Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government 

April 6

 

1830 James Augustine Healy, America's first black Catholic bishop, was born in Jones County, Georgia. Healy was one of ten children born to Michael and Mary Eliza Healy; his mother was a mulatto slave purchased by her father. Though legally they could not marry in Georgia, they were married by a traveling minister and lived as husband and wife. The elder Healy was determined to educate his sons, but his children were turned away from many school doors (in both the South and North) until a Quaker school in New York accepted them. Even there they met with discrimination. Healy finally attended Holy Cross College in Massachusetts, where he felt the calling to become a priest. After studying in Canada and France, he was ordained in 1854, becoming the first African-American Catholic priest. Healy returned to Massachusetts, where he fought through discrimination against both blacks and Irish (his father was of Irish descent) to become a respected priest at St James Church in Boston - -one of the city's largest. In 1875 Healy was named Bishop of the Portland, Maine diocese -- making him the first black bishop in America. He served as bishop for twenty-five years, establishing many new churches, missions, and schools. He was noted for his work among the poor, and argued for the sovereignty of Indians and an end to child labor. He died in Portland in 1900.

 

1838 U.S. Secretary of War Joel Poinsett named Gen. Winfield Scott as commander of the troops already stationed in the Cherokee Nation.

 

1862 In southwestern Tennessee, the Battle of Shiloh began.

 

1907 Joseph Harris Chappell, first president of the Georgia Normal and Industrial College (which eventually became Georgia College and State University), died in Columbus, Ga.

 

1927 The U.S. government created the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge.

 

1935 Gov. Eugene Talmadge issued an executive proclamation naming the Brown Thrasher as the state bird of Georgia. However, in 1969, the question arose whether the governor legally could designate state symbols. On Aug. 11, 1969, Georgia's attorney general issued an official opinion stating that designating official state symbols was exclusively a legislative function. Subsequently, on March 20,1970, the Georgia General Assembly adopted a joint resolution designating the Brown Thrasher as the official state bird of Georgia.

 

1936 A tornado hit Gainesville, destroying the Cooper Pants Manufacturing Company and killing 125 workers. All together, 187 people died and more than 2,000 were left homeless. [See photos of the destruction and relief effort]

 

1957 Atlanta-born Brenda Lee made her debut on the country music chart with her recording of "One Step at a Time." She was only 12 years old at the time.

 

1982 Atlanta Brave pitcher Rick Mahler opened the 1982 season against San Diego with a two-hit shutout, launching the Braves to a phenomenol 13-0 start.

 

1995 The Atlanta Braves acquired Montreal Expo outfielder Marquis Grissom in trade for outfielders Roberto Kelly and Tony Tarasco, pitcher Esteban Yan, and cash.

 

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1733 Early Georgia colonist Peter Gordon recorded how health problems began to plague the colonists, and how the first to die was one of those most needed:

"Wee hade hither too continued very healthy, and proceeded in the publick labour with as much success and dispatch as could possibly be expected. But the weather beginning to be extreamly hott, and owr people haveing as yet no other water to drink but that of the river, which at high water was brackish, we did not long enjoy that happiness, for soon afterwards we begane to be very sickly, and lost many of owr people who died very suddenly. Aprile 6th Doctor Cox died very much lamented, being a generall loss to the Collony. He was a very useful and well experienced gentleman. As the first persone that died, and we being thane, under a sort of military government Mr. Oglethorp ordered that he should be buried in a military manner. All owr Tythings were accordingly ordered to be under arms, and to march regularly to the grave, with the corps, and as soon as he was interr'd and the funerall service performed we gave three generall discharges of owr small arms an during the time that we marched with the corps, and while the funeral office was performing, minute guns were fired from the guard house and the bell constantly toling. This military manner of burying was afterwards observed not only to all owr men that died, but likewise to owr women, till the people begane to die so fast that the frequent firing of the cannon, and owr small arms, struck such terrour, in owr sick people (who knowing the cause, concluded they should be the next) that we have hade three or four die in one day which being represented to Mr. Oglethorp he ordered that it should be discontinued."

Source: [no author or editor cited], Our First Visit in America: Early Reports from the Colony of Georgia, 1732-1740 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1974), pp. 20-21.

1839 On St. Simons Island, Fanny Kemble was somewhat shocked to find that the overseer of her husband's plantation had issued an order prohibiting the slaves from attending church:

"In the evening I had a visit from Mr. C[ouper] and Mr. B[artow], who officiates tomorrow at our small island church. The conversation I had with these gentlemen was sad enough. They seem good, and kind, and amiable men, and I have no doubt are conscientious in their capacity of slaveholders; but to one who has lived outside this dreadful atmosphere, the whole tone of their discourse has a morally muffled sound, which one must hear to be able to conceive. Mr. B[artow] told me that the people on this plantation not going to church was the result of a positive order from Mr. K[ing], who had peremptorily [sic] forbidden their doing so, and of course to have infringed that order would have been to incur severe corporal chastisement. Bishop B[owen], it seems, had advised that there should be periodical preaching on the plantations, which, said Mr. B[artow], would have obviated any necessity for the people of different estates congregating at any given point at stated times, which might perhaps be objectionable, and at the same time would meet the reproach which was now beginning to be directed toward Southern planters as a class, of neglecting the eternal interest of their dependents. But Mr. K[ing] has equally objected to this. He seems to have held religious teaching a mighty dangerous thing -- and how right he was!"

Source: Frances Anne Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), p. 310.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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