MIDWAY — More than 100 people gathered alongside Jones Creek on Monday for the official ribbon cutting of the Susie King Taylor Freedom Park, a new site dedicated to preserving local history and honoring a significant, yet long-overlooked Georgia figure.

The morning ceremony brought together community leaders, historians, educators, and residents to celebrate the park’s opening on Isle of Wight – both the birthplace and the site where Susie King Taylor, a Civil War nurse, educator, and author, escaped slavery as a teenager.

April 13 marks the anniversary of the day Taylor escaped enslavement 164 years ago, while April 12 marks the 165th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War.

“These two historic moments in our nation have an important common denominator and that is none other than freedom,” Hermina Glass-Hill, Liberty County Historical Society’s president, said. “We are standing here, gathering here in honor and memory of one great American heroine, Susie King Taylor at Susie King Taylor Freedom Park.”

Glass-Hill, also the executive director of the Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center, has spent more than a decade researching and promoting Taylor’s legacy.

Taylor was born into slavery and grew up between the Isle of Wight and Savannah, where she visited her grandmother and secretly attended school.

One year after the Civil War broke out, Taylor, her uncle and six of her family members climbed into a small boat and sailed away to their freedom. She was just 13 years old. She went on to create a legacy of emphasizing education, resilience and the pursuit of freedom.

Glass-Hill said despite growing up in Georgia, she never learned about Taylor while in school.

“I thought, we can't have another generation not knowing about this important woman in American history, who's right here from Georgia,” she said. “So, I said, ‘how do I go about making her a household name?’”

For more, see Thursday's edition of the Courier or return to coastalcourier.com.