Margaret Davis Cate

Born in 1888 in Brunswick, Georgia, she lived her entire life in the Georgia coastal region and became one of its best-known local historians. Sources about her work describe a career centered on documenting the people, places, and traditions of coastal Georgia with care and affection.

Her books include Early Days of Coastal Georgia and Our Todays and Yesterdays. Descriptions of her writing say that her research stretched from Georgia’s colonial records in London to local oral history and the study of regional African American crafts, showing both scholarly curiosity and a strong sense of place.

Margaret Davis Cate died in 1961. Her writing remains closely tied to the history of Brunswick, St. Simons Island, and the wider Georgia coast, where readers still turn to her work for a vivid sense of the region’s past.