Joel Chandler Harris
Thanks in part to Walt Disney’s "Song of the South," Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus folk tales are among the most recognizable icons in America, and Putnam County prominently displays its pride in this home-town boy.
Harris was born the illegitimate child of Mary Harris in Eatonton on December 9, 1848. A benefactor paid Harris’s tuition to Eatonton Academy where he was schooled for a few years. At the age of 14 when his formal education ended, Harris became a printer’s devil for The Countryman, a local newspaper owned by Joseph Addison Turner. While working at Turnwold, Turner’s plantation, Harris befriended elderly slaves George Terrell and "Old Herbert" who passed on to him the tales of Brer Rabbit and the other critters in the Briarpatch.
At Turnwold, Harris studied to become a journalist, and after the Civil War he left Putnam County for newspaper jobs in Macon, Savannah and New Orleans. In 1879 he went to work for the Atlanta Constitution, and a year later published the first of the Uncle Remus tales “Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings.”
Harris died in 1908 in his Atlanta home. In 1946, Walt Disney released a movie to honor Uncle Remus and his tales. The movie, “Song of the South” was released on November 2 and premiered in Atlanta. The Uncle Remus stories have been translated into at least 27 different languages. On December 6, 1947, the United States Post Office issued a three cent commemorative stamp honoring Joel Chandler Harris and in 1963, The Uncle Remus Museum was opened in Eatonton.
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Alice Walker
Alice Walker, author of the award-winning novel "The Color Purple," was born in Eatonton on February 9, 1944. She was the eighth and youngest child of poor sharecroppers Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Walker. Though temporarily blinded in one eye at the age of eight, Walker went on to be valedictorian and prom queen of Butler-Baker High School. She attended Spelman College in Atlanta for two years before transferring to Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
Walker is best known as the author of "The Color Purple." In 1983, Walker was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for the novel. Walker was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Steven Spielberg turned the book into a movie starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey. A premier of the movie "The Color Purple" was held in Eatonton in 1986, and Walker returned home from California. The book has since been turned into a Tony Award winning Broadway show of the same name.
Walker has written a collections of short stories, among them "You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down," and other novels, including "The Third Life of Grange Copeland." She has also written collections of poetry and essays.
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Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church, the former headmaster of Eatonton Academy and the founder of the Eatonton Academy Library Society, was the longest serving president of the University of Georgia. Church, who began as a mathematics professor at the University after leaving Eatonton Academy, served as president of UGA from 1829 to 1859.
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Dr. Benjamin Hunt
Dr. Benjamin Hunt was a native New Yorker who moved to Putnam County in 1891 after marrying a Putnam County woman. Hunt is credited with bringing the dairy industry to Georgia. In 1922, Hunt was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Georgia for his experiments both in the dairy industry and in botany. Many of his rare plants are still thriving on the grounds of his former home, Panola Hall, on Madison Avenue in Eatonton. He is also the father of the infamous “Hunt Grape” that is used in making wine.
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S. Truett Cathy
S. Truett Cathy, founder of the Chik-Fil-A chain of restaurants, was born on his family’s farm in Eatonton in 1921. His father, a cotton farmer, was forced to move his family to Atlanta when the crop was destroyed by the boll weevil in 1924. After being honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 1945, Cathy and his brother opened a short-order diner in Hapeville, GA. The chain of 1,000 restaurants grew from a diner so small that it was originally known as the "Dwarf Diner."
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