta in 2000 when there was illness in the family. Tricia is a native of Augusta and a homemaker who home schools their son John.

You can read about Shultz and the dead town of Hamburg, SC at http://arete-designs.com/hamburg.

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And just look what you've missed ...

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2006

7 DECEMBER 2006

"PEARL HARBOR: LESSONS FROM HISTORY"

Every generation seems to have its defining moment when one news event overshadows all others. Many of us remember where we were when we heard that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in 1963 or what we were doing on the September morning five years ago when the World Trade Center in New York was attacked. One of General Perry Smith's most vivid memories is witnessing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when he was a six-year-old little boy riding with his sister in the back of a U. S. Army truck on the way to Sunday School in Honolulu.

General Smith will speak to AGS on the 65^th anniversary of the event on 7 December at the Augusta Museum of History at 7 p.m. on the topic "Pearl Harbor: Lessons from History." Brought up in a military family that lived in Hawaii and then in Italy after World War II, Smith is a graduate of the U. S. Military Academy and earned his Ph.D. in International Relations from Columbia University. A retired Air Force Major General, he commanded an F-15 fighter wing and served as the top Air Force planner and the commandant of the National War College. In 1968-69, he flew 180 combat missions over North Vietnam and Laos.

At present, General Smith is the President of Visionary Leadership, Ltd., a consulting firm that provides leadership training and resources, and he teaches leadership, ethics and strategic planning to corporations, non-profits, and government organizations. His recent clients have included the Georgia Bankers Association, the Georgia Police Chiefs, NASA, the Secret Service, the Peace Corps, and Morris Communications. He served from 1991-1998 as a military analyst for CNN, resigning in 1998 after the cable network ran a bogus and unethical special on nerve gas. Since 1998, he has been a special correspondent for CBS Radio News. He is also the author of six books, including Rules and Tools for Leaders, which has over 300,000 copies in print.

Connor Dyess Smith, the general’s wife, has an impressive military background. She is the daughter of Colonel James (Jimmie) Dyess, the only person to have been awarded America’s two highest awards for heroism. As a young man he received a Carnegie Medal, and he was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for leading his marines in an attack at Kwajalein on the Pacific front in World War II. The Dyess Parkway, a highway in Augusta that leads to a gate into Fort Gordon, is a memorial to Colonel Dyess, as is a permanent exhibit in the Augusta Museum of History. Connor Dyess Smith is a noted soprano who has performed for Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and at General James Doolittle’s 90th birthday celebration. The Smiths live in Augusta and are the parents of two children and two grandchildren.

General Smith has honored his father-in-law by writing a biography entitled A Hero Among Heroes: Jimmie Dyess and the 4^th Marine Division and by producing a DVD. He is on the board of the Congressional Medal of Honor foundation and assisted in editing the best-selling Medal of Honor by Peter Collier. A second edition by Collier, with Smith’s editing assistance, is now out with additional biographies of Medal of Honor recipients and a DVD.

What are the "lessons from history" to be learned from the American experience at Pearl Harbor? One idea is that the terrorism that plunged the world into chaos was overcome, and every town in the nation produced its local heroes who rose to the occasion. Please come to the AGS program on the anniversary of this event which changed history. Bring a friend; our meetings are free and open to the public. The Augusta Museum has a comfortable theater and a well–lighted parking area off Broad Street.

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2005

1 DECEMBER 2005

"JIM MCGAW PRESENTS MUSICAL SELECTIONS ON HAMMER AND MOUNTAIN DULCIMERS"

Jim McGaw grew up in southeastern Ohio, where he found a musical heritage of bluegrass, country, and mountain music. He has turned that heritage into a career as a composer and performer for the past 25 years, and has been featured in a nationally syndicated PBS series. His music has also been used for Emmy Award winning documentary films and commercials.

Jim will perform for AGS on 1 December in a program entitled “Musical Selections from the Hammer Dulcimer and the American Mountain Dulcimer.” Dressed in Colonial clothing, he enjoys talking to his audiences and telling the history of his instruments in addition to playing. Because many of our members have Celtic backgrounds, he will play Irish and Scotch music, and he will also entertain us with selections of Christmas music.

On his website, www.jimmcgaw.com, Jim describes himself as a “Christian, Composer, Musician, Recording Artist, Performer, Elementary School Music Teacher, Father, Husband, and Presbyterian Deacon.” He and his wife, Dr. Myrtle McGaw, live thirty miles west of Augusta in Thomson, and Jim teaches at Dearing Elementary School.

