W. H. (William Henry) Sparks

Born on January 16, 1800, on St. Simons Island, Georgia, William Henry Sparks grew up in Greene County and later studied law at the Litchfield Law School in Connecticut. He returned to Georgia to practice law in Greensboro and also served in the Georgia legislature.

By about 1830, Sparks had moved to Natchez, Mississippi, where he became a sugar planter. He wrote both prose and verse, but he is best known for The Memories of Fifty Years, an autobiographical work first published in 1870 and expanded in 1882. The book mixes personal memories with biographical sketches and anecdotes, especially about Georgia and the early Southwest.

Sparks died on January 13, 1882. Although he was also associated with poems and fiction, his lasting reputation rests mainly on his memoir, which offers readers a lively firsthand window into the people and places of the 19th-century American South.