Georgia Magazine - August 2018 - 16

A peek into the past

PHIL SKINNER / PHILSKINNERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

Georgia Archives preserves
documents that tell state's history
BY NANCY BADERTSCHER

The Georgia Archives moved into its current home in Morrow in 2003.

who lives in Rome, reluctantly stopped at the archives
recently on the way to Macon with friends.
"I didn't want to go. I didn't know what I was doing," Salmon says.
Her opinion quickly changed. "It was just magnificent," she says. "I'm a true believer now."
Salmon was at the archives researching her family
tree, including a ninth-generation connection to Richard
Lee, an immigrant who was a cousin of Confederate
Gen. Robert E. Lee, she says.

Digital digging

The Georgia Archives once averaged 13,000 to
15,000 visitors each year. But state archives nationwide
are drawing fewer in-person visitors, while
their websites are receiving significantly
more hits, says Barbara Teague, executive
director of the Council of State Archivists
in Frankfort, Ky.
"Consumption is about the same," she
says. "It's just [that] people are getting to
records in different ways."
The 56 state and territorial archives
welcomed 127,000 visitors in 2016, compared with 285,000 in 2006, Teague says.
Still, the archives remains an important asset, says Christopher M. Davidson,

PHIL SKINNER / PHI

RAPHY.COM
LSKINNERPHOTOG

eorgians still discuss and fuss over aspects
of the state's history, even its role in the Civil
War more than 150 years ago. Because no
one alive today can serve as witness to what happened
way back when, maps, photographs, letters and other
documents preserved by the Georgia Archives in Morrow can help set the record straight.
The state has been officially documenting its history
and its people for 100 years now, having created the
Georgia Archives under orders of the state Legislature
in 1918. The archives has amassed a treasure-trove of
more than 260 million documents, with the oldest being
the Colonial Charter of 1732.
But arguably some of the most valuable documents
at the archives are the original land grants and plats that
show who was granted land in Georgia. These include
the original Colonial land grants as well as grants made
after statehood, when land was distributed by "headright" east of the Oconee River and by lottery west of
the Oconee. The "headright" system decreed that every
man older than 21 was entitled to up to 1,000 acres:
200 acres for himself, 50 for his wife, 50 for each of his
children and 50 for each of his slaves.
Last year, nearly 8,000 people
visited the state archives near Clayton
State University in Morrow. Another
83,000 tapped into its records via the
internet.
The Georgia Archives is a popular
destination for genealogists. They account for about 80 percent of in-person
visits and rely on U.S. Census records,
probate court records and county land
records to research their families. Legal
research is the second-most-common
reason for in-person visits, be it for
research on old laws or on rulings by
the Georgia Supreme Court and Court
of Appeals.
Sandra Salmon, a Mississippi native

More online at www.georgiamagazine.org

Georgia's own Button Gwinnett is listed on the
state's copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, on file at the Georgia Archives.
GEORGIA MAGAZINE

http://www.PHILSKINNERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM http://www.PHILSKINNERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM http://www.georgiamagazine.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Georgia Magazine - August 2018