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ABOUT AGS

The Augusta Genealogical Society is a nonprofit organization. It was founded in Augusta, Georgia in September 1979, by 84 charter members and now has well over 1500 members in 44 states as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, Singapore, Germany and Ireland. AGS maintains a genealogical library, publishes a newsletter and journal, presents monthly lectures and semi-annual "Footprints" methodology seminars, co-sponsors semi-annual seminars with Augusta State University, and specializes in cemetery surveys. The Society is the proud recipient of four Certificates of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History. All mail should be directed to P.O. Box 3743, Augusta GA 30914-3743. We are located at 1109 Broad Street, Augusta GA. Our phone number is 706-722-4073.

4 SEPTEMBER 2008

"CONFEDERATE PRISON CAMP LAWTON ONCE OCCUPIED MAGNOLIA SPRINGS STATE PARK"

Dr. John K. Derden, Professor Emeritus of History at East Georgia College, will present a program about the history of Camp Lawton , a Confederate prison for Union POWs, at our September meeting on Thursday, 4 September, at 7 p.m. at the Augusta Museum of History. Once called “the largest prison in the world” by the general responsible for its construction near Millen, Georgia, it featured a stockade larger than that of Andersonville and was built to relieve the crowding at the better-known facility. The program is in the format of a slide lecture, using digitized images as a background to the narration. The speaker, who is currently completing a manuscript on the history of the prison for publication, has attempted to use every known extant illustration of the camp and its operation..

Camp Lawton was constructed in open-pen style in October 1864 on 42 acres five miles north of Millen and about forty miles south of Augusta. The site was chosen for its proximity to the Augusta Railroad for transporting prisoners and because of a stream flowing through the camp that provided water for drinking , bathing, and sewage. The camp was designed to hold from 32,000-40,000 prisoners, but only about 10,000 men were actually housed there. General William Sherman was advancing through Georgia during the fall of 1864 with the intent of freeing the prisoners. Hundreds died and many were transported to other camps before his late November arrival in the area. Ironically, many even joined the desperate Confederate cause. The railroad today follows the same roadbed , and the stream is also still there. Its springs were incorporated into a recreation area in the late 1800s and eventually into a state park known as Magnolia Springs.

Dr. Derden holds degrees from Reinhardt College and the University of Georgia. His M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History and advanced study at seminars at St. Joseph’s University, City University of New York, Ohio State University, and Cornell reflect a wide variety of interests from secondary social science education and U. S. history to the Greco-Roman classics and diplomatic history. He has traveled throughout the U.S. and has resided in four of the fourteen foreign countries in which he has traveled and studied. He holds memberships in several educational and academic associations and has received many scholastic and civic honors. His employment at East Georgia College in Swainsboro has been continuous since 1973, and he now is Professor Emeritus and part-time coordinator of the Heritage Center on its campus. He currently teaches at the East Georgia satellite in Statesboro.

His publications include five books and numerous articles and book reviews for academic journals. He has written and presented papers to historical and educational associations at various colleges and libraries and presented programs to civic clubs, churches and Elderhostel groups.

His interest in local history led to the development of a day tour for his students and the general public of Sherman’s march through Emanuel, Burke, and Jenkins counties that has been conducted annually since 1989. In addition, he has written and directed many grants from the Georgia Endowment for the Humanities on a variety of topics.

Dr. Derden has shown the Camp Lawton program to civic and historical societies in Georgia and is enthusiastically preparing for its presentation to the Western North Carolina Civil War Roundtable in Sylva, NC in January, 2009.

AGS is excited to welcome Dr. Derden as our first lecturer going into our 30th year as a Society. The Civil War era is always an interesting period of study for genealogists who want to trace their families’ participation in the conflict. Avoiding fighting and recovering from its devastation were often reasons for migrations. Also, soldiers sometimes married local young women and remained in areas where they had served or took their fiancés to their home states. Generations of names of children reflected military leadership in the North and South. Many families were changed by the deaths that occurred in battle and in prison camps such as the one at Camp Lawton.

