17 July 1922: "The courteous woman..."

On this day in 1922, the Society News section of the Athens Daily Herald ran this useful piece of information for its readers:

The Society News usually ran on page 3 of the Athens Daily Herald, and was edited by Mrs. Alice Adams, whose home phone number (832) appeared at the top of the page, so anyone with news could pass it along to her.

Other news reported by Mrs. Adams this day included:

• Miss Marjorie Bickers hosted an informal prom party for Athens girls.
• Miss Jessie McGregor returned from Greenwood, S.C. Sunday afternoon.
• The friends of Mrs. Madison Nicholson will regret to hear of her continued illness.
• Miss Helen Wineberg of Columbia, S.C. is the guest of Miss Hannah Bernstein.
• Miss Elizabeth Bondurant is spending a few days at a camp near Lakemont.
• Messrs. Ed Cohen and Leroy Michael left Sunday for a motor trip through the north and east.
• Mr. and Mrs. Randall Freeman are expected home in a few days after a delightful trip to Baltimore.

Learn More:

• Athens Daily Herald, May, 1922 - Aug. 1922 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• 1920-1921 Athens City Directory on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• The Most Scenic Drives in America: 120 Spectacular Road Trips by the Readers Digest Association in the general collection.
• South Carolina: Off the Beaten Path by William Price Fox in the general collection.
• Fun and Games for Family Gatherings with a Focus on Reunions by Adrienne E. Anderson in the general collection.

9 October 1897: Georgia Plays Clemson for the First Time

On this day in 1897, Clemson College came to town for their first ever game against the University of Georgia "Footballists:"

Clemson had started their football program the previous year, and came to Athens to play at the newly seeded and renovated Herty Field. This first meeting featured a 75-yard run for a touchdown by Georgia halfback J. T. Moore, and Georgia won the game, 24-0. 

Over the next 24 years, Clemson and Georgia would meet annually, with the exception of 1917-1918, when Georgia did not field a team due to World War I. Though the teams played one another only sporadically from the 1920s through the 1950s, the rivalry intensified during the 1960s and 1970s, with near-annual meetings. In the early 1980s the rivalry became even more fierce as both teams were often vying for the National Championship. The two teams have met a total of 62 times, with Georgia holding the advantage, 41-17-4. 

Since Southeastern Conference expansion in 1992, Clemson and Georgia have not met as regularly. However, the closeness of the two campuses, less than 75 miles apart, and decades of tradition have meant that the rivalry has only continued to simmer despite episodic play. 

Their next two meetings will be in Clemson in 2013 and in Athens in 2014 to start the football seasons.

Learn More:

• Athens Daily Banner, Nov. 1, 1984 - Nov. 3, 1898 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Athens Historic Newspaper Archive collection in the Digital Library of Georgia.
• The Ghosts of Herty Field: Early Days on a Southern Gridiron by John F. Stegeman in the Heritage collection.
• Between the Hedges: 100 Years of Georgia Football, edited by Loran Smith in the general collection.
• Echoes of Georgia Football: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, edited by Ken Samelson in the general collection.
• Game Day: Georgia Football (with an introduction by Larry Munson) in the general collection.
• My Forty Years at Georgia by Vincent J. Dooley in the general collection.
• What It Means to Be a Bulldog by Tony Barnhardt in the general collection.
• Georgia Football History page on the Georgia Athletic Association website.
• Georgia Bulldogs 2011 Media Guide.
• Highlights of the 2003 Georgia-Clemson game.
• Larry Munson's Call of Kevin Butler's Winning Field Goal over Clemson in 1984.

17 June 1906: Trustees Vote to Abolish Football at UGA

On this day in 1906, the following alarming headline and story ran on page 1 of the Sunday Athens Banner:

TO ABOLISH FOOTBALL AT THE UNIVERSITY

Trustees Pass Resolution Declaring That After This Year Football Must Cease at That Institution. 

