January 8, 1734

1734 The Purrysburg sailed from Dover, England carrying 73 new Georgia colonists. Of the group, most were German Lutherans who had fled persecution in the Catholic region of Salzburg, which was located between Bavaria and upper Austria. This was the first of three shiploads of Salzburgers that would settle in Georgia.

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January 8, 1783

1783 Georgia signer of the Declaration of Independence Lyman Hall was elected governor. Born Apr. 12, 1724 in Wallingford, Conn., he received a college education and learned the practice of medicine. In 1752, he moved first to South Carolina and then to Sunbury, Georgia. By the 1770s, Hall was part of the revolutionary movement in Georgia, serving as a delegate to the Continental Congress.After the Revolution, he served as governor (1783-84) and later as a judge. In 1790, Hall bought a plantation in Burke County, where he died on Oct.17, 1790. In Dec. 1818, the General Assembly created a new county that was named in his honor. In 1848, the city of Augusta built a 50-foot-tall Signers Monument in the middle of Greene St. and moved the remains of Hall and George Walton to the site.

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January 8, 1807

1807 Jurist and politician David Irwin was born in Wilkes County, Georgia. Early in life Irwin became noted for his penmanship, which helped earn him a position as a superior court clerk. Becoming interested in the law, he studied and was admitted to the Georgia bar at age twenty. Though he served several terms in the state legislature and at two constitutional conventions, Irwin is most noted for his significant contributions to the codifying of Georgia law. Irwin, Thomas R.R. Cobb, and Richard H. Clark were chosen to incorporate all common law, statutes, and judicial decisions into a single unified code of law in 1858. The code had to be revised in 1861, 1868, and 1873 -- with virtually all the revision work being done by Irwin; the revised versions were popularly know as "Irwin’s Code." In addition to his political and judicial work, Irwin remained an active participant in the civic affairs of the state -- working to improve state railroads and serving on a local board of education. He died in Marietta on Nov. 26, 1885.

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January 8, 1821

1821 Military leader James Longstreet was born in the Edgefield District in South Carolina (an area near present-day North Augusta) while his mother was visiting her husband’s parents. Shortly after his birth, they returned to the family farm near present-day Cleveland,Georgia. Here he lived until he was nine, when he moved to Augusta to live with his grandfather Augustus B. Longstreet. Longstreet attended West Point, where he roomed with future Civil War generals William Rosecrans, John Pope, and A.P. Stewart. After graduating from West Point, Longstreet served in the Mexican War and eventually was promoted to major in the U.S. Army. After the secession of southern states in 1861, Longstreet resigned his commission and offered his services to the Confederacy. Initially, he was appointed colonel of an infantry unit, but soon he was promoted to brigadier general. Longstreet distinguished himself in the battles of First Manassas (Bull Run) and Seven Days, and he soon was Lee’s most respected subordinate.Longstreet’s reputation would be later tarnished -- many authorities would say unfairly -- by the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. [After the war, Jubal Early charged that Longstreet’s delay in getting his troops into position was responsible for the devastating Confederate defeat -- something Longstreet vigorously denied long after the war was over.] Later that year, Longstreet was the catalyst in the Confederate victory at Chickamauga, when he led his troops on a charge through an opening in the federal line, thus routing a major portion of the Union Army. Soon Longstreet was back in Virginia with Lee, where he stayed until the final surrender at Appomattox. After the war Longstreet returned to Gainesville. He ran an insurance company and then became a cotton merchant in New Orleans. When he joined the Republican Party, many of his fellow southerners turned against him. Thereafter, he took a number of jobs with the federal government, including serving as U.S. Minister to Turkey, U.S. marshal for Georgia, and a U.S. railroad commissioner. In June 1881, Longstreet returned to Gainesville, Ga. where he spent the rest of his life. served in a number of different politically appointed positions. Here he penned the autobiographical From Manassas to Appomattox and contributed much of the information that his wife, Helen Dortch Longstreet, used in her book, Lee and Longstreet at High Tide. He died in Gainesville January 2, 1904.

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January 8, 1821

1821 Meeting at Chief William McIntosh’s settlement at Indian Springs, Creek and U.S. representatives signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, in which the Creeks ceded their lands between the Ocmulgee and Flint rivers. For the first time, Georgia’s boundaries extended westward beyond the Ocmulgee River.

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January 8, 1825

1825 Inventor Eli Whitney died in New Haven, Conn.

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January 8, 1827

1827 James Holt Clanton was born in Columbia County, Ga. He became a lawyer and fought in the Mexican War. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Clanton became a colonel in the 1st Alabama Cavalry and fought in the Battle of Shiloh. He fought in the Atlanta Campaign and in Nov. 1863 was promoted to brigadier general. After the war, he returned to the practice of law. He was killed in Knoxville, Tenn. on Sept. 27, 1871 -- apparently by a former Union officer who was drunk.

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January 8, 1831

1831 John Pemberton, who developed the formula for Coca-Cola, was born in Knoxville, Georgia.

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January 8, 1942

1942 One month and one day from the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the first buildings of the new Georgia Air Depot were completed. Located on a former dairy farm in Wellston, Ga., these were used as headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers, which was building a new base for the Army Air Corps. Later, facility would become Warner Robins Air Force Base

January 8, 1961

1961 Gov. Ernest Vandiver called a special meeting of the State Board of Regents, University of Georgia president O.C. Aderhold, and other state officials. They met at the governor’s mansion to discuss the federal court order directing immediate desegregation of the University. They also debated where to house Charlayne Hunter and decided to place her alone in a Myers Hall dorm room.

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