The regular monthly programs are free and open to the public.
They are held at 7 p.m. at the Augusta Museum of History, 560 Reynolds Street. Entrance to the museum at night is from a well-lighted parking area entered from either Sixth or Broad Streets.

Imagine That!! Donors Set Up AGS Trust Fund And Give Large Donation For Virginia Records. Two magnanimous AGS members brought new meaning to us of the word generosity when they endowed the Society with our very first ongoing private trust fund, to ensure the Society's future stability, and then made available another large fund to be used exclusively for colonial Virginia records for our Library.

The donors, who Insist on anonymity, have spent many years assembling details of the lives and times of their ancestors. Trips to research centers throughout the South and East enabled them to identify sources many genealogists only dream of finding. It is their wish that these types of documents and records be made available locally, hence the gift restricted to colonial Virginia, the home place of untold numbers of Southern families.

What a splendid piece of generosity, to their fellow members, and to their community!

Available for Purchase

WILKES COUNTY, GEORGIA
TAX RECORDS, 1785 – 1805

Volumes One & Two

Compiled & Published by
Frank Parker Hudson

AGS is happy to announce that Frank Parker Hudson’s 2-volume/1520 page Wilkes County, Georgia Tax Records, 1785-1805, is available for purchase. We raved about the books when we first saw them, and still consider them one of the finest additions public and academic libraries with genealogical collections, or genealogists with early Georgia ties, can make to their libraries.

And do you need the set? Consider this: Your late-18th century Georgia research is centered in Wilkes County, where nearly half of the population of Georgia was clustered in 1790. Then you learn that someone has published 1520 pages of names of all Wilkes Taxables for 1785-1805, with adjoining landowners and original grantee – 47,000 tax returns from all extant tax records, some never before microfilmed.

All genealogical data in the tax records is in the abstracts. Thousands of free white males 21 years old or older, owning no property, are also identified. Not only that, the microfilm roll & frame number of all returns found in the original records provide a splendid finding aid unavailable for any other set of Georgia records! That’s far from all! Locations of Militia Districts (using current maps as backgrounds!), names of successive captains of Militia Districts 1806-1830 as finding aids for future research, lists placing watercourses in counties, variant spellings of surnames, even a listing of current counties encompasssed by Wilkes County in 1785 is included.

It took Mr. Hudson more than 30 years to compile all the data; his presentation is bound to answer questions genealogists from Georgia to Texas and other points West have been posing for years in their attempts to sort out names and residences of Georgia ancestors. This is to say that the books could be helpful in any research.

To quote from Marguerite Fogleman's review of the books: "to say that the project of bringing these tax records to publication for genealogists was 'monumental' might be an understatement" is an opinion with which we agree wholeheartedly!

Printed on 1520 pages of acid-free paper, with library quality binding, the handsome set is sold only as a 2-volume set, due to 104 page common index.

Now On Special Sale! Now On Special Sale!

$30.00 at AGS Library; by mail for $30.00 + $5.00 p&h.
Check to AGS, P.O. Box 3743, Augusta GA 30914-3743
Phone 706-722-4073 or 706-738-2241

65,000 Individual-Name References in Ancestoring. The Augusta Genealogical Society began publishing its official journal, Ancestoring, in 1980. Each issue contains several thousands of individual-name entries from cemeteries, churches and other rich resource records in the Central Savannah River Area of Georgia and South Carolina. All 13 Volumes include historical background articles, cemetery articles, cemetery records from St. Paul's Episcopal Church, First Presbyterian Church, Magnolia Cemetery, Cedar Grove Cemetery, courthouse records, naturalizations and more. For more information on Ancestoring, click here.

Do You Have Suggestions For Improving The AGS Web Site or Need Help in Constructing Your Own Genealogical Society Web Site? If so please contact our AGS Web Master, by clicking here.

If you would like to view queries posted by past visitors to the AGS Web site seeking genealogical information relative to their ancestors who might have once resided in, or passed through, the Augusta, Georgia region, or, if you would like to post your own query for such information, you may do so by clicking here. This will take you to our self-posting query page.

For links to other genealogical society Web sites click here.