Historic Markers in Georgia

Columbus, GA

Buried 200 feet east is Thomas Wiggins (1843-1908), the astonishing musician the world knew as "Blind Tom." Born enslaved on the Bethune family's land near Columbus, the blind child revealed a genius for reproducing on the piano any sound he heard, from classical works to birdsong. He toured America and Europe, performing even before royalty at the height of his fame.

Bulloch County, GA

Organized in 1804 by the Rev. Lewis Mayers, New Hope was Bulloch County's second Methodist church, gathered on the young Georgia frontier by a handful of trustees and lay leaders. Its members kept the Burke and Ohoopee Circuit records — the oldest in South Georgia — and sent several of their own into the Methodist itinerant ministry. Two centuries on, the congregation still carries that early leadership forward.

Marietta, GA

Built in 1916 by Marietta's Glover Machine Works, this steam locomotive was sold to a Virginia firm to haul lumber before the company reacquired it in 1921. Restored in 1992, it stands as a survivor of Georgia's early industrial age. Glover Machine Works, begun in 1848, remains a family enterprise into its sixth generation and is counted the oldest family-owned manufacturer in the state.

Savannah, GA

This memorial stands in Savannah, the coastal Georgia city that sent thousands of its sons to fight in World War II, a conflict that pulled ordinary Chatham County men into battlefields across Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa between 1941 and 1945. Titled "A World Apart," it honors those who never came home — the local cost of a global war fought to halt fascist aggression and defend the freedom of the United States. Coastal Georgia itself was on a wartime footing in these years, with nearby shipyards, airfields, and the ever-present threat of enemy submarines just offshore.

Atlanta, GA

Thirteen Atlanta physicians founded the Brotherhood of Physicians in 1854, an organization that grew through decades of name and location changes into the Fulton County Medical Society. In 1941 the society dedicated this elegant Neoclassical building, designed by Philip T. Shutze and R. Kennon Perry, as its Academy of Medicine. Its members drove advances in treating pellagra, hookworm, tuberculosis, and other diseases that plagued the South.

Madison, GA

When Madison incorporated two women's colleges in 1850 — the Baptist Georgia Female College and the Methodist Madison Female College — the town became one of the antebellum South's notable centers of female education. This building opened the Georgia Female College's first session with 148 pupils and later served as the president's house. A diverse curriculum drew young women from as far as Philadelphia, until the Civil War turned the facilities into hospitals and private education never recovered its former standing.

Bulloch County, GA

Around 1883 Green Barnes dammed the headwaters of Mill Creek to create a 300-acre pond, and the property soon passed to his son-in-law Welcome Amos Akins. Akins built a mill house in 1907 and, powered by a great water turbine, ran a grist mill, cotton gin, and sawmill; a one-ton millstone ground corn on Tuesdays and Saturdays while the gin cleaned bales of short- and long-staple Sea Island cotton. The pond doubled as a swimming hole and baptism site, and its 1910 pavilion — lit by one of the area's first Delco plants — drew dances and public gatherings until milling ended in the 1940s.

Marietta, GA

In the mid-19th century, Cobb County was farm country, and it was on one of its farms that Alexander Stephens Clay was born in 1853. He read law, made his name in Georgia politics, and rose through the state legislature before Georgia sent him to the United States Senate, where he served from the late 1890s until his death in 1910. His life traced the arc of the New South era, when a generation of Southern lawyers-turned-statesmen worked to steer their region's rebuilding and its place in a reunited nation.

Culloden, GA

Born in Culloden, Georgia in 1899, Alfred Blalock rose to become one of the century's great surgeons. His research on traumatic shock saved countless lives during World War II, and on November 29, 1944 he performed the first 'blue baby' operation, a breakthrough that opened the era of modern heart surgery. As chairman of surgery at Johns Hopkins he trained a generation of leading surgeons — the achievement he prized above all his honors.

Atlanta, GA

Alpha Delta Pi was founded on May 15, 1851 at Wesleyan College in Macon — the first educational institution to grant an academic degree to a woman — making it the first secret society in the world for college women and the mother of the social sorority system. From that Georgia beginning the organization spread to campuses across the United States and Canada. This Atlanta building, dedicated in 1955, serves as its Memorial Headquarters honoring the founding.

