- I am in every way a Georgian.

And if you read enough about our state's revolutionary history, the names of Georgia's 159 counties start to click: Gwinnett, Hall, Walton.

And one of our stops in this episode is a perfect example.

In North Georgia, Habersham County gets its name from Joseph Habersham, who was not only a politician but a soldier, and also one of the early architects of the US Postal Service.

In 1791, President George Washington, which is the namesake of Washington County, and the man who gave Habersham that job, made his one and only visit to Georgia, a trip that connected people and a president.

During the revolutionary period, his last name was synonymous with Georgia politics.

He was a military leader and a shrewd operator.

Not afraid to challenge the King.

And in early America, President George Washington even put him in charge of the mail.

This is "Marked," a series that zooms in on Georgia and its backstory, one historical marker at a time.

I'm Maiya May, and I'm here at Georgia historical marker, 068-7, to tell you the story of this really cool spot up here in North Georgia, and about the man who called it home.

(upbeat music) (clock clicking) During the Revolutionary period, most of the action was down south in Savannah.

And up here in North Georgia, it was kind of quiet.

This was like the mountainous frontier.

And for part of the year, this was home to one of the most influential people during Georgia's Revolutionary period.

And that man is Joseph Habersham.

- Joe Habersham is among that younger generation, the sons of Georgia's original founders, you know, the men who led early Georgia in the 1750s and '60s.

Now by the 1770s, the sons are ready to exert themselves onto the scene, and he is at the forefront of that.

- His daddy was James Habersham Senior, a very wealthy merchant.

And he came to Georgia in 1738.

- All right, so before we get too far into Joe's story, we have to break down the Habersham family.

So first of all, they are from England.

And then there's James Habersham.

He's the father.

He is the patriarch.

- [Greg] James is a loyalist, the term not necessarily kind of at the forefront back then as it is now.

He was a member of the King's government.

He was a member of the colonial government at a high ranking level.

- [Clay] James Habersham Senior was totally pro-monarchy.

He was a temporary governor for about two years while James Wright was gone.

So he was loyal to the Crown.

- And then there's his three sons, James Junior, our guy Joseph, and then the third brother, John.

- His three sons became Patriots.

Were revolutionaries, right?

The Revolution split families.

It split communities, it split families.

I guess the most famous family to split was Benjamin Franklin.

- It's not an uncommon dynamic in civil wars.

Throughout history, fathers are typically more conservative, the sons more eager to challenge societal norms.

- [Clay] If you go to the Colonial cemetery where the daddy is buried, he's buried, and then there's a little marker there, but right beside him is a big shrine where Joseph is, and I think some of the other Habershams there.

- The wealth generated by James Harbersham's plantations and his mercantile stores allowed him to send his boys to get an education.

Like the sons of many well-to-do Southerners, especially planters and merchants, Joe Habersham is sent north.

They would send their sons either to Princeton, sometimes Harvard or to England to get educated.

Joe Habersham is sent to England to further his education.

Like many Southern boys, they return eager to play a part in what's happening.

Joe is no different.

1771 when he arrives back to Savannah, we've just had the Boston Tea Party.

Things are accelerating.

- [Maiya] Savannah is where Joe really starts rolling up his sleeves, getting to work on what's happening in Georgia.

- Joe Habersham joins the Liberty Boys, which is Georgia's version of the Sons of Liberty, founded by Sam Adams in Massachusetts during the Stamp Act Crisis.

It is comprised of all groups of society, all white males.

They are wreaking havoc throughout Savannah, disrupting all phases of colonial government.

- Liberty Boys tarred and feathered somebody in the summer of 1775 because you went into a tavern down there and gave a toast and said, "Damnation to the Patriots."

So they were creating havoc and keeping it all stirred up.

- The Liberty Boys nicknamed by Georgia's Royal Governor, Sir James Wright, as the Sons of Licentiousness, because of the trouble they caused him.

- A lot of these men who are young and wielding influence with property and/or money run in the same circles: Button Gwinnett, George Walton, a lot of these names you hear in Georgia's history were part of the same crew in some form or another.

- Joe Habersham is one of the most active and energetic Liberty Boys.

He is able to secure leadership positions in the militia.

