Early Families of McIntosh County, Georgia

A review of the historically influential families of McIntosh County, Georgia from colonial times to the Civil War.

The "early families" in this book are those whose presence in McIntosh County, Georgia, was established before 1860. The Civil War provides a convenient dividing point as the population and settlement dynamics of the county were greatly altered as a result of the war and the subsequent Reconstruction era. Many of the families reviewed here remained a part of the McIntosh County economic fabric after the Civil War, and are thus noted as such in the narrative. The personages and families included in the volume are those that had the most impact on the county historically or economically before the Civil War, and whose influences continued in succeeding generations after the war.

Buddy Sullivan is a fourth-generation coastal Georgian. He has researched and written about the history, culture and ecology of coastal Georgia for 35 years. He is the author of 30 books and monographs and is in frequent demand as a lecturer on a variety of historical topics. He is a recipient of the Governor's Medal in the Humanities from the Georgia Humanities Council in recognition of his literary and cultural contributions to the state. Sullivan's books include Georgia: A State History (2003) for the Georgia Historical Society, and two comprehensive histories, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater (revised and expanded 2018), for McIntosh County, and From Beautiful Zion to Red Bird Creek (2000), for Bryan County. The latter volume received the Georgia Historical Society's Hawes Award for Georgia's outstanding work of local history. In addition to the current monograph, his most recent books are A Georgia Tidewater Companion: Essays, Papers and Some Personal Observations on 30 Years of Research in Coastal Georgia History (2014), Sapelo: People and Place on a Georgia Sea Island (2017), Environmental Influences on Life & Labor in McIntosh County, Georgia (2018), Thomas Spalding, Antebellum Planter of Sapelo (2019), Life & Labor on Butler's Island: Rice Cultivation in the Altamaha Delta (2019), Blackbeard Island, A History (2019), Native American & Spanish Influences on McIntosh County, Georgia: An Archaeological Perspective (2019), and, forthcoming, Twentieth Century Sapelo Island: Howard E. Coffin & Richard J. Reynolds, Jr. (2020), Harris Neck & Its Environs: Land Use and Landscape in North McIntosh County (2020), Postbellum Sapelo Island: The Reconstruction Journal of Archibald Carlisle McKinley (2020), Early Families of McIntosh County, Georgia, 1736 to 1861 (2021), An Atlas of McIntosh County History (2020), and Notes on Coastal Georgia: Historical Viewpoints from a Life of Research & Writing (2021). Sullivan has contributed 12 articles to the online New Georgia Encyclopedia, and wrote the coastal chapter for The New Georgia Guide (1996). He was director of the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve from 1993 to 2013 and is now an independent writer and consultant living on his ancestral land overlooking the marshes and waters of Cedar Point in McIntosh County.