GPB’s ‘Marked!’ explores Georgia’s role in Revolutionary War via markers

Credit: GPB SCREENSHOT

Credit: GPB SCREENSHOT

“With digital being the main target, you want to keep it short and sweet,” said May, an Arabia Mountain High School graduate who has also hosted PBS’s national climate show “Weathered” since 2020.

Andrew Iden, the programming’s executive producer who previously spent 20 years working at CNN, said while doing the research, he discovered that “Georgia’s role in the revolution is oftentimes overlooked, and we got to highlight people who overcame overwhelming odds to achieve victories” against the British and their supporters.

“It took courage to come out victorious against the greatest empire in the world,” May said.

There’s Button Gwinnett of Gwinnett County fame, who signed the Declaration of Independence and later died after participating in a sunrise duel with a sworn enemy.

There’s Elberton’s redheaded legend Nancy Hart, a frontier spy for the revolutionary cause whose exploits generated as much folklore as fact.

There’s George Washington’s only trip to Georgia in 1791, which involved a two-month trip from Philadelphia by horse and carriage to Savannah, Waynesboro and Augusta.

May said her favorite episode featured the Jerusalem Lutheran Church in Rincon, the oldest existing church in the state, which was used as a British hospital and stable during the Revolutionary War.

“I was able to talk to people still running the church, one of the few remaining structures from that period,” May said. “It put me there. It changed my mindset. It was a cool microcosm of what the war was.”

Since the protagonists in the stories are long gone, May and Iden use a phalanx of historians to fill the gaps. As host, May provides intros and interstitial commentary. Of spy Hart, May said, “It seems she was just … a boss!”

At one point, after Archibald Bulloch is referenced, May noted, “As in Bulloch County. Statesboro, see? Everyone gets a county!” (Georgia has 159 of them, second most in the country behind only Texas.)

The show intersperses talking heads with whimsical animation, maps, paintings and drone shots of locations.

Credit: COURTESY OF ANDREW IDEN

Credit: COURTESY OF ANDREW IDEN

“Marked!” shot several episodes in Savannah, where much of the Revolutionary War action happened.

“Learning more about our role in that war makes me proud to be a native of Georgia,” May said. “Spending so much time in Savannah was like stepping into a time machine. My mom would take me there every summer to get away. I’ve done all the ghosts tours. I want to get married in Savannah!”

Every episode features a different historical marker, each a distinctive cast-aluminum plaque mounted on a metal post. Anyone who has lived in the state has seen them, although May even admits she seldom read them before hosting the show.

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

Naturally, the marker program has its own history.

In 1951, the Georgia Legislature created the Georgia Historical Commission to promote historic preservation ahead of the centennial of the Civil War. But the verbiage on the green and gold signs tended to focus on the “Lost Cause” narrative of the war that romanticized the Confederacy and downplayed the role of slavery as a cause of the war.

As a result, Gov. Jimmy Carter dissolved the commission in 1973, handing duties of maintenance of the markers to the state’s Department of Natural Resources over the next quarter century.

Since 1998, the independent Georgia Historical Society took over maintenance of the markers and creates new black and silver ones each year. They install five or six new markers annually, based on an application process that requires a research paper with cited sources vetted by an independent committee of historians, educators and other experts.

Stan Deaton, Georgia Historical Society‘s senior historian who appears in a couple of the “Marked!” episodes, said this is the first time in his memory anyone has ever tackled the markers this way before.

“Visually appealing, tightly edited and with enough good historical content to draw people who may not otherwise be interested in history,” said Deaton, who appreciated how much of it was done on location.

The organization has intentionally expanded the marker’s mission beyond the Civil War, covering a wide variety of subject matter and featuring more women and more people of color. (An app is available to track all of them.)

“The marker program for 30 years was about white men and what they did,” Deaton said. “It was about battles and leaders. Our goal has always been to tell a more comprehensive history of the state, things that nobody in 1955 felt was important.”

Sandy Malcolm, GPB’s senior vice president of content, said she hopes to do more seasons that could focus around people, places or movements. “There are a lot of different ways we can go, and we’re excited to explore some of those themes.”