Episodes Located: CHATHAM, Georgia in the 1820's

  1. Disastrous Fire Ravages Savannah, Georgia
    date January 11, 1820map CHATHAM, Georgiatags Health/Death, Economy

    The beginning of the nineteenth century brought significant misfortune to Savannah, Georgia. While the city struggled to achieve public improvements and increase urban development, a disproportionate number of natural disasters struck, such as the hurricane of 1804. Incidents of yellow fever and cholera outbreak resulted in large-scale mortality and interference with business. A vast fire, “on...

  2. A Polite Education
    date September 18, 1828map CHATHAM, Georgiatags Arts/Leisure, Economy, Education, Women

    Education for women in the Antebellum South played a key role in defining and regulating social status. Many Southerners did not see education as a way to enlighten women, but rather to refine and polish them, and make them more suitable for marriage. In the Argus newspaper, published in Savannah, Georgia, an advertisement appeared in September of 1828. It announced Mr. Phillips's new school for...

  3. Our Indian Difficulties
    date May 19, 1828 to May 30, 1828map CHATHAM, Georgiatags African-Americans, Agriculture, Government, Law, Migration/Transportation, Native-Americans, Race-Relations, Slavery, Women

    People often want what they cannot have. At least, this was true in Georgia in 1828. On May 19, 1828 the Argus, a newspaper in Savannah, printed an extract of a letter from a member of Congress, to the Editor. In this letter the politician explained that the mood in Washington was changing in favor of removal of the Native Americans currently living where they had been for a long time on some of...

  4. Jane
    date July 14, 1828 to September 9, 1828map CHATHAM, Georgiatags African-Americans, Economy, Migration/Transportation, Race-Relations, Slavery, Women

    P. Wiltberger, while sitting at breakfast one morning, was interrupted by his overseer. The overseer angrily informed Wiltberger that Jane, one of Wiltberger's slaves, was missing. Other slaves were being questioned but so far, the overseer could find out nothing. Incensed, Wiltberger questioned his slaves further, but to no avail. He then picked up his pen and proceeded to write an advertisement...

  5. Yankees
    date December, 1827 to June 6, 1828map CHATHAM, Georgiatags Economy, Migration/Transportation

    In the Antebellum South, before railroads were widely used, Southern societies did not encounter people from other places very often. An anonymous man wrote a letter to the editor of The Argus in the summer of 1828, and in his etter he clearly demonstrated his inherent mistrust of outsiders. This man owned a boarding house and was writing to the paper in search of a solution to a problem...