Jim plays the six- and twelve-string acoustic and electric, nylon and steel string guitars, hammered and mountain dulcimers, autoharp and banjo. He has given numerous seminars and workshops about the instruments. He has played locally at the Partridge Inn, Appleby Library, Augusta Mall, the Colonial Times Celebration in North Augusta, and at many receptions, weddings, children’s parties, and festivals at Stone Mountain and many of Georgia’s state parks.

His CDs will be available for $10 each on the night of our program. His latest is Hammerhead, a jazz fusion album of Caribbean-South American style original compositions. Another is Old Time Mountain Joy that contains fourteen mountain hymns celebrating his mountain heritage, songs such as I’ll Fly Away and Amazing Grace. Jim has standing orders each year at this time for the CD Hammer Dulcimer Christmas Card which contains both secular and religious selections. These are also available from Jim’s website.

The name “dulcimer” is derived from Latin and means “sweet sound.” The hammered or hammer dulcimer is an ancient trapezoidal instrument with several courses of strings. It is played by striking the strings with hammers. The dulcimer was popular in England during the reign of King James I, when the Bible was translated into English as the King James Bible. It is mentioned in the book of Daniel along with the cornet, flute, and psaltery. It is the ancestor of the pianoforte and the piano.

The mountain dulcimer is a purely American instrument born in the Appalachians to pioneers who read the King James Bible and were familiar with the name “dulcimer” mentioned in Daniel 3:5.

Both styles of the instrument have merited revolutionary new interest in the past decade, and workshops are filled with new players.

We invite AGS members, guests, and the general public to this free program of “sweet sounds” at 7 p.m. on 1 December at the Augusta Museum of History located on the corner of Reynolds & 6th Sts. There is a spacious and well-lighted parking area, and the museum has an elevator to the second-floor theater.

3 NOVEMBER 2005

"A VISUAL TOUR OF AUGUSTA'S VANISHED PAST"

AGS members Joe and Virginia Lee attended Homecoming last August, and we were delighted when Joe accepted our invitation to speak at one of our regular meetings. He has more tales about Augusta than Aesop had fables and enjoys sharing his stories with listeners. Genealogy and local history are his favorite hobbies, and he has been researching and collecting material for over thirty years. Whether you are a native Augustan or have adopted the city as your home. You will enjoy his slide presentation which he has entitled “A Visual Tour of Augusta’s Vanished Past.”

The plan is to have two projectors, one to show a scene from Augusta’s distant past, and another to show the same scene in a later timeframe. Since August, Joe has been going through his vast collection of postcards and photographs to plan his program.

Joe grew up in Augusta and is a graduate of Richmond Academy, the Junior College of Augusta, and Georgia Tech. He lives in Covington and is retired from DeKalb County as Deputy Director of the Roads and Drainage Department. He is a member of AGS, the Georgia Genealogical Society, and the 8th Air Force Historical Society. He and Virginia have two adult sons and four grandchildren.

Joe has a vast collection of stereoviews, photographs, and postcards of Augusta. He is the author of two books that showcase portions of his collections. Augusta in Vintage Postcards (1997) has 200 of his postcards that show images of Augusta in the first two decades of the twentieth century. This was the period when collecting postcards was a national fad, and cards of buildings, homes, businesses, transportation, workers, amusements, sports, events, and disasters were made, thus preserving views that might otherwise be lost.

The second book, Augusta and Summerville, (2000) consists of photographs from 1859-1900 and contains the works of the first photographers in Augusta.

Business and civic leaders have promoted the commercial aspects of the city since the nineteenth century when Augusta built the first factories on the canal and referred to itself as “The Lowell of the South.” Photographs and postcards were used later to create an impression of a commercial center that was also “The Garden City” that preserved the genteel was of the South. Broad Street bustled with business, but the residences that lined Greene Street and the civic buildings and churches on Telfair had beautifully landscaped gardens behind their Victorian wrought-iron fences. Even the city cemetery called Magnolia reflected a park-like atmosphere and was photographed for its beautiful foliage amidst the elaborately carved stones.

The small independent village of Summerville, which was later incorporated into Augusta as a neighborhood, held some of the area’s most historic sires: homes of Augustans who were prominent in state and national politics, and the property of the federal arsenal that is today the site of Augusta State University.

