Bøger af Buddy Sullivan

Buddy Sullivan, author of the popular "Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater", "From Beautiful Zion to Red Bird Creek", "Georgia: A State History" and 13 other books on coastal Georgia history, provides in a single collection an assortment of essays, papers and short studies on various aspects of his research over the last quarter century. These documented studies have appeared in print in other places, whether issued as single publications, or as the introductions to some of the author's other books on coastal history. An introductory essay relates Sullivan's coastal roots, his path to becoming a coastal historian, his research methodology and how some of his books evolved from idea to publication. The following papers are primarily associated with maritime, agricultural and economic history, and how the people of coastal Georgia have used, and adapted to, the local ecosystem and the environmental factors associated therewith, in the pursuit of their lives and livelihoods.

Low Country Historian is a compilation of the best writings of Buddy Sullivan over the past thirty years gleaned from his 30 books and monographs about the history, culture and ecology of coastal Georgia. The book's approach investigates how the people of the Georgia low country utilized their local ecosystem in virtually every aspect of their lives and livelihoods.

The plantation journal and daybook of Roswell King, Jr. who managed rice and cotton lands in tidewater Georgia from 1819 to 1854 is fully annotated and edited by the author. Set in the antebellum coastal setting of Liberty County, Georgia, among the people and places of the famous "children of pride" and the rice lands of the Pierce M. Butler estate in neighboring McIntosh County, the author provides an Introduction for context. Extensive endnotes, photographs and maps.

Most of the barrier islands and smaller islands along the Georgia coast are protected and undeveloped. Although not generally recognized by many, the conservation of much of coastal Georgia began in the years following the Civil War when six of the eight major sea islands were purchased by wealthy Northerners, including the famous Jekyll Island Club. The islands passed to succeeding generations of private owners, many in the same families that acquired them from 1866 on, until the modern-day conservation movement for the coast began in the 1950s. Because of the protected private ownership of the islands through the years, they are now managed and administered by federal or state entities or private foundations. This monograph analyzes this evolution from private ownership to protected status of the islands, as well as the overall influence of Northern wealth on the economy and landscape of tidewater Georgia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Coastal historian Buddy Sullivan argues that while the postwar owners of the islands were largely unaware of "conservation" in the modern sense, their appreciation and ecological awareness of their properties precipitated a conscious desire to protect them and prevent their acquisition and development by large-scale resort and residential interests.

Bessie M. Lewis was the historian of McIntosh County, Georgia, for over fifty years. As a published author, newspaper editor and educator, she was the first to introduce academic rigor into local research starting in the 1920s. Lewis's primary focus was the early settlement of Darien and the county during the colonial period. Her important research on colonial Fort King George at Darien brought that long-lost outpost into the public awareness for the first time, and ultimately led to it becoming one of the leading state historic interpretive sites in Georgia. For nearly two decades prior to her death in 1983 at the age of 94, Miss Lewis contributed a weekly column to the Darien News, "Low Country Diary," containing anecdotes and stories of local history and culture while also conveying her abiding love of animals, both wild and domestic. In this collection, Miss Lewis's protégé, coastal Georgia historian Buddy Sullivan, has assembled and edited the best of her "Low Country Diary" columns as an interpretation of McIntosh County history through the thoughts and diligent research of Miss Lewis. Sullivan was inspired by the work of Bessie Lewis going back to his early childhood growing up in McIntosh County. In the early 1990s, he succeeded his late mentor as the official local historian with his own published work, the comprehensive "Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater," a volume recently revised and expanded by the author in a new 1,000-page 2016 edition. In the present collection, Sullivan has come full circle in his career as a historian in sharing the popular and entertaining writings of Bessie Lewis with a new generation of readers. Interspersed throughout with the editor's own notes and commentary on the writings of Miss Lewis, "A Low Country Diary" will likely become a valuable addition to the literature of the Georgia coast, and will serve as a useful supplement to "Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater" for those delving into the history of Darien, McIntosh County and the Georgia coastal country.

