Ed Jackson and Charly Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

March 22

1765 In London, the Stamp Act received the approval of King George III. The legislation, which levied a new tax on a variety of paper documents, was designed to recover some of the large costs Britain had incurred protecting the American colonies during the French and Indian War. Instead, it resulted in resentment and the growth of a movement that would lead to the American Revolution.

1796 Architect and businessman Elam Alexander was born in Iredell County, North Carolina. Though he had no formal education, Alexander proved to be a talented builder and shrewd business man. He moved to Georgia in 1820, finally settling in Macon in 1826. Strongly influenced by the Greek Revival architectural style, Alexander was primarily responsible for many of Macon's most impressive structures, some which still stand today. He built several famous homes, the Bibb County Courthouse, and the first building housing the Georgia Female College. Alexander also was a successful businessman, either owning stock in or serving on the boards of railroads, banks, a telegraph company, an iron and coal company, and a gas light company. Alexander died in Macon on March 29, 1863.

1892 Physician Enoch Callaway, Jr. was born in LaGrange, Ga. He attended the University of Georgia (1909-12), obtained an M.D. from Tulane (1916), and concluded his formal education with a B.S. from LaGrange College (1945). Assuming a general practice in LaGrange, Callaway became an early crusader against cancer after losing two children to the disease. He set up the West Georgia Cancer Clinic, helped found Georgia's affiliate of the American Cancer Society, and fought to alert Georgians to the deadly disease. Callaway also was a proponent of curtailing medical costs and supporting proper and ethical medical treatment. He was a member of many medical boards, also serving one term as president of the Medical Association of Georgia. He died on Sept. 26, 1961 in LaGrange, Georgia.

1916 A major fire destroyed 32 city blocks in downtown Augusta, resulting in over $6 million in losses. Included in the 118 burned acres was the loss of 600 homes, six blocks of businesses, and 3,000 people left homeless. Remarkably, while there were numerous injuries, no one died as a result of the fire. Though many of the buildings eventually were replaced by new structures, many Augustans who lost their residences to the fire did not return -- instead relocating to the area known as the Hill.

1934 The first Masters golf championship began in Augusta, Georgia. Georgia's most famous golf championship was won three days later by Horton Smith.

1956 Despite expressing concern over the National Democratic Party's stand on civil rights, Georgia Democratic Party chairman John Sammons Bell (who had designed the newly adopted Georgia state flag) said he was "not in favor of a third party at the present time." His remarks came in response to a growing movement among southern Democrats for breaking from the national party.

1956 The Augusta Chronicle carried a large banner headline proclaiming that Camp Gordon had been redesignated Fort Gordon by the U.S. Army. During the Korean War, the facility had served as a training center, but by 1955 its training function had been deactivated and only the 95th Military Government Group was stationed at the camp. U.S. Senator Walter F. George had pushed for reactivation of the camp with a new mission (and it was he who personally called Chronicle publisher William Morris on Mar. 21 with news of the Army's decision) In March 1957, Fort Gordon was designated as a training center for Military Police and the Signal Corps, and by August had 20,000 officers and enlisted men, plus more than 2,500 civilian workers.

1978 Famed tight-rope walker Karl Wallenda fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Previously, Wallenda had distinguished himself in Georgia in the 1970s by walking across cables suspended above Tallulah Gorge and Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

1996 The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) announced that 135,000 tickets to Olympic events previously thought to be sold out would go on sale by telephone and over the Internet. The 1996 Summer Olympic Games were the first in which tickets were available via the Internet.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1735 Several miles southeast of Savannah was the small settlement of Thunderbolt. One of colonists living there was Joseph Hetherington, who on this day wrote James Oglethorpe:

". . . Our settlement is much altered for the better since Your Honour was there, for now we can almost go a-hunting, there is so much land cleared. I have got about twenty acres to my own share and all fenced in with a strong fence.I believe Mr. Lacy, his brother, and Mr. Bishop have each of them almost as much, so that if our lands had proved but good we might expect an immense crop this year. But Your Honour knows it's most of it pine barren except a little oak and hickory . . . . Our settlement is certainly a beautiful place and the pleasantest in all Georgia and has not wanted for any industry to make it so. . . . My rural life I like so well and the inclinations I have to the place, that I am as well satisfied as if I had five hundred [pounds] a year in England. . . ."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), Vol. I, pp. 138-139.

1739 In New Ebenezer, Salzburger minister John Martin Boltzius usually recorded the daily journal. However, he had just returned from a trip to Savannah, so his colleague Israel Christian Gronau was responsible for today's journal entry:

"In a place in the woods near to the town people found some hog hides and feet, which are a sign that the people who have absconded from Savannah or deserted from Oglethorpe's regiment have killed the two fat hogs that were lost from our town and have taken the meat with them. . . .

"Today, one of the German servants in our town expressed his great pleasure with this land and used this expression in particular: he would wish not have a finger left in Germany. This was a country well suited for industrious people, he said, and it is evident that some among our Salzburgers have already reaped more rewards from their labor than many in Germany who have lived there for 40 or 50 years. All his life he had toiled hard, yet had not earned enough to buy as much as a calf.

"Now that they have received their own land and thus been able to arrange their housekeeping and farming more suitably, our Salzburgers have only too well recognized the benefits they have received by being accepted into this colony.

"It is quite possible that, once it becomes known in Germany that German people can earn their bread here in this colony and enjoy it in peace and pleasure, just as many people will travel to this country as went in past years to Pennsylvania, where there is now no land to be had. . . ."

Source: George Fenwick Jones and Renate Wilson (trans. and ed.), Detailed Reports on Salzburger Emigrants Who Settled in America . . . Edited by Samuel Urlsperger, Vol. 6, 1739 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981), pp. 49-51.

January / February / March / April / May / June / July / August / September / October / November / December

If you have a date related to Georgia history or people that ought to be included, or if know of entries that should be corrected, send a note to Ed Jackson or Charly Pou.

Go to Yahoo/The History Channel This Day in History page for Mar. 22

Go to Georgia History page

Go to GeorgiaInfo table of contents