Without the early photographs, much of the story of Augusta would be lost. In the decades between 1950-1980, leaders promoting what was then considered progress destroyed much of the historic architecture to expand highways, parking areas and new construction. The historical significance of the nineteenth century residences downtown was forgotten or ignored. An example is the Turner Clanton home on Greene Street, the home of one of the wealthiest planters during the Civil Was era and later the home of a prominent physician, Dr. Thomas Coleman. After housing the Richmond County Board of Health, the columned mansion was torn down in 1956 and replaced with an office building.

Joe plans to show us many of Augusta’s historic homes, churches, public buildings, mills and factories, and markers and monuments. Steamboats on the Savannah River, electric streetcars, and trains that carried passengers through Union Station are reminders of transportation during earlier eras. Views of what is now Daniel Field show a busy military training installation during World War I when maneuvers were held in the fields that today are populated neighborhoods along Wrightsboro Road and Highland Avenue.

29 OCTOBER 2005 - Following Footprints is Fun! Seminar

1 SEPTEMBER 2005

"JEWS OF AUGUSTA; PEOPLE, PLACES, GENEALOGY"

Jack Steinberg's name is synonymous with the history of the Jewish people in Augusta, and AGS was delighted when he accepted our invitation to speak.

Mr. Steinberg will describe the Jewish people who have come to Augusta since 1806, their institutions and activities, and the genealogy of some of the most well-known families.

Our speaker is the author of two family genealogical books, The Steinbergs of 1212 Broad Street, and The Steinberg Family Tree. He is a member of Adas Yeshuron Synagogue and Congregation Children of Israel.

He has written a portion of the history of the Jewish Community Center that will be used in the 150th anniversary celebration of that organization.

Mr. Steinberg also wrote an article, "The Jews of Augusta," for the AGS Journal, Ancestoring XII, in which he described the first families that came in the early 1800s. These families had roots in Poland, England, Charleston, South Carolina, and Newport, Rhode Island.

Many of Georgia's Jewish people came to Savannah in 1733 and settled there, but the first Jews to come to Augusta did not arrive until 1802. A fur trader from Charleston, Isaac Hendricks, and his family were followed by other families, to include two young men from different Levy families (no relation). Samuel Levy and Abram Levy married two of the Hendricks daughters and had large families. Other families were named Moise, Florence, Cohen, and others.

During the 1880s, Jews from Russia arrived in Augusta. Five founding families were named Edelstein, Steinberg, Fromberg, Shapiro, and Frank.

According to the Steinberg article in Ancestoring, many present-day Augustans are descended from the early families and have contributed greatly to the arts and to civic organizations. The first families have descendants living all over the world.

Mr. Steinberg is a native of Augusta and a life-long resident. He is a graduate of Richmond Academy and the University of Georgia. He was in the apparel industry for a number of years and is currently a practicing accountant and treasurer of the Central Savannah River Area chapter of the Georgia Association of Professional Accountants. He and Mrs. Steinberg are also members of AGS.

In conjunction with Mr. Steinberg's lecture, the program will offer an opportunity to view a special exhibit at the Museum. He and Jackie Cohen will conduct a tour of the highlights of "150 Years of Jewish History in Augusta" following his lecture.

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2004

1 JANUARY 2004

No meeting.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

5 FEBRUARY 2004

Genealogist and "enthusiastic ancestor chaser" Jack Bowie McKinney presented "A Genealogical Trilogy," a program dealing with the ideas of truth as applied to genealogy, acquaintance with ancestors, and the roads that pursuit may take.

21 FEBRUARY 2004

1 APRIL 2004

"WHO, WHEN, AND WHERE WERE THE LOYALISTS?"

Laughing that his family has always been on "the losing side" in conflicts, AGS President Russell R. Moores will speak on "The Loyalists."

He plans "a discussion of the true side of the rebellion against 'Mother England'" as he describes who the Loyalists were and where they were from.  Only about 1/3 of the colonial population supported the "radical folk" who wanted to separate from Britain.  It has been said that about 1/3 were loyal and another 1/3 were more or less politically indifferent.

In the North, New York and New Jersey were strongly loyalist, but the sentiment was also rife in the last and thirteenth American colony of Georgia.

As the youngest, with its large exposed frontier to the south and west, Georgia had a colonial population that looked to the British government for protection during Indian raids against its scattered rural settlements.

