Joining such Georgia luminaries as Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell; First Lady Ellen Louise Axson Wilson; blues singer Gertrude Pridgett "Ma" Rainey; and Girl Scout Founder Juliette Gordon Low, two outstanding Wilkes County women from Georgia's history will be inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement Inc. Thursday, March 16.

Appropriately, the fifteenth annual induction ceremony of the Georgia Women of Achievement Inc. will be held at Wesleyan College in Macon, the first institution in the world chartered specifically to grant degrees to women.

The two Wilkes County women are Eliza Frances (Fanny) Andrews and Sarah Porter Hillhouse. The third inductee on the March 16 program will be Grace Towns Hamilton, the first African-American woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly, serving for 18 years.

Fanny Andrews was nominated for the honor by Celeste Stover, director of the Mary Willis Library and the Bartram Trail Regional Library.

Miss Andrews was a writer, educator and botanist. She was born in 1840 in Washington, and was the daughter of Judge Garnett Andrews and Annulet Ball Andrews. In her home, Miss Andrews had access to newspapers, books and magazines, and was encouraged to participate in discussions of national and local political issues.

Writing was her passion. Over the course of her lifetime she produced novels, poems and botany texts, as well as serials, articles, essays and editorials for more than 70 magazines and newspapers. Her first article for national publication was a political piece appearing in an 1865 edition of the New York World. In it she assumed the guise of a male writer because women writers were uncommon at the time and often not taken seriously.

Her observations of life during the last years of the Civil War were published in 1908 as The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 18641865. She was the first American woman nominated to the International Academy of Literature and Science in Naples, Italy, in 1926.

Eliza Frances Andrews never studied botany in school: nature was her classroom. At the age of 86, she wrote of herself: "I was born a naturalist. I have never studied botany in school. In the days when I went to school, young ladies were not taught sciences. . . . I was scolded for it, but the attraction was too great to be resisted. The maple blossoms, in the shape of wings, used to puzzle me. I decided they were like butterflies and associated them with butterflies. Nature was my only teacher, and I still learn from her."

She died in Rome, Ga., in 1931 at the age of 90 and is buried in Resthaven Cemetery in her hometown of Washington.

Professor Charlotte Ford, who has done extensive research on the life of Fanny Andrews, comments, "A woman of strength and dedication, Fanny Andrews overcame personal adversity and enjoyed a fruitful life. She wrote about different topics in her distinctive style. She drew conclusions and gave advice. She broke rules and crossed boundaries on her journey into the 20th Century as a novelist, reporter, essayist, lecturer, poet, humorist, teacher, and botanist. She was a daughter of the Old South but a precursor of the New South and a new century for women."

Sarah Porter Hillhouse, 17631831, was the first woman editor and printer in Georgia and is reputed to be the first woman editor and businesswoman in the nation. She was born in Massachusetts. In 1781 she married David Hillhouse, a Yale graduate who had fought in the Revolutionary War. Five years later, Sarah and her husband boldly decided to uproot their family to take advantage of the headright system - a government plan through which rich Georgia land was granted to heads of households who agreed to settle on their claim. Leaving their two daughters behind with family in New England, Sarah and her husband set out for the Georgia frontier.

They settled in Washington and David established himself as a contractor providing supplies to troops skirmishing with Indians. He also opened a general store and served as a local and state official. David purchased the local newspaper in 1801 and assumed the role of publisher. Two years later, he died.

With her husband's death, Sarah made a remarkable decision: 40 years old, four months pregnant, and 1,100 miles from her nearest relative, she resolved to maintain the paper and took over as publisher.

Fred Denton Moon, author of an Atlanta Journal article praising The Washington Monitor, said, "Though tattered and time-yellowed, the little paper is still as readable as when it came from the widow's press a century and a quarter ago. Its general format, typographical perfection and the interesting manner in which its news was presented would be a credit to many modern weekly papers."

Georgia Women of Achievement is a historic and educational nonprofit organization founded at the suggestion of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter in 1990.

The induction ceremony is open to the public.