Important Dates in Georgia

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Important Dates in Georgia

1540 Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto passed through what is now Georgia.
1564 French settlers established a colony in Florida.
1565 King Philip II of Spain sent Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to drive the French out of Florida.
1566 Menéndez built a fort on St. Catherines Island.

1629 The region became part of a colonial land grant made by King Charles I of England.

1721 The English built a fort on the Altahama River.
1732 King George of England granted a 21-year charter to establish the Georgia colony.
February 12, 1733 James Oglethorpe and about 120 colonists arrived at the site of what is now Savannah.
1742 Troops led by Oglethorpe crushed a Spanish landing in the Battle of Bloody Marsh on St. Simons landing.
1754 The Georgia Colony was reorganized as a royal province.

March 1776 A British warship tried to seize 11 rice boats in the harbor of Savannah, but got only two of them.
1777 Georgia adopted its first Constitution.
July 24, 1778 Georgia ratified the Articles of Confederation.
December 1778 British troops captured Savannah.
1782 The British were finally driven out of Georgia.

January 2, 1788 Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the Constitution.

1793 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin near Savannah.

1838 Federal troops rounded up the last of the Cherokee Indians in Georgia and forced them to move to the Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.

January 19, 1861 Georgia became the fifth state to secede from the Union.
September 1863 Confederate troops won the Battle of Chickamauga.
September 1864 Union General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta.
December 1864 Sherman captured Savannah.

1868 Georgia was readmitted to the Union.
1869 Georgia was expelled from the Union because it refused to ratify the 15th Amendment (guaranteeing all male citizens the right to vote regardless of race).
July 17, 1870 Georgia was permanently readmitted to the Union.

1922 Rebecca Felton became the first woman U.S. Senator.
1943 Georgia became the first state to allow 18-year-olds to vote.
1961 Black children attended all-white schools in Georgia for the first time.
1962 Georgia abolished its county-unit voting system and reapportioned its senatorial districts.
1973 Maynard H. Jackson, Jr., was elected mayor of Atlanta, and became the first black mayor of a major Southern city.
1976 Former Georgia Governor James Earl Carter was elected President of the United States.

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SKC Films Library >> Georgia

This page was last updated on June 09, 2018.