Thursday, January 25, 6:00 pm, Dr. Paul Pressly, "The Story of Betty and Hercules, an enslaved Ossabaw Island couple."
Reserve your spot here: www.myhsf.org/events/lecture-series/
Historic Savannah Foundation's Lecture Series, "People, Places, and Stories that Define Savannah" is pleased to have Dr. Paul Pressly share the story of Betty and Hercules, an enslaved Ossabaw Island couple, who, along with a small group of enslaved people, escaped the island during the Revolutionary War. Dr Pressly’s lecture will address the flow of Black freedom seekers from Georgia to Spanish Florida and how it impacted the geography of slavery in the Southeast during the post-revolutionary period.
Paul Pressly is an educator and historian. He received his B.A. from Princeton University, Ph.D. in history from the University of Oxford, and a M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
He served as headmaster of The Savannah Country Day School from 1981 until 2004 and as president and chairman of national boards in Washington and Boston that set educational policy for independent schools, including the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS).
An historian, he is the author of several articles and a book, On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2013). The book was co-winner of the Bell Award from the Georgia Historical Society as the best book published on Georgia history in 2013. He is co-editor of a more recent book, Coastal Nature, Coastal Culture: Environmental Histories of the Georgia Coast (University of Georgia Press, 2018).
He was director of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance, which included researching and telling the story of the African Americans on the island. As part of this work, he organized a symposium on African American life on the Georgia coast and produced a book published by the University of Georgia Press, African American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: the Gullah-Geechee and the Atlantic World. In 2009, he received the Governor’s Award in the Humanities.
He currently serves on numerous boards, including Bethesda Academy, the Hodge Foundation, and the UGA Press Advisory Council. The University of Georgia Press is publishing his forthcoming book, A Southern Underground Railroad: Black Georgians and the Promise of Spanish Florida and Indian Lands in the spring of 2024.
The lecture will take place at Historic Savannah Foundation’s headquarters, located at 321 E. York Street. We will gather to mingle and enjoy a glass of wine at 5:30 p.m., and the discussion will start at 6:00 p.m. The event is open to the public; however, space is limited so reservations are recommended. Attendance is free for HSF members and $15 for non-members. Both members and non-members may RSVP by emailing Kendall Graham at kgraham@myhsf.org or calling 912-233-7787.