He's able to secure political positions of influence, most notably, his position on the Council of Safety, which is a very determined, motivated force for patriotism in Georgia.

But throughout the colonies, there are councils of safety everywhere, and they operate under the idea of you are with us or you are against us.

And they were able to successfully convince many loyalists with leanings to eschew those beliefs and join the rebel calls.

- [Maiya] And in May of 1775, Joe Habersham gets a crew together to really start some trouble.

- In the spring of 1775, Joe Habersham leads a cadre of young revolutionaries to steal the King's gunpowder.

- They stormed the King's magazine in Savannah.

That was in May of 1775.

And these were all young.

One of them was Noble Wimberly Jones, who was the son of a great loyal Crown supporter, just like James Habersham Senior.

And this is his son that's a revolutionary as well.

So he was there.

Edward Telfair was another one.

- [Greg] They then send that gunpowder to Boston to be used against the King's men in the deadly fighting on Bunker Hill.

- They stole the gunpowder.

Some say they dispersed the gunpowder, sent it up to the Northern colonies, you know, to help the Patriots up there.

But that was just the beginning of it.

In July, they took a British ship that was called the Philippi.

The Provincial Congress in Georgia had become aware that that ship was off for Tybee Island, and the decision was made by Samuel Elbert and Joseph Habersham and Oliver Bowen to go and take the ship.

The Philippi was coming, and it had ammunition on it.

It had powder shot muskets, but it was for the Indian trade.

And the provincial Congress gave them a school which they outfitted with a pivot gun, and they christened it The Liberty.

And they went down to Savannah River and got out there with the Philippi right off the coast of Tybee.

The Philippi was big and The Liberty was able to maneuver around it.

And they captured the ship, all of the weapons and the powder that was stored on it.

And so Joseph Habersham was in involved in that.

- He stole weapons from the Crown to then turn around and use against them.

That's, that's pretty bold.

But a few months later, Joe gets even bolder.

- [Greg] On January 16th, 1776, Joe Habersham volunteers to lead a group of rebels to arrest Governor James Wright and his council members at the Government House, which is the official Governor's residence in Colonial Georgia.

And so as James Wright is meeting with his council members at dinner at the Government House underneath a portrait of King George II, Wright is discussing this ever-growing mobocracy that's kind of taking over.

(door thudding) In past the guards, rush Joe Habersham and company.

Council members flee out the windows and through the door, and Habersham walks up to James Wright and gently places his arm on James Wright's shoulder and says, "Sir James, you are my prisoner."

- And that's how they arrested him.

He was put under house arrest.

That was in January of 1776, so he was under house arrest.

He couldn't go anywhere.

- Now, Habersham was friends with James Wright.

James Wright was his father's best friend.

We don't know exactly Joe Habersham volunteered for this duty.

It may have been because he wanted to show his father's best friend that a new generation was taking over.

It may have been because he wanted to make sure that James Wright was treated well in the process.

- Joseph Habersham spent seven years in the military in the thick of the Revolutionary War, and he worked his way up.

He started in the Georgia militia.

And by the time the war was over, he was colonel in the Continental Army.

It's a job he actually inherits from Lachlan Macintosh, one half of the Macintosh-Gwinnett feud.

But politics, that's Habersham's thing.

He serves twice as the speaker of the Georgia General Assembly.

- That was the most powerful job in the state government, the Governor one.

After the American Revolution, the Speaker of the House was the one that truly had the power.

- Joe Habersham, Princeton-educated, English-educated, understands the importance of an educated populace.

- Georgia was coming out of the American Revolution, and that revolution did much damage to Georgia's civic organization.

It was very important for Georgia to get some kind of foundation on education.

- Habersham and a guy by the name of Abraham Baldwin convinced the legislature, they lobby for a a college in Georgia, which would be the first college in Georgia history.

Coming to be known as the University of Georgia.

- All right, so the next time you tailgate in Athens, remember that the person who lived here was one of the guys who helped make that possible.

And while UGA begins in 1785, two years later, it's time for the Constitution to be ratified.

And once again, Joe Habersham is in the mix.

- Following the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, the Constitution is finally ratified in Philadelphia, but that doesn't mean that it's anything official yet.

It is sent to the individual 13 states.