AGS has a wide veriety of sources available on the Loyalists in our Library for those searching in this field.  President Moores presented an earlier lecture on a similar theme and the bibliography may be found in the August 2000 Seminar book "Drum Beats and Bugle Calls"  (CS16.9 A7 2000).

President Moores grew up in Louisiana and Arkansas.   He received his M.D. from the University of Arkansas and spent two years in the navy as Staff Hematologist at Oakland Naval Hospital in California.

He has spent most of his life in Georgia and is in his 37th year at the Medical College of Georgia, where he is Professor of Medicine (Hematology/Oncology).

He is very active in the Arts and Humanities of the Augusta community.

President Moores resumed the office of president of AGS in the fall of 2003.  He had formerly served for nine years as president.

6 MAY 2004

"COME FLY WITH LINDBERGH"

Augusta Genealogical Society members and guests used this month's meeting at the Augusta Museum of History to view their special exhibition, Lindbergh, a huge selection of approximately 400 artifacts owned by the Missouri Historical Society. The Augusta Museum of History is one of only five museums in the nation to host the exhibit, and the only one located in the Southeast.

15 MAY 2004

Footprints II - Annual Intermediate/Advanced Research Seminar

"Our Ancestors Day in Court" - An intimate look at old court records & how to use them. Sponsored by Augusta State University & Augusta Genealogical Society.

3 JUNE 2004

"GEORGIA'S NATIVE PEOPLES" will be presented by Dr. Joe Kitchen, Director of the Funk Heritage Center at Reinhardt College in Waleska, GA.

1 JULY 2004

"SHOW AND TELL: AN AGS TRADITION IN JULY"

A long-held tradition at AGS is to invite the membership to show their treasured research to others and to share experiences encountered while doing research. The 1 July meeting was one of relaxed conversation among members as they shared their genealogical treasures.

Members brought articles and books they have written, heirlooms they've inherited, and old photographs or artifacts or records to share. Of interest, also, was the manner by which genealogical materials have been acquired -- many because a grandparent or another relative left their treasured research because the member was known as this generation's "historian" who wants to preserve for the future.

5 AUGUST 2004

Dr. William S. (Bill) Brockington, Professor of History at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, will speak at the 5 August AGS general meeting. The program will be about the immigration patterns of the Scots-Irish into the Southeastern region of the United States and how they changed the face of southern culture.

A native of South Carolina who received his degrees from USC, Dr. Brockington is a recipient of the USCA Community Service Award and has been South Carolina Professor of the Year. The publication of Monro, His Expedition, a book about a Scottish professional soldier of the seventeenth century, earned him the USCA Productive Scholarship Award in 2001. He enjoys research trips to Britain to pursue interests in the Scots in Ulster and the immigration of the Scots-Irish to the American south.

He and his wife Celeste Williams, a math specialist at Ridge Spring-Monetta High School, have two sons.

The Scots-Irish are descendants of people who migrated from Scotland to settle on the more abundant and arable land found in Ulster, the northern region of Ireland. The English monarchs who controlled both Scotland and Ireland politically through military force encouraged the Scots emigration from the 15^th through the 17^th centuries. Rather than assimilation with the Irish Catholics, however, the Scots Protestants maintained their identity with the Presbyterian Church and prospered economically in the wool and linen industries. Subsequent English laws to eliminate the Scottish competition caused economic depressions. Unfair land-lease laws and religious discrimination combined with the seriously depressed economy led the Scots to look favorably toward settlement in the colonies of North America.

During the 1700s, five huge waves of Scots-Irish emigrants came to Pennsylvania. Many thousands from these groups continued their emigration southward through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, western North Carolina, and finally to the back-country of the South Carolina and Georgia frontiers. Joined by other Celtic groups from Scotland, the Border Region of England next to Scotland, and Wales, they spread to the south central and southwestern areas of the United States. By the 1840s the term "Scots-Irish" or "Scotch-Irish" distinguished them from the Irish Catholics fleeing the famine of Ireland.

The huge numbers of Scots-Irish who settled the American frontier made lasting contributions which Dr. Brockington will address. Rural, individualistic people with a distinct dialect, they brought their foods, crafts, music, appreciation of extended family, and ideas and fundamentalist attitudes about religion and education and patriotism.

21 AUGUST 2004

ANNUAL HOMECOMING - LINKING to the Past, LOOKING to the Future

For its Silver Anniversary, the Augusta Genealogical Society held a big “Homecoming” weekend with activities offered to both members and the general public. Details can be found by clicking on the Homecoming link.

