The New Georgia Encyclopedia is supported by funding from A More Perfect Union, a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
A. R. Waud's sketch Rice Culture on the Ogeechee, Near Savannah, Georgia depicts enslaved African Americans working in the rice fields.
From Harper's Weekly
An enslaved family picking cotton outside Savannah in the 1850s.
Courtesy of New York Historical Society, Photograph by Pierre Havens..
To escape slavery, light-skinned Ellen Craft disguised herself as a male enslaver. Her husband, William, who was darker skinned, posed as her valet. They successfully traveled to the North, and eventually to England, where they published a narrative recounting their lives in slavery and their daring escape.
Detail from an 1863 Thomas Nast illustration depicting freedpeople after emancipation. Freedpeople set about defining the economic and social freedom they previously could only imagine.
Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1929.
In his 1942 painting Cherokee Trail of Tears, Robert Lindneux depicts the forced journey of the Cherokees in 1838 to present-day Oklahoma.
Courtesy of Woolaroc Museum, Bartlesville, Oklahoma
Although Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) that the Cherokees should receive the protection of the U.S. government, the state of Georgia continued to encroach upon Cherokee lands.
Photograph by Wikimedia
This hand-colored lithograph of Sequoyah (also called George Gist or George Guess), the legendary creator of the Cherokee syllabary, was made in 1833 after an oil portrait by Charles Bird King as part of a series depicting Native American leaders.
From The Indian Tribes of North America, by T. L. McKenney and J. Hall
This portrait by Charles Bird King shows John Ross at his prime. A well-educated and successful businessman, John Ross helped to establish the Cherokee Nation's first government and became principal chief in 1827.
Print by Charles Bird King. From History of the Indian Tribes of North America, by T. McKenney and J. Hall
Cherokee land lots were parceled out to white Georgians in one of the two state land lotteries held in 1832. The state conducted a total of eight lotteries between 1805 and 1833. Sketch by George I. Parrish Jr., circa 1832.
Artwork by George I. Parrish Jr. Courtesy of Cindy Parrish, Maryville,TN
Hand-colored lithograph of Major Ridge, a Cherokee leader who helped establish the Cherokee system of government. The soldier, politician, and plantation owner is remembered for signing the Treaty of New Echota (1835), which ceded Cherokee lands to the U.S. government and authorized Cherokee removal.
From History of the Indian Tribes of North America, by T. McKenney and J. Hall
After General Andrew Jackson took control of American troops in January 1818, his efforts weakened Seminole offenses by dividing their numbers between Georgia and Florida.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Photo File.
The Okefenokee incursion of 1838-39, led by Charles Rinaldo Floyd, ultimately was deemed a success, not because of the defeat of the Seminoles within its borders but because, by virtue of entering the swamp, Floyd claimed its expanse for the state of Georgia.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Photo File.
In 1838 a federal Branch Mint went into operation at Dahlonega. It coined more than $100,000 worth of gold in its first year, and by the time it closed in 1861, it had produced almost 1.5 million gold coins with a face value of more than $6 million.
Courtesy of Dahlonega Mountain Signal
Benjamin Parks is said by some to be the person who discovered gold in Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
lum119.
Coins minted in Dahlonega were of high quality and are still prized by coin collectors. Mint officers preferred making the larger and easier-to-coin half eagles, but they also produced quarter eagles, gold dollars, and for one year, three-dollar gold pieces.
Photograph from Wikimedia
A tour guide at the Consolidated Gold Mine demonstrating a gold panning technique used by those hoping to strike it big during the Georiga Gold Rush.
Courtesy of Explore Georgia, Photograph by Ralph Daniel.
Visitors to Dahlonega, in Lumpkin County, pan for gold in the 1970s. Dahlonega was the site of a gold rush that began with the discovery of gold in 1828-29.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
lum134.
Mining often has a devastating effect on local landscapes. This 1900 photo shows a water cannon blasting away a hillside at the Calhoun Gold Mine, in Lumpkin County, during the second gold rush.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
lum154.
A gold-mining operation near Dahlonega is pictured circa 1910.
Courtesy of Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia, #
lum211.
A replica of Fort Peach Tree, which was erected on the banks of the Chattahoochee River in 1814 during the War of 1812, stands in Atlanta. The fort was used as a construction yard for the flatboats that carried shipments along the river to Fort Mitchell, in present-day Alabama.
Courtesy of Susan Barnard
General John Floyd was given command of Georgia's troops in the War of 1812 against Great Britain. Floyd established Fort Mitchell, just across the Chattahoochee River in present-day Alabama.
Courtesy of Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, De Renne Family Papers.
