History Of Walker County Georgia

Compiled Index for the History Of Walker County Georgia

Pierce County, Georgia was founded in 1857, honoring the fourteenth President of the United States, Franklin Pierce. Blackshear, which became the county seat, was founded in 1859 and named after David Blackshear, an American Revolutionary soldier, brigadier general of the Creek Indian War, and later Georgia politician. Shortly after the establishment of the county and its seat, the tenacity of its residents was tested against the horrors and hardships of the Civil War. The men of Pierce County faced with both bravery and uncertainty the greatest challenge of their lives, while the women and children they left behind toiled to sustain the community, with the hope that their loved ones would return. After the war, Pierce County families joined together to re-build their community, which was nearly destroyed in its infancy. The late nineteenth century brought growth and change, as a determined citizenry built new homes, churches, and schools to nourish and educate its young. From the abundant green pines and beautiful white sands of Southeast Georgia arose enterprising businesses and a successful agricultural economy. Residents of the county kept their eyes toward the future while always honoring and remembering the sons and daughters they lost through the ages. The proud faces of generations past and the tangible results of their pioneering efforts to build a home fill the pages of this treasured volume.

By: J. Lanette O. Faulk & Billy Walker Jones, Orig. Pub. 1960, Reprinted 2017, 486 pages, soft cover, ISBN #0-89308-009-8. This long awaited reprint of this central Georgia county history book should make many a researcher very happy. This book is a genealogical gem of a book. It is filled with a wide variety of information such as: early history, Indian affairs, roster of soldiers from the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, World War I & II, abstracts of tax Digest for 1818-1826-1853, abstracts of deeds 1809-1900, abstracts of deeds from other Index Books to 1901, abstracts of Wills, Newspaper abstracts, Cemeteries inscriptions for some 45 different cemeteries, Land lottery - Wilkinson County 1805 (now Twiggs). The authors did not stop there. They also added biographical sketches / genealogies of approx. 66 early settlers of this important county.

This superb history takes us from the earliest settlement of Walton County, Florida, through its role in the wars and conflicts of the 19th century, to its development as a modern district. John Love McKinnon was a descendant of Colonel John L. McKinnon, who was one of the original founders of Walton County, being part of a trio of white men to first set foot upon the land. The colonel's expeditionary accounts are a significant source for the first part of this history, which discusses the characteristics of the land, the picturesque coastline, and its suitability for settlement. A clear appreciation for natural beauty graces this chronicle; the streams, fields, groves and woods of the land are evocatively described. At first sparsely populated, by the time of the U.S. Civil War many young men of the area were recruited for combat in the Confederacy. Though the area itself escaped skirmishing, several local residents fought in the large battles of the war, such as Chickamauga. On several occasions this history becomes biography, recounting the stories of individual lives and the legacy they left upon the community, be it in military prowess or with establishing the first schools and businesses.

The 1830s forced removal of Cherokees from their southeastern homeland became the most famous event in the Indian history of the American South, an episode taken to exemplify a broader experience of injustice suffered by Native peoples. In this book, Andrew Denson explores the public memory of Cherokee removal through an examination of memorials, historic sites, and tourist attractions dating from the early twentieth century to the present. White southerners, Denson argues, embraced the Trail of Tears as a story of Indian disappearance. Commemorating Cherokee removal affirmed white possession of southern places, while granting them the moral satisfaction of acknowledging past wrongs. During segregation and the struggle over black civil rights, removal memorials reinforced whites' authority to define the South's past and present. Cherokees, however, proved capable of repossessing the removal memory, using it for their own purposes during a time of crucial transformation in tribal politics and U.S. Indian policy. In considering these representations of removal, Denson brings commemoration of the Indian past into the broader discussion of race and memory in the South.