SOME OF THOSE HOMECOMING HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDED:

• PLAQUE UNVEILING: at AGS Library, 1109 Broad St., dedicating library to dedicated members Carrie and Raymond Adamson. Reception from 4-6 p.m. free and open to public.
• OPENING NIGHT DINNER: Partridge Inn. After-dinner talk by Dr. Edward J. Cashin.
• ALL DAY SEMINAR: 9 a.m.–5:15 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 21, Performing Arts Theatre, Augusta State University; provides choice of more than 20 lectures by history and genealogical experts.
• SATURDAY LUNCH: Augusta State University’s Reese Library and Augusta-Richmond County Historical Society held a picnic lunch in honor of the Augusta Genealogical Society’s 25th Anniversary, and to introduce the new location of Special Collections at Augusta State University, Saturday, August 21, on the Reese Library lawn.
• SATURDAY BARBECUE: Veranda, Performing Arts Theatre, with barbecue catered by Sconyers followed by folk/country/bluegrass concert inside theatre by Eryn Eubanks and the Family Fold.
• LOTS OF EXTRAS: Tours of Magnolia Cemetery (Friday), Summerville Cemetery (Sunday); computer research demonstrations (Friday and Sunday); genealogical book sales; introduction to new location of Augusta State’s special collections; and more.

7 OCTOBER 2004

"AUGUSTA STATE UNIVERSITY'S SPECIAL COLLECTIONS"

John O’Shea, Special Collections Librarian at Augusta State University, will speak at the 7 October 2004 program of the Augusta Genealogical Society concerning the holdings of his department.

A graduate of ASU, John received his Master’s degree from the College of Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina. During his career, he has been a reference and a cataloging librarian. He has been Special Collections Librarian at Reese Library since 1999. John is a member of the Society of Georgia Archives and attended the Georgia Archives Institute in 2001. He is active in other library organizations and has collaborated with managers of local archival collections as well as a digital photo archives project with photos from ASU’s Special Collections. He is also a member of AGS, and is pursuing his own genealogical records.

The ASU Library established its Special Collections forty years ago. It includes collections of both the University and the Augusta Richmond County Historical Society (ARCHS), an organization with maintains an administrative office in the Library.

The Collection’s mission is to serve the research needs of ASU students and faculty. IT also welcomes visitors who wish to use the materials on local history and genealogy. A large collection of non-circulating books, periodicals, manuscripts, photographs and other archival materials are available. The archival collection has recently been reinventoried. Some older fragile manuscripts, such as several Augusta Arsenal collections, are available on microfilm.

Artifacts in Special Collections remind the researcher that Augusta State University is located in the Summerville neighborhood of Augusta. The site of the University was once a plantation and later was occupied by a U.S. Arsenal. A small manual typewriter used by the poet Stephen Vincent Benet when his father was Commander of the Augusta Arsenal is in place on a filing cabinet. The cabinet contains a vertical file with many writings, records and photographs concerning historical figures in local history.

But records that appeal to researchers beyond the local level are also available. Special Collections is especially strong in the areas of Colonial and Civil War history and maintains area revolutionary War pension records.

Since 1962, Reese Library has been a U.S. Government Depository Library. The Government Documents section is on the second floor of the library.

During the AGS program, John will elaborate on the extent and content of the Collections.

A manuscript index is being revised to provide better access to titles of manuscripts housed in Special Collections.

Those who attended the AGS Homecoming Seminar in August on the ASU campus were treated to a special visit to the Collections. We were impressed by the beautifully renovated area on the third floor of Reese Library now housing the Special Collections.

Hours are 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. John encourages researchers to call ahead (706- 667-4904) or e-mail (joshea@aug.edu) to arrange for services. He added that visitors should first go by the Public Safety Office (706-737-1401) for a parking permit that will allow parking next to the Reese Library.

4 NOVEMBER 2004

"GENEALOGY AND ENTERTAINMENT: WHAT MADE GRANDPA LAUGH?"

Why should genealogists study an area's entertainment history?

That is the question that our next program will address when author and editor Don Rhodes speaks at our 4 November meeting.

According to Don, Augusta was part of a triangle for entertainment that included Savannah and Charleston in the late 1700s. The first elephant ever to appear in America came through Augusta with a circus. Maybe your G-G-G-ancestor was in the audience!

Also, he says there was fun on the homefront during the Civil War, and "not everyone was being shot at."

