Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

The University of Georgia

July 26

1827 Meeting at New Echota near present-day Calhoun, Ga., representatives of the Cherokee Nation adopted a national constitution patterned after that of the United States and made New Echota the national capital. At the time, the Cherokee Nation consisted of areas of northern Georgia and Alabama, southern Tennessee, and western North Carolina.

1864 Four days after Gen. McPherson's death, Sherman named Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard to succeed McPherson as commanding general of the Union's Army of the Tennessee. Sherman then had the Army of the Tennessee, led by the 16th Corps, begin shifting to the west of Atlanta. His objective was to destroy the rail line jointly used by the Atlanta & West Point and the Macon & Western to enter Atlanta from the south.

1882 Social activist and union organizer Lucy Randolph Mason was born in Clarens, Virginia. Her early years were devoted to such issues as women's suffrage, child labor, and workers' wages and job conditions. In the 1930s, she came to the South to organize textile mills and other manufacturing plants for the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 1937, Mason moved to Atlanta, where she continued to promote the labor movement until her retirement in 1951. She died in Atlanta in 1959.

1908 Gov. Hoke Smith signed a joint resolution of the Georgia General Assembly creating a legislative committee to investigate Georgia's convict lease system, the state prison farm, and the Georgia State Reformatory.

1913 Prosecuting and defense attorneys spent the day making final preparations for the murder trial of Leo Frank, which was set to begin July 28. Other attorneys interviewed by the Atlanta Constitution predicted this would be the "greatest legal battle of Southern history." Click here for a detailed accounting of the case.

1922 The American Hellenic Educational Progressive Assocation, largest Greek-American organization in the United States, was founded in Atlanta.

1996 This was the eighth day of the 1996 Summer Olympics -- and day 7 of Olympic competition. 

1997 Celebrated folk artist Mattie Lou O'Kelley died in Atlanta at age 89. Born March 30, 1908, in Maysville, Georgia, O'Kelley was the seventh of eight children. She grew up on the family's 129-acre farm, which raised cotton, corn, and hay. As a girl, she learned to can vegetables, sew quilts, and do the various chores expected of children on farms. Later, she would portray scenes of her childhood in the primitive painting style for which she became nationally famous. With only a ninth-grade education, O'Kelley worked as a seamstress, school cafeteria cook, and a mill worker before being forced to retire at age 50.

Four years later, she decided to take up painting as a hobby. As a self-taught artist, she began painting scenes she recalled from her childhood in Banks County. Her style was simple though full of color and detail. Five collections of her paintings were published, and one of her paintings was used on the cover of the June 1980 issue Life magazine. Perhaps her most important work is the 1983 collected series, From the Hills of Georgia: An Autobiography in Paintings. Among the paintings in this collection are "Cotton Ginning Time" and "Lillie's Pound Supper." Characteristic of her style, both are full of action and show scenes from rural life in Georgia as observed by a young child. American art experts have rated O'Kelley as one of this country's major artists. As one noted authority observed: "Her art will be collected, avidly collected, respected and exhibited for as long as there is an America."

1998 Former Dodger pitching great Don Sutton was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Sutton, who played professional ball from 1966 to 1988 won 324 games during his career. When asked what his favorite park to pitch in was, he replied Atlanta -- "because I don't remember losing very much here." In 1989, Sutton returned to Atlanta as a member of the Atlanta Braves' announcing team and today lives in Roswell, Ga. [Click here for more information on Sutton.]

Georgia cities and towns first incorporated by acts approved on July 26:

1889 Colquitt (Miller County)

1904 Westminster (Fulton County)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1736 John Wesley recorded a harrowing experience he and his brother endured:

"My Brother [Charles] and I set out for Charles-Town, in order to begin his embarking for England. But the Wind being contrary, we did not reach Port-Royal, 40 miles from Savannah, till Wedn. evening. The next morning we left it. But the Wind was so high in the Afternoon, as we were crossing the neck of St. Helena's Sound, that our oldest sailor cry'd out, 'Now everyone must take Care for himself.' I told him, 'God would take Care of us all.' Almost as soon as the Words were spoken, the Mast fell. I kept on the Edge of the Boat, to be clear of her when she sunk, (which we expected every Moment) tho' with little Prospect of swimming to Shore, against such a Wind and Sea. But How is it that thou hadst no Faith? The Moment the Mast fell, two Men caught it and pull'd it into the Boat; the other three rowed with all their Might, and God gave Command to the Winds and Seas, so that in an Hour we were safe on Land."

Source: [no author or editor cited], Our First Visit in America: Early Reports from the Colony of Georgia, 1732-1740 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1974), p. 209.

1862 From Gilmer County, W. W. Findley wrote Georgia Gov. Joseph E. Brown about lawless actions of a group of Confederate draft dodgers in that area:

"According to the wish of the people of this section of the country of Gilmer County, I have been solicited to communicate some facts of what is going on in the section of Georgia. There has been for some weeks pasts great uneasiness suffer[ed] by the citizens of this portion of the country on account of the Tories and traitors who have taken up their abode in the mountains in this section of the county. These men have been robbing the soldiers' wives of our country. They are a-killing the stock of this country all up. There has been seventy or eight seen together in company. They have [ . . . ] sent out spies into the country to reconoiter [sic] for them. They have come to the settlements and burnt up our soldiers' wives' houses and threatened their lives, if molested. They all are well armed men. Some horsemen is with them. They are killing and destroying the beef cattle all up in the mountains and in some instances have come to the pastures of citizens and killed all of their cattle nearly and taken off what they could carry, leaving the rest for the buzzard fowls. These men are [ones] who [would] have to go to war under the conscript act and have fled to the mountains. Some of our own citizens is among them. And the citizens is compelled to bear their outrages without help from some source. the soldiers taken nearly all of our guns off to war, leaving us without anything to protect ourself with, and the people of this country prays assistance from your hand."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Georgia: History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), p. 157.