Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

November 7

1793 George Mathews was sworn in as governor of Georgia. Born in Augusta County, Va. at an unknown date, he became a colonel in a Virginia regiment during the American Revolution, eventually serving under Gen. Nathanael Green. In 1785, he moved to Georgia, where he became active in politics. In 1793, the legislature elected him to a one-year term as governor--the first of three consecutive terms. Mathews died in Augusta on Aug. 30, 1812.

1801 Josiah Tattnall Jr. was elected Georgia governor by the General Assembly. Born near Savannah in 1764, Tattnall was involved in various militia units, eventually rising to the rank of brigadier general. He also served in the Georgia House of Representatives, where he helped fight for the repeal of the Yazoo Act in 1796. That same year, the legislature elected him to fill the unexpired U.S. Senate term of James Jackson, who had resigned. Tattnall served in the Senate until the end of the term in 1799 and briefly retired from politics. In 1801, the General Assembly elected him to a two-year term as governor. By the end of his term, Tattnall was ill and decided to go to Nassau for a change of climate. He died there on June 6, 1803. In December 1801, the legislature honored Tattnall by naming a new county for him.

1823 George M. Troup was sworn in as governor of Georgia. Born in McIntosh Bluff, Ga. (a site now in Alabama) on Sept. 8, 1780, Troup graduate from the College of New Jersey in 1797, after which he read law in Savannah. After being admitted to the bar, he became interested in politics and was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives (1801-03) and to the U.S. House of Representatives (1807-15). He served in the U.S. Senate (1816-18) before returning to Georgia. In 1823, the General Assembly elected Troup to a two-year term as governor. After passage of a constitutional amendment providing for popular election of the governor, Troup became Georgia's first governor elected by the voters in 1825. He returned to the U.S. Senate in 1829, but resigned in 1833 to take care of his personal estate. He died in Montgomery County on Apr. 26, 1856. Troup is remembered by a county named in his honor by the legislature in 1826.

1827 John Forsyth was sworn in as governor of Georgia. Born in Fredericksburg, Va. on Oct. 22, 1780, his family moved to Augusta, Georgia in 1785. Forsyth graduated from Princeton in 1799 and returned to Augusta to read law. Admitted to the bar in 1802, Forsyth became more interested in politics than law and embarked on an ambitious political career that included service as Georgia attorney general (1808-10), U.S. Representatives (1813-18 and 1823-27), U.S. Ambassador to Spain (1819-23), governor of Georgia (1823-27), U.S. Senator (1829-34), U.S. Secretary of State (1834-41). He died in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 21, 1841. In his honor, the General Assembly created Forsyth County in 1832 from lands formerly in the Cherokee Nation.

1860 On the day following the election of Lincoln as president, Gov. Joseph E. Brown addressed a joint session of the Georgia General Assembly and called for statewide convention to consider Georgia's future course of action -- a future which, in Brown's words, included "no more compromise."

1899 Noted educator Omer Clyde Aderhold was born in Lavonia, Georgia. He attended the University of Georgia, obtaining a bachelor's degree in 1923, subsequently serving as a teacher, principal, and superintendent of the nearby Jackson County school system. He returned to the University of Georgia to pursue a master's degree, which he earned in 1930. Prior to graduation, he joined the faculty of the University of Georgia as an associate professor. Subsequently, Aderhold earned his doctorate from Ohio State University in 1938. Returning to the University of Georgia, he eventually becoming dean of the College of Education in 1945. Five years later, Aderhold was named sixteenth president of the University of Georgia -- a position he would hold until his retirement in 1967.

