Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

April 26

1826 Confederate general Ambrose Ransom "Ranse" Wright was born in Louisville, Ga. He left school at age 15 to read law, married at 16, and subsequently was admitted to the bar. Wright practiced law in Dooly County, but in 1850 returned to Louisville, where he developed a successful practice. After unsuccessful races for the General Assembly and Congress, Wright moved to Augusta, where he practiced law until the outbreak of the Civil War. In April 1861, he enlisted as a private in the Confederate Light Guards in the 3rd Georgia. Members of the unit soon elected him to serve as colonel. In June 1862, Wright was promoted to brigadier general and commanded his own brigade at the battles of Second Manassas, Sharpsburg (where he was wounded), Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Wilderness, Spotsvylvania, and Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. In November 1864, Wright was promoted to major general and commanded a division under Gen. Hardee during the Carolinas Campaign. After the war, he resumed the practice of law in Augusta. In March 1866, Wright became editor of the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel, where he became an outspoken opponent of Radical Reconstruction. In 1872, Wright was elected to Congress as a "New Departure" Democrat but died in Augusta on Dec. 21 before taking office.

1856 Georgia politician George Michael Troup died in Montgomery County, Ga. [See Sept. 8 entry for biographical information.]

1865 At Durham Station, N.C., the terms of the surrender of Confederate Army of Tennessee under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston were finalized. Confederate soldiers would turn in their firearms and be paroled at Greensboro. Privately owned horses and mules could be retained and officers could keep their side arms. Transportation for the Confederate men would be arranged by the Federal government where possible. The men would be allowed one rifle for every five men to hunt game on their way home. Because Georgia fell under Johnston's jurisdiction, April 26 marked the end of the Civil War for Georgia.

1866 The Atlanta Ladies' Memorial Association, formed 11 days earlier, held its first Confederate memorial observance at Oakland Cemetery. [Click here for information on the history of Confederate Memorial Day.}

1886 Black Illinois congressman William Levi Dawson was born in Albany, Ga. After graduating from Fisk University, he moved to Chicago. During World War I, Dawson serve in the 365th Infantry, after which he returned to Chicago and became involved in Republican politics. In 1942, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he would serve 27 years. In 1949, Dawson became chairman of the House Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments, which gave him the distinction of being the first African American to chair a congressional committee.

1886 Gertrude Pridgett "Ma" Rainey, widely known as the "Mother of the Blues," was born in Columbus, Ga. [See Dec. 22 entry for biographical information.]

1913 This year's Confederate Memorial Day fell on Saturday. In Atlanta, a parade was scheduled downtown at 2 p.m. One month shy of her 14th birthday, young Mary Phagan caught a street car to downtown Atlanta to watch the Memorial Day parade. But there was a second -- and maybe more important reason -- for going downtown. Phagan had a job making pencils at the National Pencil Company on Forsyth St. She was owed $1.20, so she dropped by the factory to pick up her pay from plant superintendent Leo Frank. Phagan didn't make it to the parade, nor did she return home that night. At 3 a.m., night watchman Newt Lee found Phagan's body in the basement of the pencil factory. She had some bruises and gashes on her head and body, but she had been strangled to death by a cord found tied around her neck. Thus began an episode of Georgia history known as the "Leo Frank Case."

1943 The U.S. Army Air Corps officially dedicated Robins Field in Houston County.

1995 After a costly major league baseball strike is finally settled, the Atlanta Braves opened what would be their World Championship season with a 12-5 win over the San Francisco Giants.

2005 The Green Treefrog officially became the Georgia State Amphibian.

2005 Jennifer Wilbanks, aka the "Runaway Bride," did not return from an evening jog, beginning a bizarre case in which she took a bus to Las Vegaswithout telling anyone, prompting a massive missing person search. When she did call homer several days later, she pretended she had been kidnapped, but this story soon proved to be made up. She finally returned home to face a charge of making false statements to police. She had been scheduled to be married on April 30. She was eventually sentenced to probation and community service.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1802 Testifying to the danger of living on Georgia's frontier, John McConnel, Sr. wrote Col. Buckner Harris:

"I have been informed by good authority that on the evening of the 23rd instant, a Cherokee Indian came to the house of Mr. Shelton near Reed's Store on the north fork of the Oconee River about two miles from the boundary line [between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation], on this side [of] the said line. Mr. Shelton and his wife was at the cow pen when they heard the noise of the Indian killing the children: an infant killed and throwed in the fire, another wounded so that it is thought it will die, a small Negro also badly wounded. Mr. Shelton ran to a neighbor's house and got a gun. And when he returned, he found the murderer in the house plundering and had just ripped the bed and was turning out the feathers. Upon which he killed the Indian and then took the infant out of the fire that all the time was burning. The truth of this circumstance you may rely on and, not knowing that you had been informed of the matter, I thought proper to write to you. The people are much afraid on the frontiers. Some are for moving away."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Georgia: History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), pp. 64-65.

1822 On a three-month tour through Georgia, New England lawyer Jeremiah Evarts. Visiting Athens on this day, Evarts recorded in his diary:

"Called last evening on the Reverend Dr. Waddel, President of the University of Georgia at Athens. There are nearly one hundred students in the college here under the instruction of a president, three professors and a tutor. There is no professor of religion in college, though one or two students are hopefully pious.

"Called upon Mrs. Newton, a widow. She came into this country as a frontier settler thirty-five years ago and for four years was obliged occasionally to resort to forts for protection, had a sister killed by Indians within hail of the fort where herself was. Mrs. Newton says the terrors of the four years' exposure are beyond description. When her door was shut, she dared not open it for fear of seeing Indians. And when it was opened, she dared not shut it, for fear Indians would approach unseen! The settlers could not live all the while in forts, because they must gain subsistence from the land, and they could not live all the while on their farms without imminent danger of being murdered. The Indians stole their horses, cattle, &c, and murdered unprotected individuals."

Source: Edward J. Cashin (ed.), A Wilderness Still The Cradle of Nature: Frontier Georgia (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1994), pp. 65-66.

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