Child-Life on the Tidewater: A Memoir of Coastal Georgia

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A lifelong awareness of one's "place," and an accompanying sense of "permanence" within that place when set amid the context of the ecology, history and culture of the locale, is the theme of this memoir of the coastal Georgia low country by author and historian Buddy Sullivan. The author's reflections on his coastal roots are told here in his upbringing amid the salt marshes and tidal waterways of McIntosh County, Georgia, and most specifically within the little tidewater communities of Cedar Point and Valona. A fourth generation McIntosh Countian, Sullivan spent much of his childhood and adolescence in and around Cedar Point on family lands overlooking the marshes and creeks where he experienced life in the 1950s and 1960s. He relates an early association with shrimp boats and the local watermen, his own personal explorations of the local tidewater, and an early and developing interest in local history and ecology through family and extended relationships within the McIntosh County community. Contained herein is an overview of the author's family history, both maternally and paternally, and its direct connections with McIntosh County and the Georgia and South Carolina low country going back to the mid-1800s. Comprising a major portion of this book are selected essays by the author as gleaned from his writings and research relating to the coast over the past forty years. The underlying theme in both the memoir and the historical essays is that of the author's awareness and understanding from an early age of the ecosystems of the low countrytidal salt marshes, barrier islands, river hydrology and upland soilsand their unique connectivity to the region's history and culture. Accompanying the text are maps and archival photographs, interspersed with color images of the tidewater as it appears today.

Author Bio

Buddy Sullivan has researched and written about the history, culture and ecology of low country Georgia for forty years. He is the author of thirty books and monographs and is in frequent demand as a lecturer on a variety of historical topics. He is a recipient of the Governor's Medal in the Humanities from the Georgia Humanities Council in recognition of his literary contributions to the state, among numerous other awards and citations. Sullivan's books include Sapelo: People and Place on a Georgia Sea Island, Early Days on the Georgia Tidewater, From Beautiful Zion to Red Bird Creek, and Georgia: A State History. Sullivan was a daily newspaper sports writer for sixteen years, editor of the Darien weekly paper from 1985 to 1993, and was the manager of the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve from 1993 to 2013. He is now an independent writer, lecturer and historical consultant.