Aderhold's accomplishments as University of Georgia president were many. He was influential in persuading the legislature to fund the Minimum Foundation Program for Education in Georgia, designed to finance Georgia public education on a continuing basis. At the University, Aderhold's tenure witnessed construction of a new science center, a research park, the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, additions to Stanford football stadium, a new athletic coliseum, and a golf course. Off campus, a 4-H conference center was built at Rock Eagle. Library holdings increased from 250,000 volumes to almost one million. Student enrollment more than doubled; the number of doctorate degrees conferred annually rose from none to 132; the number of master's degrees increased from 176 to over 500. Equally impressive was Aderhold's strong leadership through court ordered integration in 1961, in which he made sure the law was upheld in a comparatively peaceful manner. Aderhold remained active after retirement, serving as an officer or advisor on many academic committees and commissions. After his death in Athens on July 4, 1969, the University named the new home of the College of Education -- Aderhold Hall - in his honor.

1916 Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress. In 1925, she moved to Watkinsville, Ga., where she organized the Georgia Peace Society.

1964 The National League announced that Milwaukee Braves would be allowed to move to Atlanta in 1966. This would give the South a second major league baseball team--Houston, Texas, having been awarded the first franchise--the Houston Colt 45s (later Astros) several years earlier.

1972 Andrew Young was one of sixteen blacks elected to Congress. Young became the first black elected to Congress from the Deep South since the Reconstructioon period. He was also the second black Congressman to be elected from Georgia (the first being Jefferson Long, who was elected in 1870).

1978  Sam Nunn was elected to the U.S. Senate from Georgia.

1992 The Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame at Robins Air Force Base inducted five Georgia aviators at its annual induction banquet. The inductees were the late Manley L. "Sonny" Carter, Jacqueline Cochran, Belford D. Maule, Allen E. Paulson, and Collett Everman (C.E.) Woolman.

1997 Long-time Georgia Tech football announcer Al Ciraldo died at age 76. After graduating from the University of Florida, he came to Atlanta in 1949. Ciraldo's first job was broadcasting University of Georgia basketball games. In 1954, he joined the WGST radio and broadcast his first Georgia Tech football game, subsequently also announcing Tech basketball games. Ciraldo was the voice of the Yellow Jackets through the 1992-93 school year. He continued to host pre-game, halftime, and post-game shows.

2006 Republican Sonny Perdue won re-election as governor of Georgia, and for the first time in Georgia history a Republican - Casey Cagle - was elected lieutenant governor. For full results of the general election, click here.

2007 Several native Georgians were winners at the Country Music Association awards show in Nashville, TN. Sugarland won Vocal Duo of the Year in a surprise over long time winners Brooks & Dunn. CMA Hall of Fame member Bill Anderson won for co-writing the Song of the Year - "Give It Away" - performed by George Strait. Augusta, GA radio station WKXC won the award for small market radio station of the year.

Georgia cities and towns created by acts approved on Nov. 7:

1889 Coney (Dooly County) and DeSoto (Sumter County)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1797 Benjamin Hawkins, United States Indian agent south of the Ohio River, maintained his main post at Fort Wilkinson on the Georgia frontier. Here he dealt with a multitude of matters, some barely relating to the Indians at all, as the following deposition suggests:

"Joseph Thompson, an inhabitant of Tensaw, this day complained, on oath, before me that Zachariah McGirt, in the neighborhood of Tuckabatchee, did, as he believes, on or about July last, prevail on two negros, Munday and Nancy, . . . to leave his plantation and go into the Creek nation; and in proof of this belief he states that he had been informed that this McGirt had declared his intention of getting possession of these negros under pretense of having a claim to them. . . ."

Source: Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, Vol. IX, Letters of Benjamin Hawkins, 1796-1806 (Savannah: Georgia Historical Society, 1916), p. 219.

1868 Atlanta merchant Samuel P. Richards recorded in his diary:

"This has been an important week in the history of the Nation as its chief magistrate had been chosen for another term of four years. Tuesday was Election day and victory perched upon the Republican banner. Grant & Colfax are facts now taken for Granted. But old Georgia declared loudly for the Democrats, a large number of the negroes voting that ticket. I voted for Seymour & Blair, but I did not dread the success of Grant very much, so that I do not feel very much cast down. I hope that he may make a good President after all. What I dislike is to see so many favoring the unconstitutional acts and designs of the Radical Party."

Source: Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Its Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969 reprint of original 1954 volume), pp. 786-787.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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