Ken Thomas was born on December 1, 1946, in Columbus, Georgia, the first child of Kenneth Harrison Thomas, Sr., and Louise Brooks Thomas. His father and later his mother, both Auburn University graduates, became franchised automobile dealers in the new car sales business. Ken graduated from Columbus High School and earned a B. A. in history from Emory University.
Ken served in the U.S. Air Force from 1969 until 1972, working in the personnel area, learning interviewing skills, and taking his first computer training classes in those early days. His last two years of military service were spent in England.
Ken was fortunate enough to walk into and ask questions at the State Historic Preservation Office (Historic Preservation Section/Division) of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources in the fall of 1973 and was hired as a historical researcher. He began an unexpected career in Historic Preservation, at first researching historic sites and writing book-length reports on five of them: The Robert Toombs House, The Rock House, The Kettle Creek Battlefield, McCranie’s Turpentine Still, and the Lapham-Patterson House. He later segued into the post of Historian for the National Register of Historic Places. He retired in October 2006 after 33 years.
Ken began his professional writing career in genealogy and local history with Georgia Life magazine in 1975, where he wrote articles for five years, including the genealogy of President-elect Jimmy Carter, which brought him national attention and recognition. That led to an invitation to write a weekly column on genealogy for the Sunday Atlanta Journal-Constitution. That column lasted for 47 years (1977-2024). At its ending, it was the longest-running genealogy column in the United States.
Ken has served on many boards, including the Board of Curators for the Georgia Historical Society (1985-1991, 1995-2001), as well as on the boards of the DeKalb History Center, The Wren’s Nest, the Georgia Genealogical Society, and the Friends of Georgia Archives and History, among many others. He has won many awards: the Governor’s Award in the Humanities (2003), the Sarah Turner Butler Heritage Award from the Historic Columbus Foundation (2008), the John Macpherson Berrien Award for lifetime achievement in Georgia History from the Georgia Historical Society (2013), and the Westville Legacy Award (2013). He is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and the First Families of Georgia.
Ken was the co-chair of the Coalition to Preserve the Georgia Archives from 2012-2013, which worked to keeping the Georgia Archives open to the public. He has always been an advocate for telling the truth in our history and documenting the facts both in genealogy and in history. He has served or advised in various capacities with the State Historical Marker program. He is a frequent lecturer on genealogy and history topics with lectures in a number of areas, and most recently with an emphasis on DNA and its use in genealogy.
He has published two books related to his hometown, Columbus Georgia in Vintage Postcards (2001) and Fort Benning, Images of America Series (2003), both with Arcadia Publishing. He has also contributed many articles about Columbus to Muscogiana, the journal of the Muscogee Genealogical Society.
Besides the Georgia Historical Society, his philanthropic interests lie with the Special Collections and Archives of Columbus State University, Columbus, Georgia. Ken established the Kenneth Harrison Thomas, Jr. Fund at the Georgia Historical Society in 2026, ensuring that his love of Georgia history will continue in perpetuity.