A fugitive from slavery in Georgia, John Brown provided one of the few book-length testimonials of what it was like to be enslaved in the Deep South. “Fed” (his first enslaved name) was born in eastern Virginia around 1810, and about ten years later he and his mother were moved to a nearby tobacco farm in North Carolina.  Soon he was separated from his mother and sold south to Georgia. He grew to manhood doing hard labor on Thomas Stevens’s flourishing cotton farm near Milledgeville.

Savannah-born songwriter Johnny Mercer, commemorated on this 1996 first-class postage stamp, is best known for his Academy Award-winning song "Moon River." Courtesy of Smithsonian National Postal Museum The New Georgia Encyclopedia does not hold the copyright for this media resource and can neither grant nor deny permission to republish or reproduce the image online or in print. All requests for permission to publish or reproduce the resource must be submitted to the rights holder.

Lake Hartwell, named after Revolutionary War hero Nancy Hart, provides drinking water, hydropower, and public entertainment to millions of people each year. The reservoir, which borders Georgia and South Carolina, exists because of Hartwell Dam on the Savannah River. Courtesy of UGA Archway Partnership The New Georgia Encyclopedia does not hold the copyright for this media resource and can neither grant nor deny permission to republish or reproduce the image online or in print.

A woman drives a carriage in Lanier County, circa 1900. Industrialization drove the development of the county's two main communities during the nineteenth century. Alapaha (later Lakeland, the county seat) began as a mill village, while Registerville (later Stockton) was a railroad town. The New Georgia Encyclopedia does not hold the copyright for this media resource and can neither grant nor deny permission to republish or reproduce the image online or in print.

Georgia has more than 100 local preservation commissions that manage development and monitor change. These preservation boards are among almost 2,500 local historic preservation programs nationwide. Historic preservation has been a part of local government planning in this country since 1931, when Charleston, South Carolina, responded to a threat to its downtown historic area with a local design-review ordinance, and a few other cities, including Savannah, followed. The growth of this local planning practice was fostered by the federal and state partnership initiated by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.