Ed Jackson and Charly Pou

Carl Vinson Institute of Government

The University of Georgia

September 7

1752 Officially, this day did not exist in Georgia. See Sept. 3 entry for reason.

1881 Macon-born poet Sidney Lanier died in Lynn, North Carolina. A year after graduating from Oglethorpe University, Lanier joined the Macon Volunteers in the spring of 1861. He was captured in 1864 and imprisoned in a Union prison in Maryland, where he contacted a lung disease. After the war, Lanier had a series of jobs, during which time he began writing novels and poems. His best works were written in 1869 and afterwards. Some, such as "Thar's More in the Man Than Thar Is in the Land," were written in rural Georgia dialect, while others such as "The Marshes of Glynn" were more serious in nature. As his health continued to deteriorate, Lanier traveled to the mountains of North Carolina, where he died of tuberculosis on Sept. 7, 1881.

1864 Gen. Sherman sent a letter to Confederate commanding general John Bell Hood stating that he was willing to provide transportation to Atlanta residents to leave the city, because "Atlanta is no place for families and non-combatants . . . ."

1923 Golfing-great Louise Suggs was born in Atlanta. During her career in the Ladies' Professional Golfers' Association (LPGA), she won 50 tournaments between 1949 and 1962 additionally serving as LPGA president twice.

1944 Marietta's Bell bomber plant announced it was going to a 54-hour work week to meet the wartime needs for B-29s.

1954 Former University of Georgia football coach Glenn "Pop" Warner died at age 83 in Palo Alto, California.

1972 Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" album went gold.

1977 In Washington, D.C., President Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos signed the Panama Canal Treaty in which the U.S. agreed to eventually turn over control of the canal to Panama.

1985 The U.S. Corps of Army Engineers dedicated Lake Richard B. Russell -- Georgia's newest lake, which is located between Lake Hartwell to the north and Lake Strom Thurmond (Clarks Hill) to the south.

1997 The U.S.S. Louisiana Trident nuclear missile submarine was commissioned at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, making it the tenth Trident submarine at Kings Bay and the Navy's final Trident submarine. The 560-foot-long submarine, larger than any of its predecessors, and was given the motto "they saved the best for last" by its crew.

Georgia cities and towns incorporated by acts approved on Sept. 7:

1891 Martin (Franklin)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1742 Despite the victory over the Spanish invasion force on St. Simons Island, some Georgia colonists still were complaining about the Trustee policies on slavery and land ownership. One of these was John Fallowfield, who from Charles Town wrote the Trustees on this day:

"I believe it may be said your colony is coming to a conclusion after these wars, but it is not the wars that frightened me with many others, for we stayed 'till the danger was over, near a month after. Your President [William Stephens] who was Colonel of the militia kept no guard in the greatest time of danger. He seemed to be quite dispirited, so that he sent the money away and secured a pilot and told him he should go along with the cash and partake with him and kept his horse always ready saddled . . . . Such management among them never was the like, the particulars would be too tedious to relate. I shall only tell you it's impossible for Courts to be held in Savannah, so many of the principal persons left the colony because they could live no longer in it, according to your unwholesome constitution. I am now here [Charles Town] and all that I have to repent of is my obstinacy of continuing so long at Georgia and am severely reflected on by my friends who advised me from going at all."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), Vol. II, pp. 647-648.

1864 Sherman's Atlanta Campaign took on a particular significance to John Banks of Columbus. He had seven sons to serve in the Confederate infantry companies from Georgia. Three sons were killed before the fall of Atlanta. This left four sons in Hood's army. On this day, Banks recorded in his journal the fall of Atlanta and the retreat of his four sons:

"Important events since I last made entries in my diary. Atlanta has been besieged by Sherman, the commander of the Yankee Army, for many weeks. Hood, the Confederate commander, evacuated the place at night of the 1st. Some fighting before the evacuation in which the Confederates were defeated and many killed and wounded on both sides. The retreat was successful via McDonough to Griffin, where our army now is. George, Sims, Gilmer and Elbert were in the retreat. This defeat has changed our prospects and makes this a dark day of the war. We have had considerable fighting about Petersburg, Va. We sustain ourselves better at all points than in Georgia."

Source: John Banks, Autobiography of John Banks, 1797 - 1870 (Austell, Ga.: privately printed by Elberta Leonard, 1936), p. 34.

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© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia

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.

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