This Action of the Board Will No Doubt Cause Considerable Discussion.

The wearers of the long hair and kickers of the pigskin will soon have to give up the fight in the University of Georgia. 

After this year there will be no more football played by the University students, unless the rules of the game are decidedly modified. 

That is the decision of the Board of Trustees and what they have to say on the subject is final.

The matter was brought up in the meeting of the board yesterday by Judge George F. Gober, and the resolution introduced by him was passed after very little debate.

The trustees will not interfere with the game this year, as the team has already contracts covering a number of games, but after this year all these games will cease. 

This action of the board is sure to cause discussion among those who favor the game but the sentiment of the board on the subject is quite pronounced.

News of such a decision would not have been a surprise in 1906. Earlier that year, trustees at Harvard and the University of South Carolina had made similar votes, banning the sport because of its "brutality" and tendency to be a distraction from intellectual endeavors. Though injuries and player deaths were the primary focus of criticism, the loudest voice against the new sport of football was more concerned by the moral hazards posed by the game.


Leading the charge against football was Harvard president Charles Eliot, who felt the game taught students to be dishonorable, such as when a running back exploited the weakest point on the opposing team's line in order to advance the ball. He felt the passion around the game by spectators in the stands was divisive, as people tended to cheer for only their own team.  It should be noted that President Eliot also considered baseball "a game of trickery," citing the deception of the curve ball, and believed true sportsmen did not require umpires or referees for their activities.

Among the more ardent defenders of football on the national level was President Theodore Roosevelt, who believed that the "rough play and occasional injuries" built moral character in America's young men. Princeton professor Woodrow Wilson also defended the game, believing it "encouraged valuable qualities such as precision, decision, presence of mind and endurance." In a debate with a Cornell professor on the subject, Wilson said, "I believe it develops more moral qualities than any other game of athletics." 


On a more local level, newly elected University of Georgia chancellor David C. Barrow was a supporter of the game of football. Several weeks after his appointment by the same trustees who had originally voted to abolish the game if changes were not made to the rules, he told the Athens Banner that football was "a rough game" but that "more men are saved by the training than injured by the game," that there was far less fighting amongst the student population since football had been introduced in 1894, that it was "the best training in self control I know of, certainly for a young man," and that even those who don't play on the field "get behind the team" and learn lessons in loyalty that would be equally applicable to community, state, and country in their adult lives. 


Within a week after the initial vote, the trustees decided to leave any decisions in the hands of the faculty, provided certain changes were made to the rules of the game. Since these rules were already being adopted by the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, of which the University of Georgia and most schools they regularly played were members, the threat of losing football at UGA was never seen as inexorable. 


On a national level, more than a dozen new rules were enacted, including shortening the game to two 30-minute halves, defining "tripping" and "hurdling" and making both actions illegal, and introducing the forward pass as an acceptable form of ball advancement. However, for some, football reform was irrelevant. Football critic and University of California president Benjamin Wheeler told the New York Times in September, 1906, that game of football would soon die out, and be rightly replaced by the more established and honorable game of rugby. 




Learn More:

• Athens Banner, Mar. 1906 - Dec. 1907 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Athens Historic Newspaper Archive collection in the Digital Library of Georgia.
• Red and Black Newspaper Archive collection on the University of Georgia Libraries website.
• Ghosts of Herty Field: Early Days on a Southern Gridiron by John F. Stegeman in the Heritage and general collections.
• The University of Georgia: A Bicentennial History, 1785-1985 by Thomas G. Dyer in the Heritage and general collections.
• Rites of Autumn: The Story of College Football by Richard Whittingham in the general collection.
• Oh, How They Played the Game: The Early Days of Football and the Heroes Who Made It Great by Allison Danzig in the general collection.
• Only a Game interview with author John J. Miller, 21 May 2011.
• The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football by John J. Miller via PINES.
• "Political Football: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and the Gridiron Reform Movement" by John S. Watterson in Presidential Studies Quarterly (Summer 1995) from ProQuest Research Library via GALILEO.
• New York Times 1851-1980 online archives.
• Georgia Football 1900s History web page on the University of Georgia Athletic Association website.
• Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris in the Biography collection.
• Woodrow Wilson by H. W. Brands in the Biography collection.
• David Crenshaw Barrow by Thomas Walter Reed in the Heritage and Biography collections.