Augusta has always been a crossroads as people moved south and west. The city has been a performing stage for many celebrities during its more than 250 year history and has been home to nationally and internationally known actors, athletes, musicians and writers.

Don Rhodes is one of our nationally known writers. His weekly "Ramblin' Rhodes" is the longest running newspaper column in the United States about country music (33 years). He is a publications editor of Morris Communications Company, an international business for which Don edits a publication that goes out to its 6,500 employees.

Locally, he has written for the Augusta Herald, the Augusta Chronicle, and Augusta Magazine. He helped create the "Applause" section in the Chronicle that keeps readers in the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) informed about artistic and entertainment events in Augusta and surrounding cities. He has won the Media Person of the Year award from the Greater Augusta Arts Council twice and is a past board member of the Augusta Museum of History.

Don is a lifetime member of the Augusta Genealogical Society. His skills in genealogy were more than evident when he researched the life of Emanuel Wambersie, a Belgian entrepreneur who emigrated to the United States in the 1700s. In presentations to AGS at a regular program and at the Homecoming Seminar in 2003, Don told how Wambersie brought musical entertainment to Augusta as early as 1786.

Don has also made genealogy researchers aware of a new research venue, the archives of the Augusta Chronicle. Although previously available on microfilm, the vast archives of the newspaper which dates back to 1785 are now available electronically from AugustaArchives.com.

Don presented a program to AGS about use of the electronic archives and used them extensively himself while writing a book that was published in 2004. His book, Entertainment in Augusta and the CSRA is part of the "Images of America" series published by Arcadia. This series publishes photographic histories of communities and cities throughout the United States.

Don's book was reviewed by Marguerite Fogleman in the July, 2004 issue of Southern Echoes. It will be available at our November meeting for $20, and Don will be happy to sign copies.

2 DECEMBER 2004

YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMICS IN AUGUSTA: "THE CITY CEMETERY LOOKS LIKE A PLOWED FIELD""

Dr. Daniel Hook, owner of the plantation “Richmond Hill” six miles south of Augusta, had gone into the city in the summer of 1839 on business concerning his Richmond Factory. Several times he was approached and asked to “look in on” residents who had become suddenly ill. To Dr. Hook’s astonishment, he recognized the symptoms of Yellow Fever.

When he asked if there was much sickness, he was told, “Yes, a great deal. It looks like everybody in the first and second wards of the City has some sickness in their families in the last few days.”

The next day, Dr. Hook placed an announcement on a placard near the post office declaring the disease to be yellow fever in the two lower wards, and that in his opinion the illness would spread over the entire city. Dr. Hook warned that if treatment were not given “the hearses will not be able, in a week from now, to carry the dead to the cemetery, but drays and wagons will be needed.”

How right he was! The Augusta Chronicle would comment on the epidemic situation in Augusta in the “plowed field” headline quoted above.

Russell Moores will speak to us about “Yellow Jack” fever and other epidemics that terrorized our ancestors in the past. Dr. Moores has spoken to the Society on other occasions about diseases of the 1800s and about the history of the Medical College of Georgia.

Dr. Moores is an oncologist who has had a long teaching career at the Medical College of Georgia. He received his M.D. from the University of Arkansas. He served an internship in Rochester, NY; his Fellowship was done at the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, MD, and his residency at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, MO. He was Staff Hemotologist at Oakland (CA) Naval Hospital before he came to Augusta.

Dr. Moores is in his eleventh year as President of AGS, having resumed the position in September 2003 after the resignation of Dr. George Christenberry and was elected to his present term in September 2004. Moores was first elected in 1982 and guided the young Society through nine years of major projects and publications.

Yellow fever was a horrible disease, with the first epidemic recognized as a “new pestilence” in the western hemisphere at Barbados in 1647. It reached as far north as the cities of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Mostly, however, it struck port cities of the southeastern U.S.

During the 17th through the 19th centuries, people did not know that the highly infectious disease was spread by mosquitoes that picked up the virus from bites to humans. One of its symptoms is jaundice, which causes a yellow tint to the skin. The victims experience headaches, high fevers, and vomiting as the disease attacks the liver and digestive tract. Vomiting of blood occurs before death.

Augustans had known malaria and connected it to low swamps and the Savannah River. Many sought safer summer homes on the Hill in Summerville. But yellow fever was a new disease with horrible symptoms that led to all sorts of speculation as to its origin.

