Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

The University of Georgia

July 5

1737 Aboard the Blandford, James Oglethorpe sailed from England for Georgia accompanied by the man-of-war, Hector, and five transports carrying his newly authorized regiment that would be stationed on St. Simons Island.

1742 Manuel de Montiano, governor of Spanish Florida, used an incoming tide to sail his flotilla of 36 ships and 2,000 men past Fort St. Simon on the southern tip of St. Simons Island into the safety of the harbor out of reach of British cannons. Realizing the fort has been outflanked, Oglethorpe ordered his troops to spike the cannons. At midnight, they lowered the British flag and retreat under cover of darkness to Fort Frederica. The long-feared Spanish invasion of Georgia was now underway.

1864 Arriving at Roswell, Union Gen. Kenner Garrard's cavalry found the bridge across the Chattahoochee had been burned. Garrard then ordered his men to burn all mills and industrial buildings in Roswell. According to his report, one of the cotton mills destroyed had over $1 million in machinery and employed 400 workers.

1885 Mauney D. Collins, noted proponent of public education in the first half of the 20th century, was born in Union County, Georgia. He became state school superintendent in 1933 and headed the Georgia Department of Education for 25 years--longer than anyone in history. Under his leadership, Georgia public schools got a twelfth grade, school lunch program, rural school libraries, a teachers retirement system, increased vocational education, a nine-month school year, and many other progressive changes. M.D. Collins also is remembered for his motto, "Education does not cost--it pays."

1981 Ellis Merton Coulter, one of Georgia's most noted historians, died in Athens, Georgia. Born in North Carolina in 1890, he earned his undergraduate degree in history at the University of North Carolina, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin. Coulter came to the University of Georgia in 1919, where he became a full professor, department head, and regents professor before his retirement in 1958. Coulter's exclusive interests were the history of Georgia and of the South. During his lifetime, he produced numerous publications, but the most popular was his Georgia: A Short History.

1983 Trumpet great and big band leader Harry James died in Las Vegas. James was born March 15, 1916, in Albany, 

1985 The Atlanta Braves and New York Mets made baseball history when they play a game in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium that lasted over six hours (due to two rain delays). In the 19th inning, the Mets scored 5 runs to beat the Braves 16-13 in a game that ended at 3:55 a.m. Since the game began on July 4th, a promised fireworks show was held at 4 a.m. on the July 5th.

1986 Ted Turner's first Goodwill Games kicked off in Moscow.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1739 From Frederica, James Oglethorpe wrote the Earl of Egmont of his dismissal of a Col. Cochran, who apparently had been leading an uprising over Oglethorpe's discipline policy for his regiment:

". . . The mutinous and disorderly wretches who never knew what discipline was might hate them who expected service from them, but I believe no one was ever better beloved by their officers and the majority of the men than I am and, since Colonel Cochran's departure, there hath not been the least difference or uneasiness in the regiment."

Source, Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), Vol. II, p. 407.

1835 In a letter signed to L. and Matilda Parker and Henry and Rebecca Swann in Jackson County, Ga., to Louis Parker in Franklin County, evidence is found that the Great Revival was still active in Georgia:

". . . there is the greatis [sic] Revival of religion about Athens that ever has been witnessed at that place. . . ."

Source: Manuscript in the postal history collection of Ed Jackson.

1864 A Union sympathizer in Atlanta only known as "Miss Abby" wrote in her diary on this day:

"[Gen. Joseph E.] Johnston's army fell back to the river last night. 'Joe' is something of a nocturnal traveller. His headquarters are now on this side of the [Chattahoochee] river. It is reported that a force of the Union army are near Fairburn, endeavoring to cut the LaGrange road. Where the main army is, we have no means of knowing.

"A young man was telling me today of an incident he witnessed in some of the recent engagements. The Federals were charging a battery, and the color bearer was shot. Before he fell, another soldier rushed up and caught the flag, but soon shared the fate of his comrade. Another brave boy snatched the banner from the falling, dying man, who yet held it erect, and he, too, was killed. The stars-and-stripes did not fall until it fell with the seventh brave man. The young man relating this incident is in the Confederate army. 'Oh,' he said, 'when that old flag went down at last by the side of those brave men, I almost forgot where I was. I could not see for the smoke and dust -- or something else.' I felt that war, fearful and bloody, was each hour coming nearer."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Georgia: History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), pp. 169-170.

1915 From Chicago, a friend identified only as "Alfred" wrote Leo Frank in prison in Georgia:

"Now, Leo, I certainly agree with you on Slaton and am duly thankful for the nerve and decency he displayed, but if the interview he gave in New York, to the effect that he would have liberated you, had your petitions asked for that, is true, then I can't help but feel sore over the fact the petition only asked for commutation to life imprisonment. . . .

". . . By the way, a friend of mine, Mr. Magie of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., asserts that, having lived in the South almost thirty years, he would undertake to make Conley tell the truth and so bring about your liberation; I suppose he would use the snake-bag and the dead men's knuckle we have all read about in fiction. I rather thank that some of these fine days one of the 'right guys" who helped to frame the story Conley told, will be dying and confess the part he had in the conspiracy. . . ."

Source: Letter in the Leo Frank manuscript collection of the Atlanta History Center.