Athens, GA

In 1891 twelve Athens women gathered in the home of Mrs. E.K. Lumpkin and founded the Ladies Garden Club, with Mrs. Lamar Cobb as its first president. What began as a small neighborhood group opened to all interested Athens women, mounted its first flower and vegetable exhibition in 1892, and drew up professional show standards by 1894. In 1936 the National Council of State Garden Clubs recognized it as America's first garden club.

Americus, GA

Opened in 1923 and funded largely by Dr. W.S. Prather, the Americus Colored Hospital was one of the earliest hospitals in southwest Georgia devoted to the care of African Americans. In an era when segregation barred Black physicians, nurses, and pharmacists from most Southern hospitals, it opened its practice to doctors of all races. Despite chronic financial troubles it served the community until Sumter Regional Hospital was built under the Hill-Burton Act in 1953.

Bartow County, GA

In the autumn of 1864, as Sherman's armies pressed through north Georgia, Confederate troops under General Samuel G. French stormed the Union-held gap at Allatoona Pass on October 5, trying to sever the railroad that fed the Federal advance. The fighting was close and brutal, and among the fallen was a soldier whose name was never recorded. For generations afterward, Southerners made their way to this solitary hillside grave to honor him.

Andersonville, GA

Incorporated in 1853 as a small farming village, Andersonville was thrust into history when Camp Sumter prison opened here in 1864 and its commandant, Capt. Henry Wirz, was tried and executed for the suffering of Union prisoners. Amid that misery, the Irish priest Father Peter Whelan — himself a former prisoner of war — came in June 1864 and tended the stockade's prisoners daily for four months, remembered by Union and Confederate men alike as a 'Good Samaritan.' The town today calls itself a 'Civil War Village,' honoring the dead of both sides.

Cuthbert, GA

Founded at Cuthbert in January 1854, Andrew College was named for Bishop James O. Andrew, whose refusal to free his wife's slaves helped split the Methodist Episcopal Church North and South in 1844. Led first by Yale-educated Augustus Alden, it was the second college chartered to confer degrees on women and served as a Confederate hospital in 1863–65. In 1867 it became the first women's college in the South to include physical education in its curriculum.

Madison, GA

As cotton plantations spread across Morgan County in the early 1800s, the town of Madison became a social and commercial hub where planters shopped, worshipped, and built fashionable in-town residences. Their grand Greek Revival homes advertised both new wealth and the stark reality of a slave-based plantation economy that had displaced the region's earlier yeoman farmers. Landmarks like the Johnston-Jones-Manley House—later preserved as the house museum Heritage Hall—still trace that antebellum transformation.

Morgan County, GA

Founded in a primitive log cabin in September 1809, Antioch Baptist Church grew quickly on the Georgia frontier, soon erecting a large meetinghouse. In 1827 it hosted a session of the Ocmulgee Association drawing some 4,000 people, and a sermon by its minister, Dr. Adiel Sherwood, sparked a revival that reportedly swept 22 counties and brought thousands of converts. The congregation moved to its present site in 1845.

Stewart County, GA

Built in the 1850s and run by the Antioch Primitive Baptist Church, this schoolhouse passed to Stewart County in 1895 and served the Louvale community for decades—first as a high school until 1928, then as an elementary school until 1942. It survives today as the Louvale Community House and home of a Sacred Harp singing school. The building marks the long arc of rural Southern education from church academy to public school.

Gilmer County, GA

Stretching roughly 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine, the Appalachian Trail was one of the boldest ideas of early American conservation—a continuous footpath along the spine of the eastern mountains, first proposed in the 1920s and stitched together largely by volunteer hiking clubs. The Georgia Appalachian Trail Club, formed in 1930, cut and blazed the trail's southern reaches through these Blue Ridge highlands, and the full path was completed in 1937. A plaque like this one marks not a battle or a birthplace but a shared act of stewardship: ordinary walkers building a wilderness corridor by hand.

Cairo, GA

This retired U.S. Army helicopter stands as a static-display memorial in Cairo, Georgia, dedicated simply 'in honor of our troops.' Aircraft like it were mounted in parks and town squares across the country to honor local men and women who served. With no single war named, it speaks to military service broadly rather than to one campaign.