A documented history of Ashantilly, a McIntosh County, Georgia home built in 1820 by prominent agriculturist Thomas Spalding of Sapelo Island. The architecture of Ashantilly is reviewed as is the successive generations of its ownership and occupants through the last private owner of the house, William G. Haynes, Jr. The story of Ashantilly is set against the backdrop of local history and includes a detailed review by the author of the use of tabby as a building material both at Ashantilly and among the coastal planter and business class of the antebellum period.

Georgia's past has diverged from the nation's and given the state and its people a distinctive culture and character. Some of the best, and the worst, aspects of American and Southern history can be found in the story of what is arguably the most important state in the South. Yet just as clearly Georgia has not always followed the road traveled by the rest of the nation and the region. Explaining the common and divergent paths that make us who we are is one reason the Georgia Historical Society has collaborated with Buddy Sullivan and Arcadia Publishing to produce Georgia: A State History, the first full-length history of the state produced in nearly a generation. Sullivan's lively account draws upon the vast archival and photographic collections of the Georgia Historical Society to trace the development of Georgia's politics, economy, and society and relates the stories of the people, both great and small, who shaped our destiny. This book opens a window on our rich and sometimes tragic past and reveals to all of us the fascinating complexity of what it means to be a Georgian.

Reference maps and photographs tracing the history of McIntosh County, Georgia

This monograph represents a consolidation of material relating to archaeological research and findings contained in the author's earlier works on the history of Sapelo Island and McIntosh County, Georgia, in particular Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater: A New Revised Edition (2018), Environmental Influences on Life & Labor in McIntosh County, Georgia (2018), and Sapelo: People and Place on a Georgia Sea Island (2017). Additional new material not found in those volumes has been added to the present text to provide greater elaboration on archaeological field work at the Fort King George site near Darien in the 1950s and 1960s, and at the Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge. The path-breaking work of Clarence Bloomfield Moore, who conducted the first systematic archaeological field work with attendant academic rigor in what is now McIntosh County has been amplified considerably. While this study is not considered to be definitive, it nonetheless is offered as an overview of the field research of archaeologists and historians from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first relating to investigations of pre-Columbian and Spanish sites, most specifically at Sapelo and Creighton islands, and Fort King George. In essence then, this may be considered a "layman's guide" to local archaeology.

The "early families" in this book are those whose presence in McIntosh County, Georgia, was established before 1860. The Civil War provides a convenient dividing point as the population and settlement dynamics of the county were greatly altered as a result of the war and the subsequent Reconstruction era. Many of the families reviewed here remained a part of the McIntosh County economic fabric after the Civil War, and are thus noted as such in the narrative. The personages and families included in the volume are those that had the most impact on the county historically or economically before the Civil War, and whose influences continued in succeeding generations after the war.

This study comprising a survey of the history of Darien, the principal town and county seat of McIntosh County, Georgia, is largely extrapolated from my most recent research from 2016 to 2019 contained in a revised and expanded edition of my county history, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater. Darien is the second oldest settled municipality in Georgia with a history and culture as diverse as any in the state. Its origins lay in its founding by Highland Scots, and that Scottish legacy has transcended almost three centuries. Darien's history is unique in that it experienced a series of devastating economic downturns in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, yet made remarkable recoveries each time to become an even more prosperous community. In addition, Darien suffered the travails of war--it was burned to the ground by federal forces in 1863, yet rebuilt and prospered economically for the next forty years as one of the leading exporters of raw timber and processed lumber in the United States, exemplifying a new industrial economy that succeeded its former antebellum agricultural economy, and reflecting the changing dynamics of a "new South" in the postbellum era. In essence, Darien was the "big little town" in its timber prosperity. The focus of this study is economic, rather than social, cultural, or political, and the preponderance of its attention is to the century and a half from 1800 to about 1960. Additionally, I have taken the liberty of incorporating within the text certain aspects of the history of other areas of McIntosh County as they affected Darien.

