Markers of History

The Georgia Infirmary
State Historical Markers
Georgia Historical Society 2001.16

Location: 1900 Abercorn St, Savannah, GA 31401

Visited: August 13, 2009, 6:05pm

Transcription of marker:

The Georgia Infirmary
First African-American Hospital in the United States

Chartered by the Georgia General Assembly in 1832, the Infirmary was estab­lished “for the relief and pro­tec­tion of afflicted and aged Africans” under the pro­vi­sions of the last will and tes­ta­ment of Savannah mer­chant and min­is­ter Thomas F. Williams (1774 – 1816). Originally located south of the city, it was moved here in 1838. Its four­teen acres included sev­eral single-story build­ings and small farm tracts for veg­etable gar­dens. In 1904, the Infirmary became one of the ear­li­est train­ing schools for African-American nurses. In 1975, it became Georgia’s first day cen­ter for stroke rehabilitation.

2001.16     Erected by The Georgia Historical Society and The Georgia Infirmary, Inc.     25 – 9

My impres­sions: I am back from our trip to Georgia and I wanted to start with this marker, because it’s the clos­est one to the church where we spent most of our time in Savannah. I also like the fact that the site is still in use for pur­poses related to the ones that were hap­pen­ing more than 175 years ago. It also shows an evo­lu­tion of a site, not focus­ing exclu­sively on any one era. I also have to say that I really like the trans­parency evi­dent at the bot­tom of the marker. From what I’ve read, sev­eral states require a finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to erect a marker. The fact that the infir­mary is listed along with the his­tor­i­cal soci­ety makes that clear in this case. Though I don’t know what the process is get the soci­ety in Georgia to put up a his­tor­i­cal marker, I def­i­nitely worry that (a) the finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion may be more impor­tant than cri­te­ria related to his­tory in deter­min­ing where mark­ers are placed, and (b) given that, in most areas of life, “he who pays the piper calls the tune,” I would won­der about whether the infir­mary had undue input into the marker’s text. (Again, I have NO knowl­edge of the pro­ce­dures involved, so I do not intend to cast asper­sions by this post, but to raise the issue that with money comes influ­ence and the reader is appro­pri­ately warned in this case.)

The week ahead: Tomorrow, I hope to con­tinue this week of posts about our trip to Savannah with a statue that I’ve seen called The Georgia Volunteer, which has a link to a statue I’ve pre­vi­ously posted about here in Virginia. Wednesday, I’ll write about a marker for a fel­low church musi­cian and com­poser. Thursday and Friday, some posts about some other stat­ues, and a spe­cial bonus week­end post will look at mark­ers related to Gordon House in Savannah.

One word of apol­ogy, there is a chance that this week’s posts won’t be quite as timely as I’d hope, because we are in the midst of mov­ing into a new place and for the next week, the old place (where we’ll con­tinue to be sleep­ing) no longer has Internet access.