1 April 1964: Autographing Party for Athens Book

On this day in 1964, The McGregor Company bookstore on East Clayton Street hosted an autographing party for the authors and contributors to the newly published book, Athens: Georgia's Columned City by Kenneth and Blanche Marsh. McGregor Company, located where The Firehouse bar is today, sold each hard-backed, 84-page volume for $3.25.

The Marshes were not Athens natives, but from Greenville, South Carolina. Kenneth Marsh took the photographs of the buildings and his wife Blanche Marsh wrote the commentary for each published image. In their Acknowledgments page, they thank the  many locals who assisted them with the book, including Mary Claire Warren, who was also present at the signing and appeared on the front page photograph of the party in the Athens Banner-Herald the following day.

Several of the homes featured in the book have since been acquired, restored, and put to practical use by the University of Georgia, such as the Cobb-Treanor House on Lumpkin Street, the Joseph Henry Lumpkin House on Prince Avenue, and the Wray-Nicholson House on Hull Street. Interior shots of antique furniture and chandeliers in the Stevens Thomas House on the corner of Hancock and Pulaski Streets provide a glimpse into the building's past as home to the Young Women's Christian Association, before it was converted into the office space it is today.

Other buildings in the book are now gone, including the Thurmond-Cofer House on Dearing Street, which was torn down to build Dearing Garden Apartments in 1965; the Mell House on the corner of Rutherford Street and Milledge Avenue, which was torn down in the 1960s and is now the location of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority house; and the Hull-Morton-Snelling House on Hull Street, which was torn down in 1990 to build an extra parking lot for the Holiday Inn. 

The Marshes published similar books together about Greenville, South Carolina; Charlotte, Bath, and Flat Rock, North Carolina throughout the 1960s. Their Athens book was the only one written about a Georgia location.

Learn More:

• Athens: Georgia's Columned City by Kenneth and Blanche Marsh in the Heritage and general collections.
• Historic Houses of Athens by Charlotte Thomas Marshall in the Heritage and general collections.
• Athens: A Pictorial History, 1801-2001 by James K. Reap in the Heritage and general collections.
• A Postcard History of Athens, Georgia by Gary L. Doster in the Heritage and general collections.
• A Guide to Architectural Styles in Athens, Georgia by the John C. Waters in the Heritage collection.
• Athens, Georgia: A Treasury of Historic Architecture by Mari L. Berry and Lisa Vogel in the Heritage and general collections.
• Souvenir of Athens, Ga. by Albin Hajos in the Heritage and general collections.
• The Columns of Athens: Georgia's Classic City by William Columbus Davis in the Heritage collection.
• Athens Banner-Herald, Apr. 1964 - Jun. 16, 1964 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation website.
• Athens Historical Society website.

6 January 1869: Madame Sophie Sosnowski's Female Institute

On this day in 1869, the following notice appeared in the Southern Watchman newspaper:

Madame Sosnowski was born in Germany in 1809, to a privileged and wealthy family that ensured her education even after the death of her parents. In 1833, she married Joseph Stanislaus Sosnowski, who had been exiled for taking part in a Polish uprising. They first went to France, but when forced out there, decided to seek a new life in the United States, settling in Erie, Pennsylvania. They lost everything, mostly money Madame Sosnowski had brought to the marriage, in the Financial Panic of 1837, and not long after, Joseph died, leaving his wife penniless with four children to rear on her own. At this time, Madame Sosnowski took a position at the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, and began her career in women's education as an instructor in Music, German, and French.

