Once a year a tent would go up and the town would have a week of lectures, classes, concerts and events.  This was the Chautauqua, and it was a major event in the life of a rural community.  This week I describe a Chautauqua in Demorest thanks to a newspaper article I found through Digitize Habersham.  This is a local project that digitizes newspapers and other publications- it's searchable and a great resource if you're a fan of local history.

Link to Digitize Habersham

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Joseph Standing and another Mormon missionary were abducted from Northeast Georgia, and Standing was shot.  This week the murder of a religious missionary in the mountains near Rome, Georgia.

When I first started looking into Crawford Long I thought it would be too boring for a podcast episode- I was wrong.   Think you wasted your time partying in college?  This week a doctor from Georgia performs surgery on a sleeping patient using what was previously a recreational drug.

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This is an episode I did for a podcast called 'Civil War Sketches', that I don't do anymore.  It's the tale of Jefferson Davis' odyssey from Richmond to Georgia, ending with his arrest and the end of the Confederacy.

Eugene Talmadge dies before taking the oath of office, and three men step in with a claim to the chair.  Do you think politics are overly contentious, too partisan, and out of control right now? Have a look how elections were contested in the forties.

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This week we discuss the origins of Wilkes and Elbert County, the Battle of Kettle Creek, and who the city of Clarkesville was named for; but the podcast isn't about them.  It's about Old Dan Tucker.

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This week one of Georgia's more controversial governors, Eugene Talmadge.  He believed in the Bible, a thrifty government, and segregation.  We'll also digress into the County Unit system of voting and set up for next week- the year that Georgia had three governors.

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From James Mooney's 1902 book 'Myths of the Cherokee'.  What stars really look like, and why the possum's tail is bare.

As we prepare for the championship game, here's a few stories from the first two centuries or so of the University of Georgia.  

In this extra episode we discuss the shape note singing tradition.  Get ready to sing along!  Square...triangle...circle...

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