Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

February 13

1730 In London, James Oglethorpe unveiled his plan for creating a charitable colony for poor debtors released from prison to Sir John Percival, a fellow member of the House of Commons who had served on his Gaols [Jails] Committee. At this point, Oglethorpe expected that the proposed colony would be located in the West Indies. Percival embraced the idea and quickly became a key figure in what would become the Georgia movement. [See "In Their Own Words. . ." below.]

1850 Gov. George Towns signed legislation creating Gordon County as Georgia's 94th county. Created from portions of Bartow and Floyd counties, the new county was named for William Gordon, president of the Central Railroad and Banking Co. and an active proponent of Georgia's transportation development. [Click here to see Savannah monument erected in Gordon's memory.]

1854 Gov. Herschel Johnson signed legislation creating Chattahoochee County as Georgia's 109th county. Created from portions of Marion and Muscogee counties, the county was named for the Chattahoochee River, which forms the county's western boundary.

1917 Martha Lumpkin, daughter of Gov. Wilson Lumpkin, and for whom Terminus was incorporated as Marthasville in 1843, died in Atlanta. She had been born Aug. 25, 1827.

1941 Gov. Eugene Talmadge signed a joint resolution of the General Assembly proposing a constitutional amendment to change the term of the governor and other constitutional officers from two years to four. On the following June 3, Georgia voters ratified the amendment.

1956 The Secretary of the Senate sent S.B. 98 (which would change Georgia's state flag by adding the Confederate battle flag) to Gov. Marvin Griffin, who immediately signed it into law in a ceremony attended by flag designer John Sammons Bell and state senators Jefferson Lee Davis, and Sen. Willis Harden (who were the bill's primary sponsors). [See photo of signing ceremony.] The same day, by a 39-0 vote, the full Senate adopted H.R. 185, which declared that Georgia was interposing its sovereign power and declaring the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decisions null and void.

2005 Ray Charles and Usher Raymond were both multiple award winners at the 47th Grammy Awards.

2007 U.S. Tenth District representative from Georgia - Charlie Norwood - died at his home in Augusta after a lengthy battle with cancer.

2008 The University System of Georgia Board of Regents voted to approve a new Medical College of Georgia branch at the University of Georgia in Athens.

2008 The University System of Georgia Board of Regents voted to approve a statue of Vince Dooley to be located on South Campus. They also voted to name the Athletic Complex where the statue will sit after Dooley - longtime UGA football coach and athletic director. Controversy immediately arose over the proposal - with many UGA fans believing Dooley should be honored by having the football stadium or field named for him, or at least having the statue either in or near the stadium.

Georgia cities and towns incorporated by acts approved by the governor on Feb. 13:

1854 Graniteville (Coweta County)
 
 

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1730 James Oglethorpe originated the Georgia movement in Parliament, although initially he proposed that the new colony be located in the West Indies, as Sir John Percival [later Earl of Egmont] noted in his diary, :

". . . I afterwards went to the House [of Commons] . . . . I met Mr. Oglethorp, who informed me that he had found out a very considerable charity, even fifteen thousand pounds, which lay in trustees' hands, and was like to have been lost, because the heir of the testator being one of the trustees, refused to concur with the other two, in any methods for disposing the money, in hopes, as they were seventy years old each of them, they would die soon, and he should remain only surviving trustee, and then might apply all to his own use. That the two old men were very honest and desirous to be discharged of their burthen, and had concurred with him to get the money lodged in a Master of Chancery's hands till new trustees should be appointed to dispose thereof in a way that should be approved of by them in conjunction with the Lord Chancellor. That the heir of the testator had opposed this, and there had been a lawsuit thereupon, which Oglethorp had carried against the heir, who appealed against the decree; but my Lord Chancellor had confirmed it, and it was a pleasure to him to have been able in one year's time to be able at law to settle this affair. That the trustees had consented to this on condition that the trust should be annexed to some trusteeship already in being, and that being informed that I was a trustee for Mr. Dalone's legacy, who left about a thousand pounds to convert negroes, he had proposed me and my associates as proper persons to be made trustees of this new affair; that the old gentlemen approved of us, and he hoped I would accept it in conjunction with himself, and several of our Committee of Gaols [Jails] . . . . I told him it was a pleasure to me to hear his great industry in recovering and securing so great a charity, and to be joined with gentlemen whose worth I knew so well; that I had indeed been thinking to quit the trusteeship of Dalone's legacy, because we were but four, and two of them were rendered incapable of serving and the third was a person I never saw. That when I accepted the trusteeship it was in order to assist Dean Berkley's Bermuda scheme, by erecting a Fellowship in his college for instructing negroes . . . .

