General Meeting
March 24 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
General Meeting
Time: 7:00 – 8:30 pm ET
Location: First Presbyterian Church, 189 Church Street, Marietta, GA 30060
Topic: Sir James Wright and Colonial Ancestors
Description:
Greg Booking uses the life and conflicted career of Sir James Wright (1716-1785) as a means to better understand the complex struggle for power in both colonial Georgia and the larger British Empire.
James Wright lived a transatlantic life, taking advantage of every imperial opportunity afforded him. He earned numerous important government posts and amassed an incredible fortune, totaling over £100,000 sterling. An England-born grandson of Sir Robert Wright, James Wright was raised in Charleston, South Carolina, following his father’s appointment as the chief justice of that colony. Young James served South Carolina in a number of capacities, public and ecclesiastical, prior to his admittance to London’s famed Gray’s Inn to study law. Most notably, he was appointed South Carolina’s attorney general and colonial agent to London prior to becoming the governor of Georgia in 1761.
Wright’s long imperial career delicately balanced dual loyalties to Crown and colony and offers a new perspective on loyalism and the American Revolution. Through this lens, Greg Brooking connects several important contexts in recent early American and British scholarship, including imperial and Atlantic history, Indigenous borderlands, race and slavery, and popular politics.
His presentation will include information on how to research Loyalist ancestors.
Speaker:
Dr. Greg Brooking is an award-winning historian of early America, the American Revolution, and the colonial South. He received his PhD in History from Georgia State University and is the author of From Empire to Revolution: Sir James Wright and the Price of Loyalty in Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 2024). He has taught high school and college since 1994, joining the staff of North Springs High School (Atlanta, Fulton County, GA) in 2015. He is currently working on his second book, Henry Laurens: A Southern Founder.