Dallas, GA

In late May 1864, Gen. James McPherson's Army of the Tennessee swung west through Van Wert and crossed Pumpkin Vine Creek as part of Sherman's drive on Atlanta. On May 26 the 15th and 16th Corps converged on Dallas, entering the town by early afternoon before pushing east against opposing Confederate cavalry. The maneuver was part of the wider flanking campaign that repeatedly turned Joseph Johnston's defensive positions.

Augusta, GA

Across four Masters Tournaments between 1958 and 1964, Arnold Palmer authored a run of charging finishes that made him the event's first four-time champion. His bold, go-for-broke play and magnetic charm drew huge, devoted galleries—"Arnie's Army"—and helped turn golf into a television-age spectator sport.

Twiggs County, GA

Arthur Fort (1750–1833) came to Georgia as a boy from North Carolina and served as a lieutenant in the Revolutionary War, sitting on the Council of Safety during the conflict's darkest days. As a Wilkinson County legislator, he introduced the bill that created Twiggs County in 1809, then settled and died there. This marker honors the founding public servant near his burial place in the Bullard community.

McIntosh County, GA

Built around 1820, Ashantilly was the mainland home of Thomas Spalding (1774–1851), a prominent antebellum planter whose principal estate lay on nearby Sapelo Island. Likely constructed by Spalding's enslaved workers, the house was made of tabby—a coastal building material of oyster shell, sand, lime, and water—and named for his family's ancestral home in Scotland. In the 20th century it became the home of the Ashantilly Press before being donated as a cultural center in 1993.

Athens, GA

Established in 1916–1917 and accredited in 1922, Athens High and Industrial School was Georgia's first four-year public high school for African-American students, growing out of the earlier Reese Street School. It offered a rigorous curriculum—Latin, Greek, literature, chemistry, physics—alongside evening industrial classes for adults, under longtime principal Samuel F. Harris. In 1933 it moved to the former site of the Knox Institute, founded by the Freedmen's Bureau in 1868.

Bartow County, GA

On May 19, 1864, Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston entrenched on the ridge east of this spot near Cassville, intending to give battle to Sherman's advancing armies. When Sherman threatened his flank and his corps commanders objected to the position, Johnston instead withdrew to the strong defenses at Allatoona Pass. Rather than assault it, Sherman again slipped around, moving toward New Hope Church.

Gordon County, GA

On May 13–15, 1864, the opening major clash of the Atlanta Campaign unfolded near Resaca, where Confederate lines north and west of town held firm against Federal attacks. Unable to break the position by assault, Sherman executed a flanking movement to the west and south that rendered Johnston's line untenable. The Confederates were compelled to fall back deeper into Georgia, setting the campaign's pattern.

Atlanta, GA

Organized on November 11, 1895, the Atlanta Woman's Club grew out of a General Federation of Women's Clubs gathering held during the Cotton States and International Exposition. Under founding president Rebecca Douglas Lowe, the club pursued a "threefold" mission—social, literary, and humanitarian—and in 1896 it hosted the meeting that formed the Georgia State Federation of women's clubs. After years of meeting in members' homes and rented halls, it bought its lasting clubhouse in 1919.

Jonesboro, GA

When Gen. John Bell Hood tried to protect Atlanta's last open railroad, the fighting at Jonesboro on August 31 and September 1, 1864, decided the city's fate. On August 31, the corps of Hardee and S.D. Lee attacked the entrenched Federal 15th Corps between the town and the Flint River. Lee's three divisions struck the Union line at the river but, lacking support on their left, were driven back.

Atlanta, GA

During the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864, Confederate divisions under Gen. George Maney and Gen. Patrick Cleburne struck the front and rear of Giles Smith's Union division on the Flat Shoals Road, forcing it back to Leggett's Hill. Aided by Stevenson's division from the city fortifications, the Confederates hammered the 17th Corps from front, flank, and rear. Despite repeated assaults, they failed to dislodge the entrenched Union defenders.