". . . He [Oglethorpe] then returned to the new trusteeship, and said that though annexed to this of Dalone's, Dalone's legacy might be a matter remaining distinct from the scheme he proposed for employing the charity he had acquainted me with . . . . That he had acquainted the Speaker, and some other considerable persons, with his scheme, who approved it much, and there remained only my Lord Chancellor's opinion to be known. . . .[T]hat the scheme is to procure a quantity of acres either from the Government or by gift or purchase in the West Indies and to plant thereon a hundred miserable wretches who being let out of gaol by the last year's Act, are now starving about the town for want of employment; that they should be settled all together by way of colony, and be subject to subordinate rulers, who should inspect their behaviour and labour under one chief head; that in time they with their families would increase so fast as to become a security and defence of our possessions against the French and Indians of those parts; that they should be employed in cultivating flax and hemp, which being allowed to make into yarn, would be returned to England and Ireland, and greatly promote our manufactures. All which I approved. . . ."

Source: U.K. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Diary of the First Earl of Egmont (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1923), Vol. I, pp. 44-46.

1839 Sometime during her 1832-34 American tour, English actress Fanny Kemble performed in Philadelphia, where she met Pierce Butler. In 1834, they married and Kemble abandoned her promising acting career. Two years later, Butler and his brother inherited their grandfather's rice and sea island cotton plantations and over 700 slaves in coastal Georgia. Fanny was opposed to slavery, though she knew very little about plantation life. For several years, she urged her husband to allow her to see his Georgia plantations. Finally, in 1838, Pierce relented, apparently believing that she might change her opposition to slavery if she were to see how his slaves were treated. Pierce and Fanny and their two children arrived at Darien, Ga. on Dec. 30, 1838 and immediately proceeded a short way up the Altamaha River to Butler Island, where she would stay until Feb. 16, 1839, when they moved to Pierce's sea island cotton plantation on the north end of St. Simons Island. In mid-April, with warm weather coming, the Butler family returned to Pennsylvania. During her short stay in Georgia, Fanny Kemble Butler was shocked at what she saw, and almost immediately began compiling a journal documenting her firsthand impression of slave life. Her journal entry for Feb. 13 noted:

". . . While rowing this evening I was led by my conversation with Jack [a slave who was doing the rowing] to some of those reflections with which my mind is naturally incessantly filled here, but which I am obliged to be very careful not to give any utterance to. The testimony of no Negro is received in a Southern court of law, and the reason commonly adduced for this is, that the state of ignorance in which the negroes are necessarily kept renders them incapable of comprehending the obligations of an oath, and yet, with an inconsistency which might be said to border on effrontery, these same people are admitted to the most holy sacrament of the Church, and are certainly thereby supposed to be capable of assuming the highest Christian obligations, and the entire fulfillment of God's commandments, including, of course, the duty of speaking the truth at all times. . . ."

Source: John A. Scott, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 by Frances Anne Kemble (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), p. 174.

1865 While visiting her sister near Albany, 24-year-old Eliza Frances Andrews wished she could be back at her parents' home in Washington, Ga. She also recorded other observations about life in Georgia in the final months of the Civil War:

". . . Oh, that dear old home! I know it is sweeter than ever now, with all those delightful people gathered there. One good thing the war has done among many evils; it has brought us into contact with so many pleasant people we should never have known otherwise. I know it must be charming to have all those nice army officers around, and I do want to go back, but it is so nice here, too, that we have decided to stay a little longer. Father says that this is the best place for us now that Kilpatrick's raiders are out of the way. I wish I could be in both places at once. They write us that little Washington has gotten to be the great thoroughfare of the Confederacy now, since Sherman has cut the South Carolina R.R. and the only line of communication between Virginia and this part of the country, from which the army draws its supplies, is through there and Abbeville. This was the old stage route before there were any railroads, and our first "rebel" president traveled over it in returning from his Southern tour nearly three-quarters of a century ago, when he spent a night with Col. Alison in Washington. It was a different thing being a rebel in those days and now. I wonder the Yankees don't remember they were rebels once, themselves. . . ."

Source: Eliza Frances Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl: 1864-1865 (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908), p. 92.
 
 

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