Harris Neck & Its Environs

This monograph comprising a survey of the history of Harris Neck, interwoven with that of the northeastern and central sections of McIntosh County, Georgia, is largely extrapolated from my research from 2016 to 2019 contained in two books—a revised and expanded edition of the county history, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater, and a new volume, Environmental Influences on Life & Labor in McIntosh County, Georgia. The thematic intent of this study rests upon land use patterns and land ownership during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the section under discussion. While Harris Neck is the area most extensively covered, there is ample material relating to tracts, settlements and land use along the South Newport and Sapelo rivers, and the central sections of McIntosh County, including the settlements of Eulonia, Fairhope and Pine Harbor.

This monograph comprising a survey of the history of Harris Neck, interwoven with that of the northeastern and central sections of McIntosh County, Georgia, is largely extrapolated from my research from 2016 to 2019 contained in two books—a revised and expanded edition of the county history, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater, and a new volume, Environmental Influences on Life & Labor in McIntosh County, Georgia. The thematic intent of this study rests upon land use patterns and land ownership during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the section under discussion. While Harris Neck is the area most extensively covered, there is ample material relating to tracts, settlements and land use along the South Newport and Sapelo rivers, and the central sections of McIntosh County, including the settlements of Eulonia, Fairhope and Pine Harbor.

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 22 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), and An Atlas of McIntosh County History (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.