Attapulgus, GA

Attapulgite is a rare form of Fuller's Earth clay found in the United States only in Decatur County, Georgia, and neighboring Gadsden County, Florida (with deposits also in Spain, Russia, and China). Prized because it forms a gel when mixed with fresh or salt water, it was once heavily used in refining oil and later found its way into cosmetics, paint, medicine, drywall compound, and oil-drilling fluids. Local processing moved to Quincy, Florida, in 1998, though some mining continues in the area.

Attapulgus, GA

One of Decatur County's earliest settlements, Attapulgus began as the Borough of Pleasant Grove and took its present name—from a Creek word meaning "Dogwood Grove"—when a post office opened in 1838. Its economy grew around shade-grown tobacco, cultivated from the 1840s until 1973, and the rare clay Fuller's Earth (attapulgite), identified around 1890, with a railroad arriving in 1903. Churches, academies, and Masonic lodges took root through the 19th century, giving the small town a rich civic life.

Attapulgus, GA

Education in Attapulgus began with a male academy in 1836 and a female academy in 1852, evolving after 1872 into a public school that grew through mergers with the Mariola and Amsterdam schools. A succession of buildings rose and fell—one burning in 1922, another erected in brick in 1925—and in 1933 local citizens supplied materials while the WPA provided labor to build "The Shell" gymnasium. County consolidation moved the high school to Bainbridge in 1966 and closed the school entirely by the early 1970s.

Attapulgus, GA

In the flatwoods of far southwest Georgia, the little community of Attapulgus set aside burial ground beginning around 1850, when J. H. Gibson donated a lot that soon adjoined the Pleasant Grove Presbyterian Church cemetery of 1854. Generations of local families — Gibson, Chestnut, Cook, Pound and others — laid their dead here, and in the twentieth century their descendants established a perpetual-care foundation to keep the ground tended. The names and small bequests recorded on the marker are the quiet institutional memory of an antebellum rural congregation.

Atlanta, GA

During the Atlanta Campaign of 1864, the hilltop plantation of Augustus F. Hurt became a nerve center of the Union advance. On July 22, as McPherson's Army of the Tennessee fought off a fierce Confederate assault to the south, Sherman himself directed the fighting from command posts on this rise. The Hurt house — mistakenly recorded in the Official Records as the Howard house — was torn down by Federal forces, and it was here that the body of the slain Gen. McPherson was carried from the field.

Atlanta, GA

This hill overlooking the Augustus Hurt plantation was a hinge of the Union lines outside Atlanta in July and August 1864. After Confederate defenders abandoned the outer defense works on its eastern slope, Schofield's 23rd Corps marched in via the Williams Mill Road and entrenched, supporting the right of the Army of the Tennessee during the Battle of Atlanta. As Sherman shifted forces around the city, this position swung from the far right to the far left of the Federal line.

Gwinnett County, GA

On the evening of December 6, 1953, four F-84 jets of the Georgia Air National Guard's 128th Fighter Bomber Squadron went down near this spot while returning from weekend training and trying to land at Dobbins Air Force Base in bad weather. All the pilots were killed, though no one on the ground was hurt — the family whose home was destroyed happened to be away. Investigators traced the disaster in part to confusion reading the aircraft altimeter, prompting the U.S. Air Force to redesign the instrument.

Alpharetta, GA

Built around 1910 by Benjamin Franklin Shirley from a Sears, Roebuck house pattern, this nine-room Queen Anne home features a veranda and exterior stairs to the second floor. The Alpharetta Woman's Club bought the house in 1962 and paid off the loan through community fundraising, preserving it largely as built.

Whitfield County, GA

On the antebellum lands of Joel Babb, at the foot of Rocky Face Ridge near Dug Gap, cavalry probed and skirmished on May 8, 1864, as Sherman opened his drive toward Atlanta. Confederate horsemen under Col. W. C. P. Breckinridge patrolled out from Dug Gap and found Dogwood Valley swarming with Federals, then fell back before advancing Union brigades. By mid-afternoon Geary's division had reached this vicinity and deployed to storm the gap.

Alma, GA

Bacon County was carved out by the Georgia legislature in 1914 and named for Augustus O. Bacon, a four-term U.S. senator who had died in office earlier that year. A Georgian who served as adjutant of the 9th Georgia Regiment in the Civil War, Bacon rose to national prominence as an authority on Mexican affairs, and his death came at a tense moment in U.S.-Mexico relations. The marker also records the county's first slate of local officers.