The northern climate, however, was not amenable to Madame Sosnowski, and she left New York for positions in the southeast: Charleston, South Carolina; Macon, Georgia; and later started her own school in Columbia, South Carolina in the early 1850s. She stayed in Columbia during the Civil War, using her vacations to go to Virginia to volunteer in hospitals and ministering to wounded soldiers when their trains stopped in Columbia. Her eyewitness account of the burning of the city of Columbia on February 17, 1865, is part of the Papers of the Sosnowski Family, 1828-1948 collection at the University of South Carolina's South Caroliniana Library.

After the war, Lucy Cobb Institute hired Madame Sosnowski to be their principal, and hired her two daughers, Callie (Caroline) Sosnowski and Sophie Schaller, and her son-in-law, Frank Schaller to teach at the school. Her time at Lucy Cobb was short-lived; though there was no publicity about the matter, a disagreement with the Board of Trustees caused Madame Sosnowski to leave the school in December, 1868, at which time she placed her first ad for her own girls' school, later renaming it The Home School. Her departure from Lucy Cobb took many of her pupils with her, causing further financial problems for an institution that had struggled through the war years.

Madame Sosnowski opened her new girls' school with her daughter Callie; Sophie and Frank had gone to Sewanee, Tennessee for Frank to continue his teaching career. In 1867, Sophie Schaller died giving birth to her namesake daughter. Madame Sosnowski and Callie reared little Sophie and older sister, Ida, in Athens while running their school. Sophie would later marry Charles Holmes Herty, a revolutionary chemist and founder of University of Georgia athletics.

The Home School was known for its instruction in French, German, and music, and unlike other female academies of the time, did not have recitals or other public exhibitions by the students, since Madame Sosnowski believed they were "incompatible with true feminine grace and delicacy." Augustus Longstreet Hull noted in his collection, Annals of Athens, that Madame Sosnowski was "highly educated, a brilliant musician and of very distinguished appearance. It was an education to a girl to be associated with the Madame and Miss Callie."

The Home School closed not long after the death of Madame Sosnowski in 1899. Its final location was in the Joseph Henry Lumpkin House on Prince Avenue, now used for seminars by the University of Georgia School of Law. A collection of items associated with the Home School is available in the University of Georgia's Madame Sosnowski Collection, 1869-1917 in the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Madame Sosnowski, her daughters Callie and Sophie Schaller, and her grandaughters Sophie Herty and Ida Peacock are all buried together at Oconee Hill Cemetery.

Learn More:

• Southern Watchman, Jan. 1868 - Feb. 1871 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• The Web of Southern Social Relations: Women, Family, and Education by Walter J. Fraser in the Heritage collection.
• Sherman and the Burning of Columbia by Marion Brunson Lucas in the general collection.
• Higher Education for Women in the South: A History of the Lucy Cobb Institute, 1858-1994 by Phinizy Spalding in the Heritage collection.
• Oconee Hill Cemetery, Athens, Georgia, Volume I by Charlotte Thomas Marshall in the Heritage and general collection.
• Annals of Athens, 1801-1901 by Augustus Longstreet Hull in the Heritage collection.
• The Southern Magazine (Volume 11), pp. 383-384, by the Southern Historical Society on Google Books. 
• A Polish Family in the South by Edward Kowalczyk on the Polish Roots website.
• Athens: A Pictorial History by James K. Reap in the Heritage, Reference, and general collections.
• Historic Houses of Athens by Charlotte Thomas Marshall in the Heritage and general collections.

More New Books in the Heritage Room

On this day, we'd like to tell you about more of the new books now available in the Heritage Room.

