The Rambler
The Georgia Trust’s newsletter, The Rambler, made its debut in December 1974, a little more than a year after the organization was founded. Georgia Trust members chose the name for their newsletter while on a Ramble to Oglethorpe County on November 9, 1974. Though it is fitting that The Rambler was named on the Trust’s first Ramble, the name of these semiannual field trips was not the genesis of the newsletter’s name.
Instead, the newsletter was named The Rambler after Samuel Johnson’s 16th century essays of the same name. Johnson issued his essays every Tuesday and Friday from March 20, 1750 to March 17, 1752. In his essays, he wrote as a moralist, commenting on society, literature and the nature of man.
In her front-page column in the first issue of The Rambler, Agnes Scott College Associate Professor of English Jo Allen Bradham explained the connection between Johnson’s Rambler and the Trust’s:
“In his Rambler, Johnson sought to restore common sense and preserve sound principles of moral conduct. By its Rambler, the Georgia Trust would restore architectural monuments and preserve evidence of the past. Both papers offer information and analysis, and the Georgia Trust can find a kind of directive for its activities in a line from Johnson’s Rambler for Tuesday, April 3, 1750: “There is indeed, something inexpressibly pleasing in the annual renovating of the world, and the new display of the treasures of nature.”
