July 26, 1827

1827 Meeting at New Echota near present-day Calhoun, Ga., representatives of the Cherokee Nation adopted a national constitution patterned after that of the United States and made New Echota the national capital. At the time, the Cherokee Nation consisted of areas of northern Georgia and Alabama, southern Tennessee, and western North Carolina.

July 26, 1864

1864 Four days after Gen. McPherson’s death, Sherman named Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard to succeed McPherson as commanding general of the Union’s Army of the Tennessee. Sherman then had the Army of the Tennessee, led by the 16th Corps, begin shifting to the west of Atlanta. His objective was to destroy the rail line jointly used by the Atlanta & West Point and the Macon & Western to enter Atlanta from the south.

July 26, 1882

1882 Social activist and union organizer Lucy Randolph Mason was born in Clarens, Virginia. Her early years were devoted to such issues as women’s suffrage, child labor, and workers’ wages and job conditions. In the 1930s, she came to the South to organize textile mills and other manufacturing plants for the Congress of Industrial Organizations. In 1937, Mason moved to Atlanta, where she continued to promote the labor movement until her retirement in 1951. She died in Atlanta in 1959.

July 26, 1889

Georgia cities and towns first incorporated by acts approved on July 26:

1889 Colquitt (Miller County)

July 26, 1904

Georgia cities and towns first incorporated by acts approved on July 26:

1904 Westminster (Fulton County)

July 26, 1908

1908 Gov. Hoke Smith signed a joint resolution of the Georgia General Assembly creating a legislative committee to investigate Georgia’s convict lease system, the state prison farm, and the Georgia State Reformatory.

July 26, 1913

1913 Prosecuting and defense attorneys spent the day making final preparations for the murder trial of Leo Frank, which was set to begin July 28. Other attorneys interviewed by the Atlanta Constitution predicted this would be the "greatest legal battle of Southern history."

July 26, 1992

1922 The American Hellenic Educational Progressive Assocation, largest Greek-American organization in the United States, was founded in Atlanta.

July 26, 1996

1996 This was the eighth day of the 1996 Summer Olympics -- and day 7 of Olympic competition.

July 26, 1997

1997 Celebrated folk artist Mattie Lou O’Kelley died in Atlanta at age 89. Born March 30, 1908, in Maysville, Georgia, O’Kelley was the seventh of eight children. She grew up on the family’s 129-acre farm, which raised cotton, corn, and hay. As a girl, she learned to can vegetables, sew quilts, and do the various chores expected of children on farms. Later, she would portray scenes of her childhood in the primitive painting style for which she became nationally famous. With only a ninth-grade education, O’Kelley worked as a seamstress, school cafeteria cook, and a mill worker before being forced to retire at age 50. Four years later, she decided to take up painting as a hobby. As a self-taught artist, she began painting scenes she recalled from her childhood in Banks County. Her style was simple though full of color and detail. Five collections of her paintings were published, and one of her paintings was used on the cover of the June 1980 issue Life magazine. Perhaps her most important work is the 1983 collected series, From the Hills of Georgia: An Autobiography in Paintings. Among the paintings in this collection are "Cotton Ginning Time" and "Lillie’s Pound Supper." Characteristic of her style, both are full of action and show scenes from rural life in Georgia as observed by a young child. American art experts have rated O’Kelley as one of this country’s major artists. As one noted authority observed: "Her art will be collected, avidly collected, respected and exhibited for as long as there is an America."

July 26, 1998

1998 Former Dodger pitching great Don Sutton was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Sutton, who played professional ball from 1966 to 1988 won 324 games during his career. When asked what his favorite park to pitch in was, he replied Atlanta -- "because I don’t remember losing very much here." In 1989, Sutton returned to Atlanta as a member of the Atlanta Braves’ announcing team and today lives in Roswell, Ga.