Clayton County, GA

As the Atlanta Campaign reached its climax on August 30, 1864, Davis's 14th Corps moved from Red Oak toward the Fayetteville Road, splitting into columns for the approach. At this crossroads on the Flat Shoals Road, Baird's division swung northeast and then southward, its march briefly halting the passage of two divisions of the 4th Corps until it could complete the turn. The realignment set the stage for the fighting at Jonesboro that would finally sever Atlanta's supply lines.

Atlanta, GA

On July 22, 1864, during the Battle of Atlanta, Baker's Alabama brigade of Clayton's division was drawn northeast to form the far left of the Confederate attack against the Union 15th Corps. Facing Woods's Federal division across a swampy gap in the Clear Creek valley, the assault at first threatened the Union line and the DeGress battery near the Troup Hurt house. But a Federal counterattack retook the guns and forced Baker's Alabamians to withdraw.

Macon, GA

Opened in 1949, Ballard-Hudson was for decades the only high school in Macon serving African American students in grades nine through twelve. It joined two lineages: Ballard High, descended from the Lewis High School founded by the American Missionary Association in 1868, and the public, industrial Hudson High. Reorganized in 1970 as Georgia's public schools were finally integrated by federal order, the school counts among its graduates the soul giant Otis Redding and rock-and-roll pioneer Little Richard.

Homer, GA

Banks County was created in 1858 from parts of Franklin and Habersham counties and named for Dr. Richard Banks, a physician whose skill was renowned across north Georgia and upcountry South Carolina. Practicing from Gainesville, Banks was especially noted for treating Cherokee and other Native people during smallpox outbreaks. The marker preserves the roster of the new county's first commissioned officers in 1859.

Bulloch County, GA

Founded in 1908 when David Callaway Banks bought his first tract in Bulloch County, Banks Dairy Farm grew into a 900-acre operation combining dairying with cotton, tobacco, peanuts, watermelons and other crops. Most of its milk flowed to the family-owned City Dairy Company, and each of the Banks children took charge of a piece of the enterprise — the town plant, the milking, the feed crops. The dairy ran for three-quarters of a century until it was sold in 1982.

Roswell, GA

Barrington Hall was the Greek Revival home of Barrington King, who with his father Roswell King founded the town of Roswell. Completed in 1842 after two years of seasoning virgin timber and three of construction by Connecticut carpenter Willis Ball, the house crowned a community the Kings had planned with wide streets, a park, and church and school sites. The Kings also organized the Roswell Manufacturing Company, incorporated in 1839, which made the town a textile center.

Cartersville, GA

Carved out of Cherokee lands in 1832, this northwest Georgia county was first called Cass before the Civil War swept away its old name. In December 1861, with the Confederacy newly formed, Georgia rechristened it for Francis S. Bartow, a Savannah lawyer and politician who had marched off to Virginia at the head of his brigade. Bartow was killed that July at the First Battle of Manassas, one of the earliest prominent Confederate officers to die in the war, and his reported last words—urging his men never to give up—made him a martyr to the Southern cause.

Atlanta, GA

On July 20, 1864, at the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the right of Bate's division of Hardee's corps rested here on Clear Creek before joining the Confederate assault. Moving northwest through wooded ground, Bate led off the attack against Newton's Union division posted on the ridge above Collier Road. The stroke was part of Hood's aggressive first battle after taking command of the Army of Tennessee, an attempt to smash the Federals before they could close on Atlanta.

Atlanta, GA

By accident of timing, the Battle of Atlanta ignited near this spot on July 22, 1864. Sweeny's division of Dodge's 16th Corps, held in reserve and marching to support Blair's 17th Corps, halted here at noon to await orders. When Confederate divisions under Walker and Bate swept forward aiming at the rear of Blair's line, they instead collided with Mersy's and Rice's brigades posted here — a chance encounter that touched off one of the campaign's largest battles.

