Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

The University of Georgia

March 12

1734 After their ship had grounded on a sand bar in the mouth of the Savannah River the previous day, the first group of German Salzburgers finally reached Savannah. The entire town turned out to watch their arrival, and several cannon were fired to salute Georgia's newest colonists.

1739 James Oglethorpe wrote the Trustees in opposition to a petition being circulated in Savannah asking the Trustees to revoke their ban on slaves on the grounds that white men could not work in Georgia.

In his letter, Oglethorpe noted: "This Assertion I can disprove by hundreds of Witnesses, all the Salzburgers, the people of Darien, many at Frederica, and Savannah and all the Industrious in the Province. The idle ones are indeed for Negroes." Oglethorpe urged fellow Trustees to remain firm on the ban, predicting the ruin of the colony if it was lifted.

1823 Educator and Confederate general William Flank Perry was born in Jackson County, Ga. He later became a teacher, school superintendent, and college professor. In 1862, Perry joined the 44th Alabama as a private. Subsequently, he was appointed major and served at the Battle of Second Manassas. By the Battle of Sharpsburg, he was a lieutenant colonel. In Sept. 1862, Perry was promoted to full colonel and served at the battles of Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. He commanded Laws' Brigade in Field's Division at the Battle of Petersburg. In February 1865, Perry was promoted to brigadier general and served at Appomattox.

After the war, he became a planter, as well as teacher and college professor. Perry died on Dec. 18, 1901 in Bowling Green, Ky.

1866 Gov. Charles Jones Jenkins signed legislation extending Atlanta's city limits to everything within a mile and a half radius from the passenger depot. The 1847 act incorporating Atlanta had set the limits at a mile from the depot established at zero-point milepost on the Western & Atlantic Railroad.

1888 African-American choral director Hall Johnson was born in Athens, Ga. In 1925, he organized the Hall Johnson Choir and went on gain fame for his musical arrangements. He is probably best remembered for directing the chorus in the 1930 Broadway play, "The Green Pastures" -- repeated on film in 1936.

1898 The city of Atlanta accepted George Gress' gift of the Cyclorama painting of the Battle of Atlanta. The gift was conditioned on city officials making repairs to the circular wooden building in which the painting was housed in Grant Park, and on the city funding repairs to the giant canvas (which was 50 feet in height and 400 feet in circumference). Repairs were made to the building, which served as the Cyclorama's home until a new marble building was completed in 1921 (where it has been housed since).

1912 The Girl Scout movement was founded in America when 18 girls held their first meeting at the home of Juliette Gordon Low in Savannah and were organized into the first troop of Girl Guides (which the following year was renamed Girl Scouts). Low's niece -- Daisy Gordon Lawrence -- was the first member.

1929 Cola-Cola executive and noted philanthropist Asa Griggs Candler died in Atlanta. He was buried in Westview Cemetery.

See Dec. 30 entry for biographical information on Candler.

1932 Civil rights leader, politician, and diplomat Andrew Young was born in New Orleans, La. Upon graduating from Howard University and becoming a minister, Young was drawn into the civil rights movement. He was an active participant with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in leading voter registration drives, and worked closely with most of the other civil rights leaders, such as Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Young was with King in Memphis when King was assassinated (and is one of the persons in the famous photograph pointing to where the shot came from). Young was elected to the U.S House of Representatives from Georgia in 1972, and was subsequently reelected twice. In 1977, Pres. Jimmy Carter appointed Young as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He served with the U.N until 1979.

In 1981 Young was elected mayor of Atlanta for the first of two consecutive terms - lasting through 1989.

Young was influential in the drive that won for Atlanta the honor of hosting the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.

1937 President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrived in Warm Springs, Ga. for his thirty-first visit to his "second home."

1956 Former Atlanta Braves great Dale Murphy was born in Portland, Oregon.

1981 Timothy Hill disappeared in Atlanta; later in the month his strangled body was discovered in the Chattahoochee River. He was the latest victim in the Atlanta Child Murders case.

1990 Georgia-born Clarence Thomas took the oath of office for the District of Columbia Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

1993 A surprise winter storm -- called by some the "storm of the century" -- struck middle Georgia. The storm produced blizzard conditions and gale force winds, forcing airports to close throughout the eastern U.S.

1996 Two Georgia swimmers qualified for the 1996 U.S. Summer Olympic team -- Angel Martino, from Americus, in the 50-meter freestyle, and Carlton Bruner, of Dunwoody, in the 1500-meter freestyle.
 
 2007 Athens band R.E.M. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1733 Six weeks after arriving in Georgia, James Oglethorpe wrote the Trustees that the Yamacraw Indians had concluded a peace treaty with him giving English colonists rights to settle at Yamacraw Bluff and other lands not reserved to the Indians. Oglethorpe further noted that he had drawn on the Trustees account for £400, and that he personally had paid the remainder. Thus began his practice of using personal funds to support the colony when sufficient Trustees funds weren't available. Ultimately, Oglethorpe would mortgage his entire estate back in Surrey on behalf of Georgia:

"I have been obliged to make many expenses here. The rice given by the [South Carolina] Assembly not being near sufficient, I was forced to buy a considerable quantity of provisions as also to make up the arms which was burnt in the fire and also the tools, many of which were so bad as to be useless, besides which I have thought it necessary to make several expenses in gift to the Indians for intelligence, rewards for taking outlaws, and spies. . . ."