They hold their own ratifying conventions, and Joe Habersham is a part of that ratifying convention in Georgia.

- [Maiya] By just about every measure, this is the date in Georgia's history that matters: official statehood, the fourth state across the line of independence.

And Joe Habersham isn't done.

- Joseph Habersham is the mayor of Savannah from 1792 to 1793.

So it was a perilous time.

- It's perilous because Georgia is still trying to figure things out.

It's taking its first wobbly steps as a state.

And as if he hasn't done enough, Joe finally gets tapped to serve in the federal government.

Joseph Habersham is put in charge of the mail.

- [Greg] George Washington saw him as someone incredibly capable and trustworthy.

Washington tabs Joe Habersham to be US Postmaster.

- And Postmaster General is a really important job, especially during this time period.

- Habersham understood the importance of an operating mail system that largely is sending newspapers and pamphlets across the country, which is incredibly important for a young democratic republic, for people in places that are further away from the capitol, in Philadelphia and New York, to know what's going on.

- That was no trivial position.

The only way people could communicate was through writing and through the mails.

It made the country function.

- He saw it as so important that anyone that impeded such delivery was un-American, if not treasonous, because the mail was so vital to a democratic republic.

- He's also postmaster under John Adams.

But when Jefferson becomes president, then that's the other party, Jefferson offers him a cabinet position, but he didn't want it.

- Thomas Jefferson asked him to be Secretary of the Treasury, an incredibly important job, especially as the nation changed from federalist policies to democratic Republican policies.

- I'm suspecting that he was a federalist because he supported many of the policies of Alexander Hamilton, which includes the Bank of the United States.

- [Maiya] Joseph Habersham also served as president of the US Bank in Georgia until his death in 1815, at the age of 64.

- Joe Habersham was one of early Georgia's most important founding fathers.

He led Georgia's revolutionary movement.

He led Georgia's early statehood government.

He was a national figure, admired by Washington and Jefferson.

He helped found the University of Georgia, who, two and a half centuries later, is world renowned.

Go dogs!

- When we've been digging into these stories, there's often a similar thing, right?

There's an interesting person that does an interesting thing that has some real influence over Georgia, but Joseph Habersham is a little different.

This is a guy who did all kinds of interesting things that had a ripple effect all over early America, and it should make us wonder, for a guy that's so busy, when did he get a chance to spend summers here in North Georgia?

Regardless, the people here in aptly titled Habersham County are often reminded of what he did for Georgia, early America and its people.

I'm Maiya May, and we'll see you at our next stop.

(tense music) He was America's very first CEO.

He packed his bags for a road trip to the deep south.

It was a gesture of unity and of leadership, and it also sent a clear message, that the United States of America wasn't just ready to stand on its own, but that the office of the President reports to the people.

This is "Marked," a series that zooms in on Georgia and its backstory, one historical marker at a time.

I'm Maiya May and I'm here in Savannah, Georgia, to tell you the story of America's very first president and his only visit to the deep south.

(upbeat music) (clock ticking) When you're in Savannah, you can't go five feet without running into something old with a story to tell.

In the late 18th century, almost everything was routed through this town.

In 1791, it's also the southern most city of the original 13th colonies, and that's just one of the reasons that in the same year, President George Washington, who spends most of his time up north, decided to head south.

If you're in Savannah, talking George Washington or anything historical, that means talking to one person, Stan Deaton, Senior Historian with the Georgia Historical Society.

What was the importance of him doing this tour?

Why was it important for him to go and meet Americans out in the field, in the wild, on the ground?

- Well, the American Revolution had been over for about 10 years by that point, and he sort of embodied, for a lot of people, the American nation.

He thought it was time for him to get out and come down to the southern states where, believe it or not, even though he was a Virginian, he had never been south of Virginia.

So he decided to come out and see North Carolina, South Carolina, and here in Georgia.

- South of Virginia, and the further south you go from Pennsylvania even, there are less and less and less citizens, a lot of people, half of them or more, depending upon where you're living and at what exact date are enslaved or free Blacks, whose opinions don't matter in the grand scheme of early American politics.

But George Washington understands that it is important to connect north and south, especially Charleston and Savannah, because those are two cities that are very important to America's export game.

