The fact that Bryan County has a comprehensive, single-volume history is not by accident—it's the result of visionaries who refused to let our story slip away. Twenty-five years ago, Dr. Leslie Long and his wife, Lucy, made it clear that this kind of work needed to be done. The Longs were more than historians; they were participants in the history of Richmond Hill. They lived through the Ford Era, co-founded the Richmond Hill Historical Society, and alongside Buddy Sullivan, championed the idea that history should be preserved for the generations to come.

Dr. Long himself wrote The Ford Era, and in an act of foresight, left the rights to the book, along with an endowment to the Richmond Hill Historical Society after his passing, ensuring that its mission could live on. Without the Longs' dedication, the narratives of what it was like to live in this community during such a pivotal period might have been lost.

It was Dr. Long's insistence that ultimately convinced the Bryan County Commissioners to support a comprehensive county history. Buddy Sullivan, who was then managing the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve, had already published a history of McIntosh County. In Dr. Long's eyes, Buddy was the natural choice to take on the project. He accepted, knowing the magnitude of what he was about to do.

Buddy spent roughly three years researching, writing, and compiling what would become From Beautiful Zion to Red Bird Creek. The project wasn't just academic, it was immersive. Buddy recalls field trips with Mayor Richard Davis, Thelma and Billy Speir, and Buck Rahn, who quite literally showed him the backroads and hidden places. "They brought Bryan County's history to life for me," Buddy says.

In 2000, the first edition went to press with 2,000 copies printed—a monumental moment for a county that, until then, had no single-bound volume to link its generations together.

In the introduction, Buddy immediately grabs your attention, wasting no time reminding readers of just how quirky our beloved county really is. Bryan is the only county in Georgia split in half, requiring you to literally leave the county in order to drive through it. The culprit? Fort Stewart, whose creation forever changed the shape of Bryan County.

Buddy's book opens a window into that complicated period of our history. It wasn't pretty. Families lost their homesteads, entire communities were uprooted, and a once-thriving town disappeared, leaving behind what we now call the "Lost City of Clyde." We covered Clyde in depth in Volume 3, Number 3 of Reflections—and if you ask me, it remains one of the most haunting stories in our archives.

The book's title, From Beautiful Zion to Red Bird Creek, is symbolic to those who know these two places (Zion and Red Bird Creek). Buddy does a great job at pointing out that most people don't realize just how deeply the ecologies of these two regions shaped Bryan County—from its economy to its politics, and even the way its people lived and socialized. But like the many storied places, there were many people and events in our diverse and rich history that also shaped the place Bryan County is today, like Henry Ford.

Buddy doesn't stop with the Ford Era, or even the county's earliest settlers. The first edition of the book takes readers all the way back to the "Spanish influence on the Guale Coast," which according to the book predates the formal colonization of Georgia. Buddy explains that these early settlers would have crossed the Ogeechee River before finding Sapelo Sound, which is just a smidge south of Bryan County. This detail places our county right in the path of some of the very first European contact in the region.

The first edition of the book wraps up right before the turn of the century, in 1999, which feels almost quaint to say now! Buddy devotes a chapter to the growing pains of the 1980s and 90s, a period that can be surprisingly difficult to document. Trust me, I've looked. It's challenging to find images and stories from those two decades. It's almost as if no one recalls, and they certainly didn't document much.

A New Chapter for a New Century

Fast forward twenty-five years to today, and Buddy has brought From Beautiful Zion to Red Bird Creek back to life. After being out of print for years, the book has been republished, updated, and refreshed for a new generation of Bryan Countians, bearing the title Richmond Hill & Bryan County, Georgia––A New History. The timing couldn't be better as we are once again in a season of remarkable growth and transformation. Buddy's work reminds us that the questions we face today aren't all that different from those our predecessors had to answer.

When I sat down with Buddy to talk about this new edition, I asked him all the natural questions about the original project, how it started, who helped, and what surprised him along the way…"I was lucky to have had this opportunity," he told me, "because so many of the people who remembered those stories are no longer living."

Living History, Future Legacy

After 20 years of stories that have unfolded on these very pages, I've decided that the magazine's purpose might be meant to document the living history of this community. We both had a good laugh when Buddy suggested that I pull an old image of him from the very first story we did about this book back in 2006—in the First Anniversary Issue of Reflections. I told him, 'no way!' If what I think is true, 'I need to show readers what Buddy Sullivan looks like 20 years later.' Buddy got a kick out of that, and before I left, he invited me to his home. It was a joy to walk around his cottage absorbing as many of the historical tidbits he shared as we looked at his collection of historic maps and books. I was able capture new photographs of him in his element—writing, surrounded by the tools of his trade—so that this recount of history will effectively show readers our local historian at work.

Buddy's work is a reminder that history doesn't simply exist—it must be intentionally captured. The first edition of his book now serves as a time capsule of Bryan County through 1999, and the new edition picks up where it left off. But what about the stories being written right now? The businesses opening, the neighborhoods growing, the families planting roots here for the first time…

I often wonder if we are documenting enough of today's history for tomorrow's readers. One day, our present will be the past. It will be the subject of future books, essays, and late-night research projects. Who is insisting that we write it all down, as Dr. Long once did?

That, in many ways, is indeed the heartbeat of Reflections. For nearly two decades, we have been collecting, curating, and publishing the stories of Bryan County so that one day, a future historian will have a treasure trove of local narratives to pull from. Our hope is that when the next comprehensive county history is written, Reflections will be cited as a notable source—a living record of the people, places, and events that shaped this extraordinary community.

So here's my challenge to you: document your stories. Save your photos. Write down the memories that matter. Share them with your family, your neighbors, and yes—with us. Because we are living the very history that future generations will one day long to know.

Richmond Hill & Bryan County, Georgia: A New History is available for purchase at The Richmond Hill History Museum, Fort McAllister State Park and at the Richmond Hill Convention and Visitors Bureau