• Terrell County, Georgia Newspaper Clippings, Volume III (1877-1880) and Volume V (1886-1889) by Elizabeth Evans Kilbourne (we already have Volume IV)
  
• History of the Colored Race in America by William T. Alexander (originally published in 1887)
• Clinch County, Georgia, Marriage Records Index, 1846 to 1962 by Jessie H. Paulk and Delma W. Paulk
• North Carolina Slaves and Free Persons of Color: Iredell County by William L. Byrd III and John H. Smith
• The Most Dangerous Branch: Slavery, the Courts, and the Constitution by Randall C. Young
  
• History of the Underground Railroad by Col. William M. Cockrum (originally published in 1915)
• The Gettysburg Nobody Knows edited by Gabor S. Boritt
• Guide to Tracing Your African Ameripean Civil War Ancestor by Jeanette Braxton Secret
• Voices from the Past: 104th Infantry Regiment, USCT Colored Civil War Soldiers from South Carolina edited by J. Raymond Gourdin
• Bounties to Black Soldiers by William W. Belknap (originally published in 1870)
• Tapestry: A Living History of the Black Family in Southeastern Connecticut by James M. Rose and Barbara W. Brown
  
• Cecil County, Maryland, Indentures 1777-1814 by Jerry M. Hynson
• Register of Free Blacks, Rockingham County, Virginia, 1807-1859 by Dorothy A. Boyd-Rush
• Pittsylvania County, Virginia, Deeds 1765-1774 by Lucille C. Payne and Neil G. Payne (covers Deed Books 1, 2, and 3)
• Blacksburg by Richard A. Straw (Images of America series)

19 August 1916: Polio Epidemic Affects Travel Rules For Children

On this day in 1916, the following announcement was published on page 4 of the Athens Banner:

South Carolina And Infantile Paralysis

The following has been issued by the Seaboard Air Line Railway, concerning the South Carolina quarantine against infantile paralysis:

South Carolina. --"Railroad ticket [sic] will not be sold to children under sixteen (16) years of age unless a certificate is furnished by local Board of Health, where one exists, and where no local Board of Health exists, by family physician residing in the locality showing that child has not been in contact with case of Infantile Paralysis and has not had the disease this year."

The summer of 1916 saw the first epidemic of polio (poliomyelitis virus) in the United States. It began in New York City, where by the end of the year, they would have over 9,000 cases and 2,448 deaths. The epidemic was most prevalent along the east coast, and nationwide there were at least 27,000 cases and 6,000 deaths.

Little was known about the virus at the time. It had only been identified as a virus eight years earlier, and it was unclear how it spread, though it was prevalent in the summer. Despite the name "infantile paralysis," teens and adults could also catch the disease; Franklin Delano Roosevelt was 39 when he was stricken in August, 1921. In the early 1950s, 35% of those who contracted polio were adults.

The symptoms for polio mimicked a common flu: fever, aches, sore throat, stiffness, nausea, and fatigue, so the virus was not always immediately recognized as a more serious condition. Most of those who contracted the disease were not aware and had few, if any symptoms, and only 1% experienced permanent paralysis.

Even as late as the 1940s, the primary form of control for the disease was quarantine. When muscles affecting breathing were paralyzed, patients could be placed in a tank respirator (also known as an "iron lung"), but only a few hundred hospitals in the entire nation even accepted polio patients.

In 1934, Roosevelt and his law partner, Basil O'Connor, started "the Birthday Balls," celebrations on Roosevelt's birthday held all around the nation as a fundraiser to fight polio. The initial ball raised $1 million in donations. In 1937, Roosevelt established the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (later the March of Dimes), to help fund researchers looking for cures and vaccines. Among those they funded was Jonas Salk, in 1949.

The first polio vaccine was approved for use on April 12, 1955, the anniversary of Roosevelt's death. It was a an Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) delivered by injection. An Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) that used a live virus was developed by Albert Sabin in the late 1950s replaced the Salk vaccine in the United States until 2000, when the IPV became the recommended procedure again. In other parts of the world where the virus is still endemic, the OPV is still distributed because it provides intestinal immunity.

Learn More:

• Athens Banner, Jun. 1916 - Oct. 1916 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio by Jeffrey Kluger in the general collection.
• Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine by Jane S. Smith in the general collection.
  