- [Maiya] And because the South doesn't have a lot in terms of population, it's kind of the wild country.

- Traveling in the 18th century was probably worse than we even imagined it to be.

Sitting on a horse hour after hour after hour, 20, 30 miles a day, day after day after day, with very few roads, even fewer roads that resemble anything like finished roads.

Rain or snow, throws everything into confusion.

A tour like Washington's requires a great deal of logistical machinations and logistical organizing just to get everyone from point A to point B. During his trip, he was able to stay in what they considered close contact with the Vice President John Adams.

- President Washington also isn't doing this trip solo.

There's a whole group.

There's staff, including his secretary and right hand, Major William Jackson, a few horses, a couple of carriages.

So wanting to avoid a deep south summer, the trip south from Philadelphia starts around 11:00 AM on March 21st, 1791.

- [Stan] He had an entourage of about 10 people.

We know how presidents travel today, with the security they have and the administrative staff that they have.

He really didn't have any of that.

He also traveled with one of his dogs, which enjoyed.

- Washington is an observer of everything around him.

And as you travel by horseback hundreds and hundreds of miles, he sees a society that in some ways certainly resembles the cavalier nature of his home in Virginia.

He observes what we come to know as southern gentility.

- [Maiya] All along the way, he's being toasted and showered with dinner parties, meeting with local politicians and their wives.

Everyone is getting an up and close look at the first president.

This is a big deal.

And by April, he's winding his way through Virginia into North Carolina and down into Charleston.

- He was really taken aback by how well he was treated by southern elites, but also the more common folk that he encountered on his journey.

He has to stay at various locations on the road, sometimes actual ends by the side of the road and sometimes people's houses.

- So after getting through Virginia, the tobacco fields of North Carolina and into the Port of Charleston, President Washington and his team arrive here in Savannah on May 12th, 1791, almost two months after leaving Philadelphia.

- Savannah hasn't seen a celebration like this since the arrival of the final Royal Governor in 1760.

And so for George Washington, great fanfare, parades, parties, cannon firing their salute to him announcing his arrival.

He would be escorted by the town leaders, and so Georgia's finest, Noble Wimberly Jones, great Patriot leader, rebel during the Revolutionary War, and Joseph Joe Habersham.

They brought him into Savannah.

- So he came down the river and then he came up the bluff onto, of course, what is now River Street and then up to Bay Street.

And they had all the pomp and circumstance that you would imagine and think that they would do.

There were guns and cannons and fireworks and banners.

It was a moment never to be forgotten.

So he already had this mythic status as a leader.

He was in many ways a magnificent physical specimen.

He was about 6'2".

He looked great on horseback.

He was a natural horseman.

So even though he traveled by carriage, when he got outside town, he always stopped and got on his horse so that he came into town and he really sort of cut this majestic figure.

He looked the part, he had this aura about him.

- Like any VIP visitor, the President was wined and dined too.

And some of that took place right behind me, which was once the site of a place called Brown's Coffee House, a Savannah staple in those days, that was later torn down in 1889.

- The city's elite spent time with him nearly 24/7 it seemed.

Dancing, at feasts.

And George Washington has always been known to love dancing with the finer sort.

General Nathanael Greene's wife Caty, who lived in Georgia after the war, was a favorite of his.

He loved dancing with her, and he loved flirting with women, from Abigail Adams all the way down to Eliza Hamilton to Caty Littlefield Greene.

- He saw the city.

He acted as a tourist.

He had a big dinner at a city tavern with some of the muckety mucks that you would expect.

Washington loved to mingle, especially with the ladies.

Everywhere he went, his journals record that he danced the night away.

He drank punch.

He met veterans of the Revolution, veterans of his army like Lachlan Macintosh, who gave him a personal tour of the battlefield.

- [Greg] As part of his tour of Savannah, General Lachlan Macintosh wanted to show Washington the ground that the Siege of Savannah in October, 1779, was fought on, specifically the Spring Hill readout.

Washington as a general certainly was accustomed to viewing the scene and figuring out, you know, what land is best chosen for a battle.

Macintosh and Georgians wanted to know what he thought about the lay of the land in Savannah.

He was very diplomatic.