This book is another in a continuing series of studies incorporating the theme of environmental influences on life and labor in McIntosh County, Georgia. Previous volumes have covered rice cultivation in the Altamaha delta, and barrier island agriculture as embodied in the ecological awareness of Thomas Spalding of Sapelo. The present study looks at Sapelo Island from a twentieth century perspective, covering a time span of 1912 to 2015. Herein are four separate stories within the overall story: that of Howard E. Coffin, Detroit industrialist who owned most of Sapelo from 1912 to 1934; Richard J. Reynolds, Jr., at Sapelo from 1934 to 1964; scientific research at Sapelo Island from 1953 onward, resulting in a new understanding of the salt marsh ecosystem; and the human dimension as seen through the twentieth century generational and cultural legacy of the people of Sapelo, many of whose ancestors were enslaved laborers on the antebellum island plantations. Theirs is a story of permanence and perseverance on Sapelo and it will be told here, often from a personal perspective.

In 1877, John Girardeau Legare of Adams Run, South Carolina, arrived in Darien on the Georgia tidewater. Legare managed Darien-area rice plantations, first at Generals Island, then at Champneys. His journal contains many observations on contemporary national events. Buddy Sullivan has placed the Journal in context with an introduction and comprehensive endnotes identifying people and events.

Blackbeard is a small barrier island off the coast of Georgia. Named for Edward Teach, the infamous pirate who attacked merchant shipping along the southeastern coast of America in the early 18th century, the island has had a unique and fascinating history. For over two hundred years Blackbeard has been a federally-managed property, isolated, remote and usually uninhabited, and serving in such diverse capacities as a U.S. Navy timber reserve, a national yellow fever quarantine inspection station, and now as a national wildlife refuge. Coastal Georgia historian Buddy Sullivan has investigated the history of Blackbeard for three decades, and now offers this narrative overview based on archival resources, federal manuscript records and personal accounts.

A review of rice cultivation on an antebellum plantation in coastal Georgia, utilizing as its case study Butler's Island where some six hundred slaves labored to plant and harvest crops of rice that in some years exceeded one million pounds in production. Covered are rice planting methods and slave management from the perspective of the plantation owners, the Butler family of Philadelphia, and from that of the enslaved people of Butler's Island themselves as seen through the writings of Frances Anne Kemble and her plantation journal. The book also reviews the other rice plantations in the Altamaha district, with particular emphasis on Hopeton, referred to as "the model plantation of the South."

This monograph comprising a brief biography of antebellum planter Thomas Spalding and his times, the first such work specifically relating to Spalding since 1940, is gleaned from the author's previous writings about Sapelo Island and coastal Georgia. Chief among these works are Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater A New Revised Edition (2018), Environmental Influences on Life & Labor in McIntosh County, Georgia (2018) and Sapelo: People and Place on a Georgia Sea Island (2017). Thomas Spalding was one of the leading agrarians in the antebellum South and his Sapelo Island cotton and sugar cane plantation was among the region's most productive and efficiently managed. This book provides a review of Spalding's life, an assessment of his plantation and slave management philosophy, and a glimpse of the times in which he lived as the owner and master of a large agricultural operation with hundreds of bondsmen in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. Within are sections on barrier island ecology, planting techniques for sea island cotton and sugar cane, and the principles of tabby architecture as promoted by Spalding. The last section of the book carries the story into the early 20th century with the final years of the Spalding family's presence on Sapelo Island, and the growth of postbellum African American communities developed by the formerly enslaved people of Sapelo.

Sapelo, a barrier island off the Georgia coast, is one of the state's greatest treasures. Buddy Sullivan covers the full range of the island's history, including Native American inhabitants; Spanish missions; the antebellum plantation of Thomas Spalding; the African American settlement of the island after the Civil War; and the transition of Sapelo's multiple African American communities into one.