Researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered what may be the earliest moving images of a baseball game played in Georgia. The 26-second, 28mm home movie shows African Americans employees playing the game at the Pebble Hill Plantation. Researchers believe the film was made around 1919. The film was found in the archives of the Pebble Hill Plantation that were donated to the Walter J. Brown Media Archives of the University of Georgia Libraries.
The Pebble Hill Plantation, located just outside of Thomasville, Georgia, was a hunting preserve bought in 1896 as a winter home by Howard Melville Hanna of Cleveland, Ohio. Many similar plantations in Georgia and North Florida had baseball teams made up of their Black employees.
The plantation is now a museum and can be leased for weddings and corporate events.