"I have drawn upon you for £400, part of which I have paid and the rest I have by me. . . .

"There are in Georgia on this side of the mountains three considerable Nations of Indians, one called the Lower Creeks consisting of nine towns or rather cantons making about 1000 men able to bear arms. One of these is within half a mile of us and has concluded a peace with us giving up their right to all this part of the country, and I have marked out the lands which they have reserved to themselves. The king [Tomochichi] comes constantly to church and is desirous to be instructed in the Christian religion and has given to me his nephew, a boy who is his next heir to educate.

"Our people still lie in tents, there being only two clapboard houses built and three sawed houses framed, our crane, our battery of cannon and magazine finished. This is all we have been able to do by reason of the smallness of our number, of which many have been sick and others unused to labour, though thank God they are now pretty well and we have not lost one soul since our arrival here. . . ."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), Vol. I, pp. 7-8.

1733 Another letter written on was from Savannah was by Thomas Causton. Writing to his wife in England, Causton described the status of Savannah:

". . . We are, according to a plan directed to be drawn by Mr. Oglethorpe as I mentioned in my last [letter], building the town, have got up three houses, are planting and sowing, and have sowed about ten acres in all of different kinds of seeds. The houses are made of timber of one floor, only a cock loft over it sufficient to hold two beds, the lower part will make one large room and two small ones and stands in a piece of ground which with the intended garden is 20 yards broad in front and 30 years long in depth. . . .

"As to our government we are divided into four tythings, each maintaining eleven men able to bear arms, of which one is Tythingman. I am one of them and according with my ten other men keep guard every fourth night. Our situation is indeed very pleasant, and though we want for nothing we have some grumbletonians here also.

". . . we are much pestered with a little fly they call a sand fly. I have seen it in England about the horse dung. But every insect here is stronger than in England. The ants are half an inch long and they say will bite desperately. As for alligators I have seen several but they are by the sides of rivers. Our town is too high ground for them to clamber up. We have killed one. I find the camphor very good against the stings of the flies. I now begin to be somewhat hardened against them. . . ."

Source: Mills Lane (ed.), General Oglethorpe's Georgia: Colonial Letters, 1733-1743 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1990), Vol. I, pp. 10-11.

1734 After spending much of the previous day stranded on a sand bar, Baron von Reck recorded the landing of the Salzburger emigrants in Georgia, and his first impressions of Savannah:

"The Magistrates of the Town sent on Board our Ship an experienced Pilot; and we were carried up to the Town of Savannah by 11 in the Forenoon. They returned our salute of five Guns with three; and all the Magistrates, the Citizens, and the Indians, were come to the River side. The two Divines, Mr. Dunbar, some others, and myself, went ashore in a Boat. We were received with all possible Demonstrations of Joy, Friendship, and Civility. The Indians reach'd their Hands to me, as a Testimony of their Joy also for our arrival. The Salzburgers came on shore after us; and we immediately pitch'd a Tent for them, in the Square of the Town. I went to view this rising Town, Savannah, seated upon the Banks of a River of the same Name. The Town is regularly laid out divided into four Wards, in each of which is left a spacious Square, for holding of Markets, and other publick Uses. The Streets are straight, and the Houses are all of the same Model and Dimensions, and well contrived for Conveniency. . . . There is laid out, near the Town, by Order of the Trustees, a Garden for making Experiments, for the Improving Botany and Agriculture; it contains 10 acres, and lies upon the River; and it is cleared, and brought into such Order, that there is already, a fine nursery of Oranges, Olives, white Mulberries, Figs, Peaches, and many curious Herbs: besides which, there is Cabbages, Peas, and other European Pulse and Plants, which all thrive. Within the garden there is an artificial Hill, said by the Indians, to be raised over the body of one of their ancient Emperors. I had like to have forgot one of the best Regulations, made by the Trustees, for the Government of the Town of Savannah, I mean, the utter prohibition of the Use of Rum, that flattering but deceitful Liquor, which has been found equally pernicious to the Natives and new Comers, which seldom fails, by Sickness, or Death, to draw after its own Punishment."

Source: [no author or editor cited]: Our First Visit in America: Early Reports from the Colony of Georgia, 1732-1740 (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1974), pp. 46-47.

1772 Writing to royal governor James Wright (then in London) Savannah merchant Joseph Habersham wrote of the growing popularity in the assembly of those opposed to British policies. Habersham himself had not yet joined the revolutionary bandwagon:

". . . Last Monday the 9th The Election for this Town was held, when the former representatives were chosen, without the least opposition, only 19 Votes were given, and from the quiet appearance, as I am told throughout the Town, A Man must have been at some Pains to know, that such a Transaction was on Foot. It is said the Opposition was surprised, that none were made, and doubtless, they had room for many Conjectures. Had any opposition been made, its my opinion, that many of those, who formerly voted for the present Members would have designedly not appeared, as I am persuaded, that many of these poor People begin to suspect, that they have been made Cats-Paws to carry on the sinister Views of a few designing Men. But it will take time to eradicate the Prejudices, that they have imbibed, and has been so industriously propogated among them for 7 years past. . . ."

Source: Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, Vol. VI, The Letters of the Hon. James Habersham, 1756-1775 (Savannah: Georgia Historical Society, 1904), pp. 168-169.