Fitzgerald is a city in and the county seat of Ben Hill County in the south central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia.[6] As of 2020, its population was 9,006.[7] It is the principal city of the Fitzgerald micropolitan statistical area, which includes all of Ben Hill and Irwin counties.
A small portion of Fitzgerald is in Irwin County.[8]
History
Fitzgerald was developed in 1895 by Philander H. Fitzgerald, an Indianapolis newspaper editor. A former drummer boy in the Union Army during the Civil War, he founded it as a community for war veterans–both from the Union and from the Confederacy.[9] The majority of the first citizens (some 2700) were Union veterans.[10] It was incorporated on December 2, 1896.[11] The town is located less than 15 miles (24 km) from the site where Confederate president Jefferson Davis was captured on May 10, 1865.
Fitzgerald was an early planned city. It was laid out as a square, with intersecting streets dividing it into four wards. Each ward was divided into four blocks and each block had sixteen squares.[12] The first two streets running north–south on the west side of the city were named after Confederate generals Lee and Johnston, whereas the first two on the east side were named after Union generals Grant and Sherman.[13]
After about a year, the residents planned a Thanksgiving harvest parade. Separate Union and Confederate parades were planned. But when the band struck up to play, the Confederates joined the Union veterans to march as one under the US flag.[14] At the time there was increasing reconciliation nationwide between white soldiers of the North and South; historian David Blight notes that outstanding issues of race were pushed aside. In this era southern states had already begun to pass new constitutions that raised barriers to voter registration, following Mississippi's in 1890, and essentially disenfranchised most freedmen and many poor whites. By 1900, Fitzgerald was a sundown town, prohibiting African Americans from living there.[15]
In recent years the unofficial, and sometimes controversial, mascot of the city has become the red junglefowl, a wild chicken native to the Indian subcontinent. In the late 1960s, a small number were released into the woods surrounding the city and they thrive to this day.[16] In 2019, work began on a 62-foot (19 m) tall topiary statue of a chicken.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 9.0 square miles (23.3 km2), of which 8.8 square miles (22.9 km2) is land and 0.15 square miles (0.4 km2), or 1.64%, is water.[18]
Climate
Climate data for Fitzgerald, Georgia, 1991–2020 normals, extremes 1898–2006
The Blue and Gray Museum, located in the town's AB&A 1908 railroad depot, houses several artifacts that tell the story of the town's founding.[25] The town also has a city government owned art gallery located in the Carnegie library on the edge of downtown.
The Ben Hill County School District, which includes all of Ben Hill County,[26] conducts pre-school to grade twelve, and consists of one pre-school, one primary school, an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school.[27] The district has 217 full-time teachers and over 3,395 students.[28]
Fitzgerald was home to a minor league baseball team in the Georgia State League from 1948, the league's first season of operation, through 1952. The team was called the Fitzgerald Pioneers. The club had no affiliation with any major league club during the five seasons of operation in the Georgia State League. After the 1952 season, the Fitzgerald Pioneers relocated to Sandersville and became the Sandersville Wacos, which were affiliated with the Milwaukee Braves for the 1953 season. The team ended their last season in 1956, under different affiliation.
Fitzgerald got a replacement team for the Pioneers in 1953 when the Moultrie Giants of the Georgia–Florida League moved to town. The Moultrie club was a charter member of the Georgia–Florida League when it began operations in 1946. After relocating to Fitzgerald and becoming an affiliate of the Cincinnati Redlegs, the new edition of the Fitzgerald Pioneers lasted one season (1954) saw the team name changed to the Fitzgerald Redlegs. After two years in Fitzgerald, the club returned to Moultrie. It ceased operating in 1958 under the name Brunswick Phillies.
After the Fitzgerald Redlegs left, the city was without a team for the 1955 season. The next year the Cordele club relocated to Fitzgerald after ten seasons in Cordele. They changed affiliation back to what were now called the Kansas City A's, and the Fitzgerald A's played for the 1956 season. In 1957, the club again changed its affiliation, to the Baltimore Orioles; the club was known as the Fitzgerald Orioles for the 1957 season. The Fitzgerald team relocated to Dublin, Georgia after the 1957 season and remained a Baltimore Orioles farm team; they played as the Dublin Orioles for the Georgia–Florida League's last year of operation. Fitzgerald has not had a minor league team in the 63 years since.
^"History". FitzgeraldGA.org. Archived from the original on September 9, 2017. Retrieved July 11, 2018.
^"How Northern Settlers Solve the Negro Problem". The Lexington Gazette. Lexington, Virginia. March 28, 1900. p. 1 – via Chronicling America. In the colony of Fitzgerald, in Georgia, there are very few negroes, and not one allowed to live in the city of Fitzgerald. The founders of this colony and the builders of this city are all Western people, and many of them old Union soldiers. But they met and solved the race problem by keeping the races separate and drawing, not only the color line, but the land line on the negro.
