women – Page 2 – the DLG B

Selected by statewide cultural heritage stakeholders and funded by the DLG’s competitive digitization grant program, this collection is the Augusta Jewish Museum’s first collaboration with the DLG and is available here:

Augusta Jewish Museum Collection

The collection contains historical materials dating from 1850 to 2022 that come from a diverse group of Jewish creators, including youth, women, clergy, fraternities, and congregations that offer unique insights into the greater Augusta, Georgia region’s Jewish life, philanthropy, foodways, and experiences.

Rabbi David Sirull of the Adas Yeshurun Synagogue in Augusta emphasizes the importance of making this work accessible freely online.

“It is important that we remember our place in history as we move to the future. The Augusta Jewish Museum allows for valuable content to be procured, preserved, and disseminated that tells the story of Jewish heritage in the Central Savannah River Area that encompasses the Augusta, Georgia area…This content is invaluable to researchers in defining the ways of Jewish life in the Southeast.”

About the Augusta Jewish Museum

The Augusta Jewish Museum and its programming chronicle the life, history, and contributions of the Jewish community in the Central Savannah River Area. The museum also educates about Jewish traditions, remembering the Holocaust, and Israel–the land and its people. Their website is: https://www.augustajewishmuseum.org/.

About the Digital Library of Georgia

Based at the University of Georgia Libraries, the Digital Library of Georgia is a GALILEO initiative that collaborates with Georgia’s libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions of education and culture to provide access to key information resources on Georgia history, culture, and life. This primary mission is accomplished by developing, maintaining, and preserving digital collections and online digital library resources. DLG also serves as Georgia’s service hub for the Digital Public Library of America and as the home of the Georgia Newspaper Project, the state’s historic newspaper microfilming project. Visit the DLG at dlg.usg.edu.

Selected images from the collections:

**Title:** Book of Handwritten Poetry, Rosina Hendricks Levy **URL:** https://dlg.usg.edu/record/augjm_augjmc_2019-003-010 **Collection:** Augusta Jewish Museum Collection **Courtesy of the Augusta Jewish Museum** **Description:** Paper-bound book of poetry bound with twine into a single volume, handwritten pages. Rosina’s Book of Poetry is an essential part of local Jewish history as a rich, female, first-person perspective of the beginning of the Jewish congregation in Augusta. Rosina Hendricks, daughter of the first Jewish family who arrived in Augusta in 1802, authored this book that remains unpublished. Written throughout her adult life, the book includes poems written to her husband and children, on life in Georgia and the South, and on Judaism and her experiences as a Jewish woman. She played a key role in establishing the religious school that would eventually become the Congregation Children of Israel.

**Title:** “United for Worship and Charity” by Jack Steinberg
**URL:** https://dlg.usg.edu/record/augjm_augjmc_2022-005-004
**Collection:** Augusta Jewish Museum Collection
**Courtesy of the Augusta Jewish Museum**
**Description:** Staple-bound booklet about the history and community of Congregation Children of Israel, authored by Jack Steinberg

**Title:** Daughters of Israel Cook Book, page 8 of 88
**URL:** https://dlg.usg.edu/record/augjm_augjmc_2021-054-001
**Collection:** Augusta Jewish Museum Collection
**Courtesy of the Augusta Jewish Museum**
**Description:** Synagogue Cookbook (1950s), Paper spiral bound with plastic spine, published by the Adas Yeshurun Synagogue’s (AYS) Daughters of Israel.

Drawings by Georgia’s first female landscape architect Clermont Lee are now publicly available online thanks to a collaboration between the Georgia Historical Society and the Digital Library of Georgia.

From 1940 through the mid-1980s, she made landscape designs for clients in Savannah, Georgia, and throughout the Southeast.

“These designs provide insight into the less-well documented elements of preservation and restoration projects throughout the state,” notes G. Andrew Fleming, the Friends of Georgia State Parks & Historic Sites executive director.

“Clermont Lee was a pioneering figure in the history of landscape architecture,” says Nate Pedersen, Manager of the Archival and Reference Team at the Georgia Historical Society. “We expect her drawings to be of significant interest to historic preservationists, landscape architects, gardeners, and scholars around the country. As such, we are delighted to be able to freely share her drawings online and are grateful for the support from the Digital Library of Georgia.”

Plans for many Georgia and South Carolina residences, churches, schools, city blocks, office buildings, parks, airports, and historic sites are among the detailed design drawings now available at GHS. Lee is probably best-known locally for her mid-to-late twentieth-century work designing formal gardens for several of Savannah’s historic house museums, including the Owens-Thomas House and the Green-Meldrim House, as well as plans for several of the Landmark District’s beloved squares. Across the state, Lee’s designs include plans for the Chief Vann House in Murray County and Baptist Village in Waycross.

Fleming also adds: “These types of records are invaluable in helping establish a complete picture of our state’s historic spaces.”

About Clermont Lee

Clermont Huger Lee, born in Savannah in 1914, was the city’s first female architect in private practice. She worked as an assistant to T.M. Baumgardner of the Sea Island Corporation during the Great Depression. She became interested in historic gardens in the 1940s after receiving her education at Barnard and Smith Colleges.

As one of the first professional female landscape architects in Georgia, Lee worked with and independently of some of her era’s leading preservationists. She focused on preserving, recreating, and reinterpreting historic gardens and landscapes. This was an aspect of the preservation movement that she felt was ignored in many plans that focused on historic structures.

Lee represents a less recognized part of the movement’s story as both a professional woman working in the field and as a preservationist focused on the natural environment. Historic preservation, particularly during the mid-twentieth century, was associated primarily with professional male architects and developers. Women (usually wealthy white women) worked as volunteers and activists.

In addition to her work in Savannah, she worked on projects throughout Georgia and in cities such as Jacksonville, Florida, and Hilton Head, South Carolina. Lee also worked on the founding of the Georgia State Landscape Architects Board.

Clermont Lee passed away in 2006 on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

About the Georgia Historical Society

Georgia Historical Society (GHS) is the premier independent statewide research and educational institution responsible for collecting, examining, and teaching Georgia history. GHS houses the oldest and most distinguished collection of materials related exclusively to Georgia history in the nation. Visit georgiahistory.com/

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Savannah’s pioneer female landscape architect Clermont Lee transformed our public spaces. Now you can see her drawings online