Here©s Georgia! LIBRARIES - the Digital Library of Georgia

Macon, with eighty
manufactories, has also
twenty educational in
stitutions, including
~Wesleyan, the first char
tered female college in
the world
The value of Macon's
manufactured products
in 1914 was $18,861,000.
Fourteen railroad lines
radiate in all directions.
2O FACTS ABOUT GEORGIA
With a population of 82,554 in 1790, Georgia had reached
340,989 in 1820, and 1,057,286 in 1860. During every decade
up to 1840, its rate of increase in population was higher than
that of the United States. The present population of the State,
2,776,513, is thirty-three and one-half times its 1790 population,
and during the same period the population of the United States
has multiplied only twenty-three times.
Not in numbers only was Georgia notably progressive during
its first half century of statehood, but in education, science, com
mercial relations and wealth, as well as in agriculture. Railway
construction began in the early thirties, a complete system being
planned from the start. Cotton factories multiplied and grew fn
output. The first had been built near Washington in 1811. New
towns were springing up. Mechanics were in demand and held
in high esteem. Labor was everywhere respected.
In educational endeavor Georgia was an acknowledged leader.
The first State University in the United States was established in
Athens, Georgia, in 1784. The first free manual training school
was started there in 1803. The Constitution of the State of Geor
gia, adopted in 1777, had stipulated that "schools should be erected
in each county, and supported at the general expense of the
State," and these were established accordingly, and granted lands
and money to provide permanent funds to assist in their support.
At St. Marys in Camden County and at Augusta, are two dis
tinguished examples of these County Academies, with endow
ments dating from 1783. The first female college in the United
States, with authority to grant diplomas to women, was estab
lished at Macon, Ga., in 1836, the Wesleyan Female College.
In scientific research and invention Georgia also shows well in
the lead. The illustrious discoverer of anesthesia, Dr. Crawford
W. Long, was a Georgian, a modest country doctor in the town
of Jefferson when in March 1842, at 27 years of age, he first
employed sulphuric ether in a surgical operation. No greater