Overview

Few men in the history of Georgia have come down to the present in hearsay and folklore as profusely and as controversially as has James Monroe Smith, who became a millionaire farmer around the turn of the twentieth century. He was born near Washington, Georgia, in 1839 and died on his plantation a few miles from Athens in 1915. Smith’s plantation “Smithonia” was measured in terms of square miles. He developed an empire of farming and allied interests, among which was a railroad to connect his plantation with other rail lines. He served terms in the state legislature in both the house and the senate, and in 1906 ran unsuccessfully for governor. The colorful career of Smith, a bachelor, did not end with his death but was kept alive in numerous claims and counter-claims in the settling of his estate. E. Merton Coulter seeks to separate fact from fiction in his account of Smith’s varied activities and the final dissolution of his wealth.

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9780820325255

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E. Merton Coulter came to the University of Georgia as an associate professor in 1919; he was named an emeritus professor of history in 1958 and continued to work on campus until his death in 1981. During his career, he wrote or edited more than thirty books and his contributions to periodicals were extensive. Coulter was coeditor of the ten–volume History of the South and author of two of the volumes in the series; he also served as editor of the Georgia Historical Quarterly for fifty years.

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