Joseph Habersham was born in Savannah in 1751 and was the third Mayor of Savannah (1792).  He was one of Savannah’s Revolutionary War Heroes.  He was educated at Princeton and he returned to Savannah to assist in organizing the "Liberty Boys". These were groups that sought to organize boycotts and other resistance to the Crown. The Liberty Boys of Boston were responsible for the Boston Tea Party.

In May 1775, when news of the New England battles of Lexington and Concord reached Savannah, Joseph Habersham joined Edward Telfair, Noble W. Jones, John Milledge, and other Liberty Boys in breaking into the royal magazine and making off with 600 pounds of powder.

 As the Revolution approached, he was at the organization of the Council of Safety at Tondee's Tavern, June 27, 1775. He would become a major of a battalion of Georgia militiamen and later a colonel in the 1st Georgia Regiment of the Continental Army.

Habersham would be involved in two significant events. The first in early summer of 1775, the South Carolina Council of Safety received intelligence that a shipment of gunpowder was on the way to Savannah, and that the powder would be used to supply the Native Americans to wage war against the Patriots. Two barges were sent from Beaufort to Bloody Point to intercept the shipment.
Captain Joseph Habersham outfitted a schooner with ten carriage guns and joined the effort to stop two British ships with weapons for the Indians to side with the British in the case of battle. Habersham and his crew saw the two ships at anchor on July 8th, and stopped four miles from them. Col. Maitland of the British ship Phillippa saw the Liberty closing the distance. "The schooner was full of armed men and had ten carriage-guns mounted." The Georgia schooner fired two muskets at the Phillippa and ordered Captain Maitland to identify himself. Maitland demanded to know who the schooner was. Bowen Habersham’s co-captain from South Carolina "hauled down their pendant and hoisted at the masthead a white flag with a red border, on the field of which flag was stamped or imprinted in large red letters the words 'American Liberty,' and the people on board the schooner said the schooner’s name was the Liberty."

The patriots were able to take off 16,000 pounds of powder and "seven hundred-weight of leaden bullets." They also "took away all the bar-lead, sheet-lead, Indian trading arms, and shot that were on board." The Carolinians and the Georgians divided the cargo between them. The South Carolinian’s powder was taken to Tucker’s Island where 4,000 pounds were put on board a schooner and delivered to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The Liberty, which has a footstone in its honor at Morrill Park on River Street, would be the first commissioned ‘battleship’ of the United States.

The second significant event was as a Son of Liberty Habersham was elected to lead a group of men to arrest the Provincial Governor of Georgia as the war with England began. Governor James Wright must have been shocked when on January 17, 1776,  Habersham, the son of his deceased good friend James Habersham, burst into a dinner party at the Royal Governor’s Mansion and placed his hand on his shoulder and declared, “Sir James, you are my prisoner.” At the ripe age of twenty-four Habersham was defying the British Empire.

Habersham’s career would have been more distinguished if he did not have to resign from the army after he served as Lachlan McIntosh's second in the controversial duel that killed Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. But he would, after the war, have an important political career. He served as Speaker of the Georgia House in 1785 and was a member of the Georgia convention in 1788 that ratified the U.S. Constitution.  In 1785, Joseph Habersham signed the first charter granted to a state university in America, that of the University of Georgia. He was appointed Postmaster General (a cabinet position at the time) by President George Washington in 1795 and served until the beginning of Thomas Jefferson's administration in 1801.

​Habersham died in 1815 and is buried in Colonial Cemetery.
 

Richard Dennis Arnold (1808-1876) was a native of Savannah, Ga., a physician, educator, and Georgia state legislator. Dr. Arnold attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and graduated in 1830. He would set out his shingle in Savannah in what would be a long and distinguished medical career. In 1830 when a small pox epidemic started he became the chief vaccinator for the city. He also became one of the world’s leading experts on yellow fever. In 1835 he was appointed to be the physician for Savannah’s poorhouse and hospital, a position he would hold for the next twenty years. In 1846 his fame and experience led him to be one of the founding members of the American Medical Association. In 1850 when his wife died he became more active and formed the Savannah Medical School where he taught for years. In the next year he founded the Medical Association of Georgia.

Dr. Arnold became one of the co-owners of the Savannah Georgian a newspaper which opened the door to a political career. He was a Union Democrat who was against nullification and had strong leanings toward a federalist government in 1833.  He would serve in the Georgia state House of Representatives and Senate. He was also an alderman of Savannah for numerous years. Arnold would serve as Mayor of Savannah four terms at different times of his life starting in 1842, 1851, 1859, and again in 1863. It would be his last term that would be his most important.   

Dr. Arnold was one of four founders of the Georgia Historical Society in 1839. The Georgia Historical Society “is the oldest continuously operating state historical society in the South and one of the oldest historical organizations in the nation. The institution is dedicated to collecting, examining, and teaching Georgia history.” He also was appointed in 1865 to the newly formed public school board. He was elected president of the school board in 1866, a position he held until his death in 1876.

But to many his most valuable contribution to Savannah was as Mayor in 1863. Sherman was on the march toward Savannah. It was Dr. Arnold who had been against secession until the very last. He was also a former member and President of the Unitarian Church of Savannah that closed because of Unitarian sympathies for abolition in 1861. It was this doctor and humanitarian that would first meet with Brigadier Gen. John W. Geary and later General Sherman. He convinced both men that he would surrender the city of Savannah without a fight if they promised among other things to not burn the city down. Thus Savannah unlike many other cities that lay in the path of Sherman was not burned.

Dr. Arnold died in Savannah on July 10, 1876; he is buried in Bonaventure Cemetery. The citizens of Savannah erected a monument to him at the site. It is inscribed with these words: “Crowned in life with every honor his fellow citizens could bestow they erect this tribute to his memory.” Dr. Arnold’s life shows a lifetime commitment to make Savannah a better place.
​