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AUGUSTA GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, Inc.



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AUGUSTA, GEORGIA

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The Society meets at 3:00 pm the first Thursday of every month in the second floor auditorium of the Augusta Museum of History.
 

ABOUT AGS

The Augusta Genealogical Society is a nonprofit organization. It was founded in Augusta, Georgia in September 1979, by 84 charter members and now has well over 1500 members in 44 states as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, Singapore, Germany and Ireland. AGS maintains a genealogical library, publishes a newsletter and journal, presents monthly lectures and semi-annual "Footprints" methodology seminars, co-sponsors semi-annual seminars with Augusta State University, and specializes in cemetery surveys. The Society is the proud recipient of four Certificates of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History. All mail should be directed to P.O. Box 3743, Augusta GA 30914-3743. We are located at 1109 Broad Street, Augusta GA. Our phone number is 706-722-4073.


WHAT'S NEW



PROGRAM PREVIEWS

by Janice M. Johnson

5 AUGUST 2010

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CONFEDERATE GOLD?

Dr. Marshall P. Waters, like many retirees from fast-paced professional careers, enjoys having time for other interests, such as researching, writing, and speaking about Civil War history. We first became acquainted with Mark last spring when he attended Don Rhodes' AGS program and Don introduced him as an acquaintance from North Augusta. They recalled Mark's brother, Charlie Waters, quarterback for Clemson University and strong safety for the Dallas Cowboys in the 1970s. After Mark volunteered that day to present a program for AGS later in the summer, we learned that he is a member of the Civil War Roundtable in both Augusta and in Washington, GA, where he now resides. He is also a member of the Georgia Historical Society's Speaker's Bureau. Among his exciting slate of topics are those with stories about the existence of caches of missing gold and silver that disappeared in the waning days of the Confederate government after Richmond fell in the spring of 1865.

Mark's presentation at our August meeting is entitled "The Confederate Treasury and the Midnight Raid at Chennault, GA: May 24, 1865." He will track the wagon train that left Virginia and arrived in Georgia with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. The wagons carried bullion, coins, specie checks (paper money), and jewelry, some of which was accounted for and much of which was not. It is well known that Davis was captured along with others from the fleeing Confederate government, but what happened to the treasure?

Funds that reached Washington, GA were to be escorted by Union soldiers to a railhead in South Carolina. The detachment stopped for the night nineteen miles northeast of Washington in Lincoln County at a plantation owned by the Chennault family where over $250,000 worth of gold and silver was stolen. The 1865 value equals nine million dollars today. A portion was recovered, but about $179,000 ($3.6 million today) remains missing.

Waters traces his Georgia heritage back five generations to his g-g-g-grandfather's land grant in Wilkes County for Revolutionary war service. He enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve and was called to active duty after high school graduation and served on the aircraft carrier USS SARATOGA until 1960. In 1965, he was commissioned an Ensign Aeronautical Engineering Duty Officer in the Naval Reserve. He attended Duke University and earned his PhD from the University of Georgia.

Recalled to active duty in 1986, he was Associate Professor of Meteorology in the Division of Math and Science at the U.S. Naval Academy. He retired as Navy Captain after a career of over 39 years of enlisted and commission service.

As a civilian, Waters had an equally extended career as mathematician and physical scientist for USDA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and retired in 2001 from the National Weather Service, National Meteorological Center, Camp Springs, MD.

He is the author of a number of technical articles relating to meteorology and oceanography but happily wrote articles in 2007 and 2009 for The Surratt Courier, Surratt Society of Clinton, MD newsletter, about the distribution of the Confederate treasury.

The regular monthly programs are free and open to the public.
They are held at 3 p.m. at the Augusta Museum of History, 560 Reynolds Street. Entrance to the museum is from a parking Area entered from
either Sixth or Broad Streets.