- [Maiya] George Washington actually wrote in his journal- - "To form an opinion of the attack at this distance of time, and the change which has taken place in the appearance of the ground by the cutting away of the woods, is hardly to be done with justice to the subject."

He knew how important the battle of Savannah had been, the Siege of Savannah, the failed attempt to retake the city from the British is one of the great American losses.

I think he felt that innately, you know, as a military man.

The astonishing thing to me is that he was here for four days.

Presidents still come to Savannah.

Important people come to Savannah for an hour or two.

- [Maiya] By the 15th of May, a Sunday, George Washington was about to leave town.

But Sunday also meant that President Washington was going to church.

Going to church meant going here, Christ Church of Savannah.

It's one of the oldest churches in Georgia, and that's why it's got the nickname the Mother Church.

Now, the actual church that George Washington attended burned down in the Savannah Fire of 1796, which also burned two thirds of the city.

- As he leaves Savannah, he stops at the rather famous plantation called Mulberry Grove, which was a gift to General Nathanael Greene after the Revolution ended, for his services in liberating Georgia.

- There are a lot of people, who feel like if George Washington at any point in the Revolution had gone down, if he had been shot, if he had been killed, Nathanael Greene probably would've taken over and would have finished the job.

- Greene dies shortly after the war, we believe of heat stroke, on the plantation.

Washington had a long and close relationship with Greene's widow, and so he made sure before he headed back north that he stopped to see her at Mulberry Grove to express pleasantries and condolences, because that was the first time he would see her after his hand-chosen leader's death.

- Savannah rolled out the red carpet for the President and his traveling party, hospitality that only a city like Savannah can provide, but it was time for them to make the turn and head back north.

- So he traveled north out of Savannah to Waynesboro first, which was named for Mad Anthony Wayne, one of his lieutenants during the Revolution.

And then he went on to Augusta, which at that time was Georgia's capital.

- I was reading some analysis from his journals and he commented on how interesting Augusta was laid out and how interesting some of the south was laid out from a mapping standpoint.

- Well, Washington from his youth had been a surveyor, and he had traveled into the back country of Virginia all the way to the Forks of the Ohio.

So he was an outdoorsman.

He loved being outside.

And of course, as a military person, he had studied terrain and topography, and so he was always interested in where cities were positioned, and particularly, how they might develop.

That was another thing that happened on this tour.

He was actually able to sort of see the country and understand better how it was going to expand in the coming years, which of course it did.

- By May 21st, 1791, George Washington's southern tour was just about over.

And as he's heading out of Augusta, he's now officially visited all 13 colonies.

He celebrated and embraced.

But his visit to Georgia wasn't just about pomp and circumstance and showing him a good time.

It's also important for a couple different reasons.

- Getting a view of him for Georgians must have been beyond electrifying, beyond gratifying.

I don't think we could actually imagine what that must have felt like to Georgians, because he is bringing to them not only his celebrity status and someone that we don't just recognize as being important.

We know that he is, at the core, this honest guy who believes in republicanism, meaning representative government, which is new.

It is new and it's scary.

But for the middling and lower classes, he had to have come across as something of a godsend.

Someone that is not just accepting of us as being part of this nation, but is willing to grant us or to embrace us as part of the body politic.

And that's the first time, certainly in American history, but really world history.

This is not something that is common and he is at the head of it.

- He didn't have to leave Philadelphia or New York.

He could have been very comfortable.

He put himself on those bad roads and in those taverns where the food was bad and the beds had fleas because he understood if this country was gonna survive, people had to see it and feel that it was a real thing.

I would argue that that visit did more to solidify the idea of the United States in the minds of the people at that time, probably than any other presidential visit.

- It may have only happened once, but the first president's visit to Georgia, a really big deal, is still kind of in the air around here.

There's the aptly named Washington Square.

There's the plaque just across the way on what's now a law office that commemorates one of the balls he attended in that very spot.

And of course, there's this marker here in Johnson Square that people stop and read every day because in Savannah history just kind of hangs out.

I'm Maiya May, and we'll see you at our next stop.

(tense music) We hope that we've been able to show you why these historical markers are more than just a spot along the side of a road.

They're an opportunity to zoom in on Georgia's story and in the process, widen your understanding of who we are and where we've been.

I'm Maiya May.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (bright music)