• A Paralyzing Fear: The Story of Polio, documentary by Nina Gilden Seavy in the DVD collection.
• Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio by Anne Finger in the general collection.
• The Polio Paradox: What You Need to Know by Richard L. Bruno in the general collection.
• History of Public Health in Georgia 1733 - 1950 by Thomas Franklin Abercrombie in the Heritage collection.
• A Chapter of Child Health: Clarke County and Athens, Georgia 1924-1928 by the Commonwealth Fund Child Health Demonstration Committee in the Heritage collection.
  
• The Squire of Warm Springs: FDR in Georgia 1924-1945 by Theo Lippman in the biography collection.
• Beside These Waters: The Story of Warm Springs, Meriweather County, Georgia by Eugenia Flourney Harper in the Heritage collection.
• The March of Dimes website.
• Whatever Happened to Polio? online exhibit by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
  

23 June 1810: Partnerships Created and Dissolved

On this day in 1810, the following two notices were published in the Georgia Express newspaper:

Athens, June 23. Married, on Tues. evening last by the Rev. Hope Hull, Mr. Thomas G. Lamar of SC, to Miss Martha L. Cary of this place.

and

Co-partnership Dissolved. The public are hereby informed, that the co-partnership of John Harwood, and Elizabeth, his wife, is this day dissolved by mutual consent; we therefore hereby forbid all persons trusting either of the said firm, on account of the other, on any conditions whatever, as we are determined to pay no debts for each other, from the date hereof.

John Harwood, Jun. Elizabeth Harwood.

Marriage records from this time were short two-line entries handwritten in the marriage book, and were easily lost. There is no record of the marriage of Miss Cary and Mr. Lamar in Clarke County's records.

Miss Cary was possibly a daughter of John Cary, who ran Athens' first hotel starting around 1803, and "housed a number of students before campus lodging became available." It is possible that is how Miss Cary met Mr. Lamar "of SC", as not all students at the early University of Georgia were from Georgia. Starting in 1811, Thomas G. Lamar's name appears on plats for Edgefield, South Carolina, approximately 100 miles from Athens.

The fate of the Harwoods is equally fuzzy. There is a marriage record from 27 October 1795 in Richmond County for John Harwood and Elizabeth Dawson, and they do not seem to have been living in Athens at the time. Divorce was complicated during the early years of the United States, and this sort announcement was an easier and cheaper way of alerting those with whom they might do business that they were no longer a single entity for the purpose of debts.

Despite the public announcement of their separation, five months later, on November 30th, a John Harwood from Richmond County, Georgia was issued a passport by Governor David B. Mitchell "to travel through the Creek Nation of Indians." The passport included "his wife, three children, and eight negroes." To gain a passport at this time, one had to provide character references and promise to behave well while in Creek territory, even though some of the purposes for entering the territory were "to view the country" with plans for later settlement.

Learn More:

• Clarke Co. (Athens), GA Newspaper Abstracts 1808-1820 abstracted by Faye Stone Poss in the Heritage and general collections.
• Antebellum Athens and Clarke County, Georgia by Ernest C. Hynds in the Heritage and general collections.
• Clarke County Marriages on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Edgefield County, South Carolina: Abstracts of Deed Books 1-12 by Ge Lee Corley Hendrix in the Heritage collection.
• History of Edgefield County from Earliest Settlements to 1897 by John Abney Chapman in the Heritage collection.
• 40,000 Early Georgia Marriages by Joseph T. Maddox in the Heritage collection.
• Georgia Marriages, Early to 1800 by Jordan R. Dodd in the Heritage collection.
• Passports Issued by Governors of Georgia, 1810-1820 by Mary Givens Bryan in the Heritage collection.
• Passports of Southeastern Pioneers, 1770-1823: Indian, Spanish, and Other Land Passports for Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia, North and South Carolina by Dorothy Williams Potter in the Heritage collection.
• Georgia's Virtual Vault on the Georgia Archives website.