Editing Albany, Georgia (section)

===Nelson Tift===
[[File:"View of the City of Albany, GA. 'The Artesian City'" - County Seat of Dougherty County (1885).jpg|thumb|left|Albany in 1885]]
[[File:Nelson Tift.jpg|thumb|Nelson Tift (1810–1891), the founder of Albany]]
European-American settlement began with [[Nelson Tift]] of [[Groton, Connecticut]], who took land along the [[Flint River (Georgia)|Flint River]] in October 1836 after [[Indian removal]].  Tift and his colleagues named the new town Albany after [[Albany, New York|the capital]] of New York; noting that New York's Albany was a commercial center located at the headwaters of the [[Hudson River]], they hoped that their town near the headwaters of the Flint would prove to be just as successful. It proved to be nowhere near as prosperous. Alexander Shotwell laid out the town in 1836, and it was incorporated as a city by an act of the General Assembly of Georgia on December 27, 1838.<ref>[http://www.albany.ga.us/city_commission/cc_index.htm "City Commission"]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090310014656/http://www.albany.ga.us/city_commission/cc_index.htm|date=March 10, 2009}}.</ref>

Tift was the city's leading entrepreneur for decades. An ardent booster, he promoted education, business, and railroad construction. During the Civil War he provided naval supplies and helped build two ships.  He opposed [[Radical Reconstruction]] inside the state and in Congress, and was scornful of the [[Yankee]] [[carpetbaggers]] who came in. Historian John Fair concludes that Tift became "more Southern than many natives."<ref name="fair"/> His pro-slavery attitudes before the war and his support for [[Racial segregation|segregation]] afterward made him compatible with Georgia's white elite.<ref name="fair">Fair, John D. "Nelson Tift: A Connecticut Yankee in King Cotton's Court", ''Georgia Historical Quarterly'' (2004) 88#3 pp 338-374</ref>

This area was developed for cotton cultivation by planters, who used numerous enslaved African Americans to clear lands and process the cotton. As a result of the planters' acquisition of slave workers, by 1840 Dougherty County's majority population was black, composed overwhelmingly of slaves.  The market center for cotton [[plantations in the American South|plantations]], Albany was in a prime location for shipping cotton to other markets by [[steamboat]]s. In 1858, Tift hired [[Horace King (architect)|Horace King]], a former slave and bridge builder, to construct a [[toll bridge]] over the river. King's bridge toll house still stands.

Already important as a shipping port, Albany later became an important railroad hub in southwestern Georgia. Seven lines were constructed to the town. An exhibit on trains is located at the Thronateeska Heritage Center in the former [[railroad station]].