The Lynching of Ben Howard
In December 1864, Ben Howard watched as U.S. soldiers pillaged his slaveowner’s plantation in Liberty County, Georgia, torn between feelings of fear as the soldiers
Research – John Lambert Estate
John Lambert, a South Carolina planter, purchased a plantation in Liberty County in 1784. His death in 1786 produced a very unusual will, in which
Flanders Pray – A Community Leader
As the Civil War ground to an end, Liberty County, Georgia, was in disarray. It had been raided by Sherman’s Army, white families had fled
Holcombe’s 1870 Liberty County Census Fiasco: The Rest of the Story
In the summer of 1870, Charles R. Holcombe conducted an entirely fraudulent U.S. federal census enumeration for Liberty County, Georgia. Not only were there glaring
A Study in Courage: Liberty County’s African American Voters in 1868
In November 1868, Republican Ulysses S. Grant defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour for the U.S. Presidency on the national stage, but Seymour prevailed in the Georgia
Hannah and Plenty
On March 16, 1826, Eliza Bowler, a White woman wrote her will in Savannah, Georgia[1]. She was 47 years old, and suffering from dropsy.[2] Dropsy
An 1818 Interracial Marriage in Liberty County, Georgia
By Stacy Ashmore Cole (5/16/2022) Edited on 5/18/2022: Changed the paragraph on manumissions to show that it was still possible to manumit enslaved people by
Sent to Liberia by Jacob Wood
In 1844, Jacob Wood, a wealthy white planter of McIntosh and Liberty Counties in Georgia, wrote his will in Massachusetts, directing that all of the enslaved
Henrietta Hamilton, Free Woman of Color
In antebellum Liberty County, Georgia — amongst some of the wealthiest slaveowners of the time — Henrietta (“Hetty”) Hamilton, a free woman of color born
A Different Civil War Story
James and John Somersall were white brothers who lived in rice-growing, slave-owning Liberty County, Georgia. They were poor. They owned a few acres of land,