Dr. Moores has studied the sextons’ records for Magnolia Cemetery to examine the 1839 epidemic. He will discuss the wrong conclusions reached by the early physicians and Augusta residents as to the cause of the disease and the new evidence that came out of the 1854 panic when yellow fever struck again. He will explain how new technology in the 19th century brought the diseases inland to cities such as Augusta.

Dr. Moores is a gifted researcher and lecturer. His talk will be at 7 p.m. at the Augusta Museum of History, 560 Reynolds St., on Thursday, 2 Dec 2004. The program is free and open to the public.

 

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2003

MARCH 2003

"Ancestors: Climbing Your Family Tree"
Genealogists/Historians Set for 5-part Series in March on
Family Research Tactics at Augusta Museum of History

AGS joined with the Augusta Museum of History to bring something different to the Museum's educational programs.

Each Monday evening in March, Carrie Adamson and Jerry Scott conducted 2-hour classes (5-7 p.m.) on the basic points of doing a documented family history. They were joined by other AGS instructors for specialized subjects. Augusta Public Library's Alice Walker participated in the first session.

The participants had fun while learning how to create ancestor charts, interview relatives, get the most out of census records, and check out an ancestor's military records. Name changes (translations, spellings, etc., especially of early German and French names), were discussed. Courthouse and land records, finding elusive "Hatched, Matched, Dispatched (birth, marriage, death) records and even exploring old migration routes were part of the paper trail covered. Using Internet resources was also on the agenda.

Emphasis was given to how and where to find important personal documents and other records and how to use them effectively to put it all together for the whole family to enjoy--and to extend on for future generations to enjoy.

A field trip to the AGS Library was included during the 5-week course for the participants. All classes were held at the Museum.

Speakers: Carrie Adamson and Jerry Scott, AGS

What: Classes to learn how to effectively do and document your family history.

Where: Augusta Museum of History.

Registration: $25 for members of AMS or AGS; $35 for non-members
Checks payable to Augusta Museum of History, 560 Reynolds St., Augusta, GA 30901.

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3 APRIL 2003

AGS and the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta co-sponsored a lecture by historian Bettis Rainsford on "The Simkins Family of Edgefield, South Carolina."   This program was held at the Morris Museum.  Attendees enjoyed a special exhibit of fifty works by Dallas artist Martha Simkins, an early 20th century painter who was influenced by Impressionism, which was on display at the Morris Museum.

19 APRIL 2003

"Following Footprints II", Skinner Hall, Augusta State University

1 MAY 2003

Columnist Don Rhodes, who has a special interest in history as well as music, presented a lecture he developed called "The Elusive and Mysterious Emanuel Wambersie, 1761-1829."  A colorful land dealer from the GA Sea Islands, Wambersie had international trade and political connections to Augusta's historic figures and to friends throughout America and Europe and is buried in Ghent, Flanders.

5 JUNE 2003

Sophia Bamford, M.D., a retired physician with an immense knowledge of history and genealogy about the colonial Georgia up-country, especially Wilkes County, presented her NEW lecture about WARREN COUNTY with maps showing homes of original settlers in that area.

3 JULY 2003

Honorary AGS President Carrie Adamson, AGS Graphic Artist Octavia Garlington and Dr. Jule Rucker, Chairman of the Loose Papers Committee, were the panelists for an "Ask the Experts" program.  Participants shared information and asked wonderful questions.   All went home with renewed energy to use the new tools in furthering their genealogical research.

7 AUGUST 2003

Dr. Sophia Bamford's new lecture about Warren County, GA received such a favorable response from the audience at the AGS meeting in June that we immediately wanted to invite her back.  She has graciously agreed to return in August with another NEW lecture --- this time on LINCOLN COUNTY, GA with names and maps showing original settlers.

4 SEPTEMBER 2003

Dr. Helen (Nell) Callahan, author and retired professor from Augusta State University will speak about Summerville.  Known locally as "The Hill," Summerville was home to many Augustans who achieved national prominence.  Summerville is one of Augusta's beautiful and historic neighborhoods.

6 NOVEMBER 2003

Virginia Bowe (Jean) Strickland, fifth generation Augustan, provided suggestions and showed us how to combine our genealogy research with the making of crafts for wonderful holiday gifts.

4 DECEMBER 2003

AGS members Wayne Hubbard, Tom Dirksen, Carrie Adamson and Ruth Shaw shared their genealogical discoveries and offered advise to help others in their searches in this "Show and Tell" program.

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