Hugh Golson was born on December 20,1950, at the Telfair Hospital in Savannah, the second son of businessman Charles Oliver Golson and Elinor Palmer Stiles. Hugh graduated from The Savannah Country Day School and earned a B.A. in political science from the University of South Carolina. Later he pursued an M.Ed. in History Education from Savannah State University.

Hugh began a career of teaching history at H. V. Jenkins High School in Savannah, and later he was part of the founding faculty of the Savannah Arts Academy. For several summers he taught at the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program in both Valdosta and Dahlonega. Hugh became a certified teacher of Advanced Placement history, and he was Chatham County’s 1997 Teacher of the Year as well as its 1999 STAR teacher. He was active in the Georgia Association of Educators and chaired its elections committee. In 2003 he was elected President of the Board of Education for the City of Savannah and Chatham County.

Hugh is an ardent preservationist who has saved and preserved several buildings. He chaired the Revolving Fund of the Historic Savannah Foundation and also chaired the City of Savannah’s Historic District Board of Review. His knowledge of the history of Savannah  placed him on the county’s Historic Sites and Monuments Commission. In 2001 he was honored with the Governor’s Award in the Humanities. He edited Caroline Lovell’s Light of Other Days in 1995 with the Georgia Colonial Dames, and he coauthored Andrew Low and the Sign of the Buck in 2011.

Hugh’s passion for history has led to a lifelong affiliation with the Georgia Historical Society. Early in his teaching career he sent his students into the community on a project to visit historic buildings and to write up what they found and how they evaluated their visit. Several students came back complaining that Hodgson Hall had denied them entry because of their age. Hugh appealed to the GHS Board of Curators, which changed the policy. Shortly after, he found himself elected to the Board in 1980 at age 30, the youngest member to date. For over a decade Hugh served on the GHS Georgia Heritage committee and regularly marched in the Georgia Day parades, once portraying General Oglethorpe and once as Governor Henry Ellis. In 1996 he delivered the Georgia Heritage address to the membership. In recent years he has been conserving and upgrading thousands of documents in the Colonial Dames Collection at GHS.

The arc of Hugh’s life has intersected in so many ways with the Georgia Historical Society that it is only fitting that it be honored with the Hugh Stiles Golson Fund, established in 2025, ensuring that his commitment to Georgia history will continue in perpetuity.