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Historical Ruminations

Savannah’s and Savannahians contributions to our country are often overlooked by us. Robin Williams, a professor and chair of the Architectural History Department at SCAD, says although Savannah is small it punches out of its weight class. He compared it to a welter weight who can punch and fight in the heavy weight division. The posts in this section will look at some of the ways that this is true.
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Here is Michael Freeman's new book on Savannah. It tells a story not often told of the Creeks and the Native American Creeks who lived in Savannah during its founding. You might  even  say Tomochichi and Mary Musgrove were co-founders of Georgia. 

Mayors of Savannah: Joseph Habersham

10/28/2016

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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.
 

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MAYORS OF SAVANNAH: RICHARD ARNOLD

10/18/2016

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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.
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Mayors of Savannah: Peter Meldrim

10/11/2016

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Savannah has had some amazing mayors for the good and bad. In the next few weeks, we will
examine the lives of some of these mayors. The first is Peter Wiltberger Meldrim (1848-1933) a Savannahian who became one of our most influential citizens. He went to school in Savannah and later graduated with a law degree from the University of Georgia.

Meldrim had a lifetime interest in the law and politics. He began practicing law in Savannah in 1869 and was president of the Georgia Bar Association in 1904 and in 1914 was the president of the American Bar Association. He would serve in both the Georgia House of Representatives and in the Senate in 1881. He was Mayor of Savannah beating then renowned Mayor Herman Myers in 1897. After his term was over he decided not to run again. He was selected in 1917 to serve as Judge of the Superior Court of the Eastern Judicial Circuit which he served until his death. He would be the chair of the Georgia delegation to the Democratic National Convention held in Denver, Colorado in 1907.

Probably one of the things that spurred his successful mayoral run was because he was president of the Hibernian Society from 1887 to 1912. In 1812 the Hibernian Society of Savannah was organized by forty-four prominent Savannah gentlemen for the purpose of tendering aid to needy Irish immigrants. Since 1813 the Hibernian Society has been responsible for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade one of the largest in the United States.

In 1892, Meldrim bought the house that had served as Sherman’s Savannah headquarters in 1864. It was from this house that the Union general wrote a telegram to President Lincoln offering him Savannah as a “Christmas present.” It’s also where Sherman, meeting with 20 African-American leaders in January 1865, signed his Special Field Order 15. That order confiscated abandoned plantations along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts to give to freed slaves in 40-acre parcels. (A later order gave them Union mules. Both orders were rescinded within months.) Today the house is called the Green-Meldrim House and is one of the finest examples of a Gothic architecture residence in the South.

Another interest of his was providing housing for the poorer of this world. One of his adventures led to an unincorporated town named after him Meldrim. When the railroad came through the South Effingham community, on hunting land owned by Meldrim was surveyed into lots selling for $25-$50 each. The lots, next to the railroad tracks, became a small business district. The railroad tracks crossed over the Ogeechee River. Underneath the tracks a popular swimming spot developed for locals to escape the heat.

On the Sunday, June 28, some 35-50 people were sitting on the riverbank, swimming or standing by the clubhouse.  A freight train with several cars filled with liquid petroleum gas traveling toward Savannah derailed and fell into the water. A spark, from something caused the train itself, caused the gas to explode. The second propane car loaded with 10,000 gallons of the gas ignited next. This explosion caused sheets of gas flames to sweep the river killing twenty-three people. “The disaster is the largest single loss of life in the Savannah area in modern memory, outpacing the February 2008 explosion at Imperial Sugar in Port Wentworth, where 14 people lost their lives.”

Recently, another Meldrim housing venture was in the news. A block of cottages were slated for demolition to make room for a police precinct called Meldrim Row. These cottages were developed beginning in the 1880s as housing for black workers. In total there were 36 wood frame cottages.
Some preservationists and neighborhood advocates protested the destruction of the cottages. They said the cottages were important historically because they represented a type of housing important in its function as simple homes for the black community. Neighborhood activists said that housing added to the fabric of the community and offered low cost housing opportunities.  In the end the city did not agree and the cottages were demolished.

  Besides politics one of his other interests was in education. Because of his advocacy for education to blacks he was selected to help establish Georgia State Industrial School now the Savannah State University in 1891. When President William Howard Taft visited Savannah in 1912, Judge Meldrim proudly escorted the President on a tour of the college’s campus.  He would serve on the board until his death in 1933 a total of forty-two years. He was also serving as a trustee of the University of Georgia his alma mater at his death.
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As many of our mayors he had a diverse life and was exemplary in his efforts in working to make Savannah a better place.

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Green-Meldrim House
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Meldrim Train Wreck
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