Wilcox County, GA

On March 9, 1818, near this spot, 34 men of the Telfair County Militia under Major Josiah D. Cawthon clashed with about 60 Creek warriors. The fight left four Indians and five white men dead, including Capt. Benjamin Mitchell Griffin, and several wounded — among them Mark Willcox, later a major general, who was carried to safety under fire by Nat Statham and Wiley Ellison. It was remembered as the last battle between Indians and settlers in this part of Georgia.

Screven County, GA

In the winter of 1779, British and American armies faced each other across the Savannah River, with control of Georgia and possibly the whole war in the balance. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln maneuvered to flank the British, but on March 3 Gen. Augustine Prevost's forces executed a bold night march and surprise assault that shattered Gen. John Ashe's American command. The rout ended in disaster, redeemed only by the desperate last stand of Georgia Continentals and militia under Gen. Samuel Elbert and Col. McIntosh, who fought until nearly all were dead or wounded.

Newnan, GA

In July 1864, as the Atlanta Campaign raged, Union Brig. Gen. E.M. McCook led 3,600 cavalry on a raid to wreck the railroads feeding Atlanta and free the thousands of Federal prisoners held at Andersonville. Three miles south of Newnan, Confederate Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler caught the raiders with a far smaller force and routed them, capturing some 2,000 men, a battery, and freeing 500 Confederate captives.

Baker County, GA

In July 1836, amid the violent upheaval of the Creek War in the Deep South, some 300 warriors fortified an island in Chickasawachee Swamp after a deadly raid on nearby settlers. Georgia militia under Col. Thomas Beall pursued them into the swamp, where a fierce fight left casualties on both sides and recovered plunder taken in the raid on Roanoke. The battle scattered the warriors and broke their planned march toward Florida.

Culloden, GA

On April 19, 1865—days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox—part of Wilson's Federal cavalry raid pressing toward Macon met the local "Worrill Grays" near Culloden. Fewer than 200 strong and badly outnumbered, the Georgians fought a stubborn two-hour battle before yielding, leaving their dead and wounded on the field. The fighting was fierce enough that the two Indiana soldiers who seized the unit's flag received the Medal of Honor.

Atlanta, GA

On July 28, 1864, during the struggle for Atlanta, the divisions of Gen. J.C. Brown of S.D. Lee's Confederate corps launched the opening assaults of the Battle of Ezra Church against the Union right flank. Brantly's Mississippians briefly carried the Federal log barricades before being thrown back by a counterattack, and a renewed effort by Walthall's division met the same fate.

Atlanta, GA

At the Battle of Ezra Church on July 28, 1864, Confederate Gen. A.P. Stewart brought Walthall's and Loring's divisions forward to renew the assault on the Union lines west of Atlanta. Riding to this hill to assess Walthall's failed attack, Stewart was struck by a spent bullet; command passed to Walthall, who withdrew and called off further attacks. That night Hood pulled his battered troops back into Atlanta.

Atlanta, GA

This spot marked the extreme right of Gen. O.O. Howard's Army of the Tennessee during the Battle of Ezra Church on July 28, 1864. Lightburn's brigade of Logan's corps held the line here as Brown's four Confederate brigades tried to roll up the Federal flank, and again when Walthall's division attempted the same ground—both attacks failing to dislodge the Union defenders.

Clayton County, GA

On August 31, 1864, the opening day of the Battle of Jonesboro, Gen. O.O. Howard's Army of the Tennessee entrenched along the Flint River after marching up from Fairburn. Confederate corps under S.D. Lee and Hardee attacked the Union lines but could not break them, leaving the contest drawn and unresolved until the following day.

Jonesboro, GA

On September 1, 1864, the final pitched battle of the Atlanta Campaign was fought around Jonesboro. Hardee's Confederate corps, posted in a salient near the Warren house, was assaulted late in the day by three divisions of Davis's 14th Corps, aided by Stanley's 4th Corps advancing down the railroad. With nightfall Hardee withdrew south to Lovejoy's Station.

Cobb County, GA

On June 22, 1864, Union divisions of the 23rd and 20th Corps linked up near Kolb's farm on the Powder Springs Road as Sherman probed the Confederate left. Federal skirmishers, backed by the 14th Kentucky, seized a ridge and held it stubbornly, and when Stevenson's Confederate division advanced against the main line it was driven back.