GEORGIA BIBLIOGRAPHY

Prepared by Kathy Jarvis

Click here for bibliography


AGS TRUST FUND

Imagine That!! Donors Set Up AGS Trust Fund And Give Large Donation For Virginia Records. Two magnanimous AGS members brought new meaning to us of the word generosity when they endowed the Society with our very first ongoing private trust fund, to ensure the Society's future stability, and then made available another large fund to be used exclusively for colonial Virginia records for our Library.

The donors, who Insist on anonymity, have spent many years assembling details of the lives and times of their ancestors. Trips to research centers throughout the South and East enabled them to identify sources many genealogists only dream of finding. It is their wish that these types of documents and records be made available locally, hence the gift restricted to colonial Virginia, the home place of untold numbers of Southern families.

What a splendid piece of generosity, to their fellow members, and to their community!


AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

DUPLICATE BOOKS FOR SALE

For an updated list of duplicate books for sale
at AGS's Adamson Library
click here.

Contact pointingdog1206@comcast.net for further information.


WILKES COUNTY, GEORGIA
TAX RECORDS, 1785 – 1805


Volumes One & Two

Compiled & Published by
Frank Parker Hudson


AGS is happy to announce that Frank Parker Hudson’s 2-volume/1520 page Wilkes County, Georgia Tax Records, 1785-1805, is available for purchase. We raved about the books when we first saw them, and still consider them one of the finest additions public and academic libraries with genealogical collections, or genealogists with early Georgia ties, can make to their libraries.

And do you need the set? Consider this: Your late-18th century Georgia research is centered in Wilkes County, where nearly half of the population of Georgia was clustered in 1790. Then you learn that someone has published 1520 pages of names of all Wilkes Taxables for 1785-1805, with adjoining landowners and original grantee – 47,000 tax returns from all extant tax records, some never before microfilmed.

All genealogical data in the tax records is in the abstracts. Thousands of free white males 21 years old or older, owning no property, are also identified. Not only that, the microfilm roll & frame number of all returns found in the original records provide a splendid finding aid unavailable for any other set of Georgia records! That’s far from all! Locations of Militia Districts (using current maps as backgrounds!), names of successive captains of Militia Districts 1806-1830 as finding aids for future research, lists placing watercourses in counties, variant spellings of surnames, even a listing of current counties encompasssed by Wilkes County in 1785 is included.

It took Mr. Hudson more than 30 years to compile all the data; his presentation is bound to answer questions genealogists from Georgia to Texas and other points West have been posing for years in their attempts to sort out names and residences of Georgia ancestors. This is to say that the books could be helpful in any research.

To quote from Marguerite Fogleman's review of the books: "to say that the project of bringing these tax records to publication for genealogists was 'monumental' might be an understatement" is an opinion with which we agree wholeheartedly!

Printed on 1520 pages of acid-free paper, with library quality binding, the handsome set is sold only as a 2-volume set, due to 104 page common index.

Now On Special Sale! Now On Special Sale!

$30.00 at AGS Library; by mail for $30.00 + $5.00 p&h.
Check to AGS, P.O. Box 3743, Augusta GA 30914-3743
Phone 706-722-4073 or 706-738-2241


OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST

65,000 Individual-Name References in Ancestoring. The Augusta Genealogical Society began publishing its official journal, Ancestoring, in 1980. Each issue contains several thousands of individual-name entries from cemeteries, churches and other rich resource records in the Central Savannah River Area of Georgia and South Carolina. All 13 Volumes include historical background articles, cemetery articles, cemetery records from St. Paul's Episcopal Church, First Presbyterian Church, Magnolia Cemetery, Cedar Grove Cemetery, courthouse records, naturalizations and more. For more information on Ancestoring, click here.

Do You Have Suggestions For Improving The AGS Web Site or Need Help in Constructing Your Own Genealogical Society Web Site? If so please contact our AGS Web Master, by clicking here.


Like To Visit Our Query Page?

If you would like to view queries posted by past visitors to the AGS Web site seeking genealogical information relative to their ancestors who might have once resided in, or passed through, the Augusta, Georgia region, or, if you would like to post your own query for such information, you may do so by clicking here. This will take you to our Query page.


For links to other genealogical society Web sites click here.