Ed Jackson and Charles Pou

The University of Georgia

September 1

1820 In Milledgeville, drawings began on a land lottery dispensing lands ceded by the Cherokees in Treaty of Washington on February 27, 1819.

1864 The Battle of Jonesboro continued all day until late into the night. Confederate forces fought bravely but were overwhelmed by superior Union numbers.

Confederate Brig. Gen. Daniel Govan and his Arkansas brigade were captured, and at one point Gen. William J. Hardee's entire corps was at risk. Darkness brought fighting to an end, and at 11 p.m. Hardee withdrew from the field. In the darkness, what was left of Hardee's corps marched through the night to Lovejoy's Station six miles to the south of Jonesboro. There, they wearily dug in to prepare for what would prove to be the final battle in Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. Meanwhile, the morning of September 1 had found Atlantans believing that the Confederates had won the previous day's battle at Jonesboro. However, some Confederate deserters arrived and told what really happened. Confusion reigned during the day, and no one seemed in charge. Groups of slaves began arriving, taking residence in abandoned houses and cellars. By 5 p.m., a full-scale evacuation of Atlanta was underway. Confederate supplies that could not be carried were distributed to city residents. Gen. Hood ordered Gen. Stephen Lee to take his corps to Lovejoy's Station to join Hardee's corps.

For more, see This Week in Georgia Civil War History.

1922 Frank DuPre became the last person hanged in Atlanta. In December 1921, the 19-year-old son of a blacksmith had killed a jewelry store security man while stealing a large diamond ring for his girlfriend. DuPre also seriously wounded Atlanta's city controller, who attempted to stop him from fleeing the scene. DuPre was subsequently apprehended in Detroit and returned to Atlanta, where he was tried and sentence to die. Approximately 5,000 people gathered outside the Fulton County jail to witness the hanging.

1941 In the Houston County community of Wellston, located south of Macon, groundbreaking ceremonies were held for construction of a new Army Air Corps depot in central Georgia.

Initially, the new aviation facility was known unofficially as the Georgia Air Depot.

Worker's Identification Badge Used During
Construction of the Georgia Air Depot

The facility actually had two names. The landing field was named "Robins Field" on Jan. 23, 1942, in honor of Brig. Gen. Augustine Warner Robins, who had died seven months earlier (see Sept. 1, 1942, entry below). The complex of buildings housing the depot was officially named "Wellston Air Depot" on March 14, 1942. After the community of Wellston changed its name to Warner Robins on Sept. 1, 1942, the depot became known as the Warner Robins Air Depot. Later, the depot and field commonly became known as Robins Air Force Base. By whatever name called, the facility considers September 1, 1941, as its founding date.

1942 The community of Wellston, Georgia, adopted a new name – Warner Robins – in honor of the late Brigadier General Augustine Warner Robins, who had been a friend and mentor of the new depot's commander, Col. Charles Thomas. Robins, born in 1882, graduated from West Point in 1907 and was assigned to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, where he served in the cavalry. In 1917, he left the cavalry for the Army Air Corps, where he became a pilot in 1918. In 1939, Robins became commandant of the Air Corps Training Center at Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas. It was here he died on June 16, 1940.

By an act of the General Assembly approved on March 5, 1943, the community of Warner Robins was incorporated as a municipality.

1946 Insurance executive and state government official Henri Talmadge Dobbs drowned while fishing on a lake on his farm near MacLand in Cobb County, Georgia. Born in Powder Springs in 1888, Dobbs entered the insurance industry as a file clerk in 1909 eventually rising through the ranks of what would become the Life Insurance Company of Georgia. In the early 1940s, Dobbs entered public service working on the staffs of two governors – including serving as Gov. Ellis Arnall's chief of staff. Dobbs also served on the Board of Public Welfare and the Georgia Merit System Council. The year before his death, he was named chairman of the State Board of Personnel Administration, which was responsible for administering Georgia's state merit system.

1949 The last Douglas C-54 transport planes arrived at Robins AFB on their way to West Germany to participate in the Berlin Airlift launched the previous year by Marietta-native Gen. Lucius Clay to bring food and supplies to the residents of West Berlin.

1992 After a day of campaigning in central Georgia, Vice President Dan Quayle flew out of Robins AFB on Air Force II.

2004 Georgia Democratic Senator Zell Miller spoke at the Republican National Convention, in support of the re-nomination and re-election of incumbent Republican President George W. Bush.

Miller's speech at the Republican Convention was a bit of political irony, as he had been a keynote speaker at the 1992 Democratic National Convention and co-chairman of the National Democratic Party's platform committee in 1996.

2008 Native Georgian Jerry Reed, noted for his guitar playing, singing, song writing, and acting, died in Nashville, Tennessee.

Georgia cities and towns incorporated by acts approved on Sept. 1:

1891 Rhine (Dodge County)

In Their Own Words on This Day. . .

1739 Georgia Trustees' secretary William Stephens recorded the destruction of a mill by flood waters:

"Saturday. Horses coming according to Appointment, we mounted very early, and got to the Mill about Seven, where we saw indeed a melancholy Wreck, and the Mill sunk away and fallen all to one side, but still held entire, though impossible to set to right again: From whence it appeared, that the Work was of sufficient Strength, as the Artificer had put it together; so was likewise the fore Bay, and the main Hatch-way, through which the spare Water was to be carried off, no Part of it that we could discover, giving way, or taking any Damage: But the flood was so strong, and spread so wide, that when it came, it covered the whole Ground near it, overflowing the whole Work, which was perfectly buried under Water, and those waters worked their Way from the Outside of the Work underneath the Mill, which occasioned its Ruin: For after it had once found Vent, thro' ever so small a Cranny, it soon made it larger, the Ground washing away apace, being of a loose, sandy Nature, so that Cavities were quickly made almost everywhere round it; the frame of the Whole yet holding together, after the greatest Part of the Foundation washed away and gone. . . ."

Source: William Stephens, A Journal of the Proceeding in Georgia ([no city cited] Readex Microprint Corporation, 1966), Vol. II, pp. 115-116.

1864 Atlanta merchant Samuel P. Richards recorded in his diary of the beginning of the evacuation of Atlanta following news of the Confederate loss in the Battle of Jonesboro:

"This was a day of terror and a sight of dread. About noon came the tidings of a severe fight on the Macon R.R. [Battle of Jonesboro] and that our forces were worsted and the city was to be evacuated at once. Then began a scramble among the inhabitants thereof to get away – others to procure supplies of food for their families. If there had been any doubt of the fact that Atlanta was about to be given up it would have been removed when we saw the depots of Government grain and food thrown open, and the contents distributed among the citizens free gratis, by the sackful and the cartload. The R.R. cars and engines were all run up to one place in order to be fired just as the army left. Five locomotives and 85 cars, Cousin Bill told me, were to be burned. . . . I went to the Macon depot with Mr. West and secured there sacks of meal. As we went down the Ammunition Train was fired, and for half an hour or more an incessant discharge was kept up that jarred the ground and broke the glass in the windows around. It was terrific to listen to and know the object. . . ."

Source: Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs: A Chronicle of Its People and Events (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1954), Vol. I, pp. 636-637.

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