Mayor John M. McDonough’s Annual Report for the year ending 13 December 1894 contained this tidbit under “Fires and Alarms”:
Sanborn fire insurance map of Savannah, Georgia, 1888.
This 13 August 1894 Savannah Morning News article sheds light on the fire and reveals that Daniel C. Suggs had a sideline as a grocer.
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This description of Georgia State Industrial College’s Scientific Department appeared in the Report of the State School Commission of Georgia to the General Assembly for 1895.
The Crisis, vol. 15, no. 5, January 1918.
Newly installed as president of Livingstone College, Daniel C. Suggs made sure Negro American knew what his institution had to offer.
For $2800, you can purchase from AbeBooks this copy of Rev. E.K. Love’s History of the First African Baptist Church, From Its Organization, January 20th, 1788, to July 1st, 1888.
The description: “8¼” x 6″. Green cloth over boards, title gilt. Pp. [5], [A]-E, [6], iv-v, [blank page], 360. Good: Ex-library with remnants of call number to spine, bookplate, due cards and embossed stamp on title page; moderately shaken, boards moderately worn with losses at spine tips, ffep heavily notated. This is another copy of Love’s History with several outstanding associations. A partially obscured inscription on the front pastedown shows that this particular copy was presented by R.R. Wright to D.C. Suggs. Richard Robert Wright, Sr., who wrote part of the book’s introduction, was born into slavery in Georgia in 1855 and was valedictorian of the first graduating class of Atlanta University, now known as the HBCU Clark Atlanta. He became an educator and newspaper editor who went on to serve as the first president of the Georgia Industrial College for Colored Youths (GICCY), the first public institution of higher learning for African Americans in the state. Under Wright’s leadership, GICCY hosted renowned lecturers including Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Mary Church Terrell. Wright later founded the first Black-owned bank in Philadelphia and co-founded the first organization of Black-owned banks in the country. The recipient of the book, Dr. Daniel Cato Suggs, was born in Wilson, North Carolina in 1865. He was a wealthy Black businessman, active in real estate, and a teacher in the public school systems of North Carolina. He served as a professor at GICCY before being elected president in 1917 of Livingston College, a private, HBCU in Salisbury, North Carolina, noted for its strong affiliation with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. This volume also contains a bookplate from Bennett College in Greensboro. Founded in 1873 as a normal school to educate freedmen and train both men and women as teachers, Bennett is now a private HBCU liberal arts college for women. There is yet another interesting facet to this copy: the front free endpaper has two pages of handwritten notes regarding a speech given by David B. Hill in Savannah in 1892 as he was campaigning to be the Democratic candidate for United States President. We found the entirety of the speech’s text in a newspaper account online and note the oddity of the possibility of a Southern African American attending a Democratic candidate’ speech at that time. OCLC shows six holdings of the physical book over four entries. A unique copy, with wonderful associations, of Love’s important history of the First African Baptist Church.”
In Chapter IX, “The Negro Bank and the Moral Uplift,” of The Story of the Negro: the Rise of the Race from Slavery, volume II, Booker T. Washington mentions Daniel C. Suggs:
New Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 30 May 1931.
Oscar S. De Priest was the first African-American to be elected to Congress in the twentieth century — and the first ever elected outside the southern states. He served three terms from 1929 to 1935. In 1931, after addressing students at North Carolina A. and T., he posed with faculty, including professor Daniel C. Suggs.
Like his contemporary Samuel H. Vick, Daniel C. Suggs was a committed Odd Fellow. While on the faculty of Georgia State Industrial Institute, he was a member of Armour Lodge No. 1884, attaining the status of Past Noble Father.
Savannah Tribune, 5 May 1900.
Savannah Tribune, 19 August 1893.
Wilson-born Daniel C. Suggs was captain and catcher for the Georgia State Industrial Institute’s professors’ baseball team in this exhibition game played at Savannah’s Bolton Street Park. Located between Bolton Street and Park Avenue east of the railroad tracks running parallel to East Broad Street, this ballpark was home to Savannah’s professional baseball clubs between 1885 and 1909.
Daniel C. Suggs filed for several building permits in Greensboro, North Carolina, in August 1915:
Greensboro Record, 9 August 1915.
Greensboro Record, 17 August 1915.
Greensboro Record, 1 September 1915.
Suggs’ projects included:
