The Andrews family of Washington, Georgia were one of the founding families of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Judge Garnett Andrews (1793-1873) purchased an interest in Ross's Landing, which later grew into the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Judge Garnett Andrews' father, John Andrews, had been a Revolutionary War soldier who served with the Continental Army from 1775-1783, and after the Revolutionary War, moved his family from Virginia to a plantation in Georgia where Judge Garnett Andrews would spend his formative years. Judge Garnett Andrews became a lawyer and politician, and in 1834 was appointed as Judge of the Northern Circuit of the Superior Court of Georgia, a position he held until he resigned in 1855. In 1868 he was returned to the bench by Reconstruction Governor Rufus Bullock and served the Northern Circuit until his death in 1873. Three years before his death, Andrews wrote and published what became a classic memoir of Georgia's antebellum legal system, Reminiscences of an Old Georgia Lawyer.

Other notable family members featured within this collection are Colonel Garnett Andrews (1837-1903), Eliza Frances Andrews (1840-1931) and Garnett Andrews (1870-1946). Colonel Garnett Andrews was a lawyer and soldier who served in the Georgia Regiment with the rank of Second Lieutenant, in Robert E. Lee's Army of North Virginia, and Cutt's Battalion of Artillery during the Civil War. Colonel Garnett Andrews then served as Mayor of Chattanooga from 1891 to 1893, one of three mayors in the year 1891.

Eliza Frances Andrews, a prolific writer and educator, is most known for her non-fiction work, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865, published by D. Appleton and Co. in 1908. Over the course of her lifetime, Eliza Frances Andrews produced novels, poems and botany texts, as well as serials, articles, essays and editorials for more than 70 magazines and newspapers under her name and her pen names, Fanny Andrews and Elzey Hay, such as A Family Secret (as Elzey Hay), published by Lippincott in 1876. In 1926, she became the first American woman invited into the prestigious International Academy of Literature and Science in Italy. Her journal within this collection documents the American Southeast during Reconstruction from 1870 to 1872 and acts as a continuation of The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865. Colonel Garnett Andrews is responsible for authoring and collecting detailed documents on the Andrews family genealogy.

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“Eliza Frances "Fanny" Andrews,” Georgia Women of Achievement, accessed July 8 2019. georgiawomen.org/eliza-frances-andrews.com

Rushing, S. K., "Garnett Andrews (1798-1873)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. September 9 2014, accessed on July 8 2019. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology /garnett-andrews-1798-1873