The architect John Wellborn Root, a Georgia native, became one of the key figures in the nationally significant Chicago school of skyscraper design. He designed one of the most significant buildings in Atlanta, the Equitable Building. Root was born in Lumpkin in 1850 and grew up in Atlanta. During the Civil War (1861-65) his father, Sidney Root, a prominent Atlanta merchant, sent his young son out of the city on one of his blockade-runners to attend school in England.

Joseph Henry Lumpkin served on the Supreme Court of Georgia from 1846 until his death in 1867. One of three justices elected by the Georgia legislature after the supreme court’s creation in 1845, Lumpkin was elected to successive terms without opposition. He was considered the chief justice of the court until officially named to that position by the legislature. An active supporter of education, he cofounded the University of Georgia law school, which now bears his name.

LaGrange College evolved from the LaGrange Female Academy, chartered by the Georgia legislature on December 26, 1831. In 1847 the legislature changed the name to LaGrange Female Institute and gave the college the authority to grant degrees. An amended charter in 1851 read “LaGrange Female College.” In 1934 the institution officially became LaGrange College. Located near the center of the city of LaGrange, in Troup County, LaGrange College is one of the few original academies for women that have grown into four-year accredited liberal arts colleges.

The Indians of Georgia spoke an incredible number of languages. It would surprise most people to learn that there were as many differences between some of the languages spoken by native Georgians as there are between English and Chinese, and that these large differences did not directly coincide with differences in culture or ethnic identity. Linguists classify the 5,000 or so known languages on the earth in language families. A language family is a group of languages that are clearly related and have a common ancestor, or mother tongue.

Larry Jerome Rubin published hundreds of poems in literary magazines and four volumes of selected verse after moving to Atlanta in 1950. He began a long academic career as an English professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1956. Though Rubin appeared in several collections of contemporary southern poets, his poems focused on historical images and the inner self rather than any particular time or place. Rubin was a self-described romantic poet whose inspirations included Emily Dickinson and whose writing included several articles on American romantic literature.