@) the History of Dawson County F Chapter One
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@) The History of Dawson County f Chapter One As white men colonized the northern areas of the North American continent they moved inland and pushed the Cherokee further south and west onto land that belonged to the Creek. At that time much of North Georgia was Creek land. The Creek and Cherokee fought a battle and the Creek lost and retreated to a line roughly south of the Etowah River. It is not known when the Cherokee Indians began occupying the upper Etowah River valley, but we do know the name of one family that lived in and around Russell Creek, that was known earlier as Child Toters Creek. In several 1 deeds dated before 1869 the name Map showing Cherokee and Creek Territories Childtoter is used, and it is clearly the same as Russell Creek. There are two records showing that Childtoter (Child Toater) who was a Cherokee lived in Big Savannah2 at the Tensewattee community. Child Toater is documented in the census of Cherokee Indians East of the Mississippi River in 1835, with eleven people. All eleven are listed as full-blood Cherokee. According to the 1835 Cherokee Census records of the portion of Lumpkin County, Georgia, that later became Dawson County, there were 54 Indian families, 6 intermarried families and 43 slaves. Names like these were full-blood Cherokees: Young Turkey, Snip, Black Bird, Sconti, Paunch Lifter, Beaver Toter and many more. There were half-blood Cherokees like John Proctor, Sr., John Proctor, Jr., Jesse Cochran, Moses Downing and others. These were white men who intermarried with Indian women giving the men Cherokee citizenship: Lewis Ralston, David Ledbetter, Silas Palmer and others. In 1836 federal agents visited the farms of Cherokees in Map shows the different Cherokee territory to record and assign a value to the creeks as they were at that improvements made by each individual. These values were to be time. used later for reimbursement and compensation for the Cherokee properties. Agents Hutchins, Shaw and Kellogg evaluated Child Toater’s farm on December 5, 18363. @) 1 f e Chapter One f In early years, several white men married mixed-blood and full-blood Cherokee women, built houses and cleared farm land in the Cherokee Nation. We know that some of these farms were evaluated the same as the Indian improvements. Once settled by the White Man and Cherokee Indians, the river valleys were dotted with farms, orchards and numerous modern log structures, as well as several businesses. Native Americans thrived in the area because artifacts and mounds that pre-date the Cherokees were located where communities were built later. The families settled near the Etowah River and Amicalola River, the two main rivers in what later became Dawson County. Etowah River rising northwest of Dahlonega, Lumpkin County, flows south and west to the lower part of the Cherokee Nation through Dawson, Cherokee, Bartow and Floyd counties. At Rome it joins the Oostanaula to form the Coosa River that flows into Alabama. Near the Etowah River, there were many families living in what would later be called Big Savannah in Artifacts from the Dawson County Historical Dawson County. & Genealogical Society Archives. The items The Etowah River with its rich bottomland were donated by Larry Hamby and were was one of the first areas settled by full and found in Dawson County near the Chestatee mixed-blood people. A few of the first white River. settlers were the Stowers, Russell, McClure, Gober, Dougherty, and Palmour families. Four minor creeks in the Big Savannah Valley were Russell Creek, Palmer Creek, Procter Creek, and Tinsawattee Creek, later changed to Mill Creek. Amicalola River begins in southeast Gilmer County, flows through Dawson County and joins the Etowah at Breadtown, a Cherokee settlement. Amicalola Village in 1834 was a small Cherokee community of several families along the Amicalola River. Lake Sconti built by the Tate family and located in Dawson and Pickens County, Georgia, was named for the Cherokee, Sconti, who lived above Breadtown. Amicalola River is best known for the falls at the upper part of the river. The area was later surrounded by Amicalola Falls State Park on Highway 52. The park covers about 1050 acres and has become a popular place for tourists. A trail leads from the falls to Springer Mountain, the beginning of the 2150-mile Mr. Benjamin Parks Appalachian Trail that runs from Georgia to Maine. The first to discover gold There are many stories of the first discovery of gold in Georgia and most credit resident Benjamin Parks with the first discovery. Mr. Parks claimed he found a nugget of gold on the ground at Licklog, just east of Chestatee River, in what was then the Cherokee Indian Nation later to become Lumpkin County, Georgia. In an article published in The Atlanta Constitution in 1894 Mr. Parks stated: e 2 f @I The History of Dawson County f “The gold, it was just an accident that I came across it. I was deer hunting one day when I kicked up something that caught my eye. I examined it and decided that it was gold. The place belonged to Rev. O’Barr, who, though a preacher, was a hard man. I went to him and told him that I thought I could find gold on his place, if he would give me a lease on it. He laughed, as though he did not believe me, and consented. So a lease was written out, and consideration of which was that I gave him one-fourth of the gold mined. I went over to the spot with a pan, and turning over some earth, it looked like the yellow of an egg. It was more than my eyes could believe.” Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina acquired the mineral rights of the land where Mr. Parks found the nugget. The Calhoun Mine became one of the first and biggest in the area. This mine was located about three miles south of what later became Dahlonega on the bank of the Chestatee River. The word spread of Mr. Park’s discovery, and within a short time thousands of people arrived in Georgia hoping to get rich. They settled near Auraria six miles southeast of present-day Dahlonega. In the beginning the town was Dawson County Historical called Knucklesville because Nathaniel Nuckolls opened a Society Collection tavern there as prospectors flooded the area. Later named Auraria, it soon became a town of taverns, banks, doctors, lawyers and miners located near John C. Calhoun's mine. Numerous gold mines were illegally developed in the area with miners entering illegally into the Cherokee Nation lands causing conflict with the Cherokees. The miners applied political pressure against the Cherokees because they wanted the gold that had been found. Several gold mines were granted charters as companies by the State of Georgia. Many individual miners were unable to make a living and began to drift away from the gold fields of Northeast Georgia. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s the area that was to become Dawson County was in the midst of the first gold rush in America. In 1849, word came of the major gold find at Sutter’s Mill in California. Several men from the North Georgia area left for California hoping to get rich. By 1830 the Cherokee Nation consisted of northwest Georgia plus adjoining areas in Alabama, Tennessee and North Carolina. Cherokee Indians remained on their land in Georgia, but on December 21, 1830, the General Assembly enacted legislation claiming all the territory within the boundaries of Georgia. The act provided for surveying the Cherokee lands in Georgia and dividing them into sections, districts and land lots and authorizing a lottery to distribute the land. On December 26, 1831, the legislature claimed all land in Georgia that lay west of the Chattahoochee River and north of Carroll County as “Cherokee County” and provided for its organization. On December 3, 1832, the legislature added areas of Habersham and Hall counties to Cherokee County, then divided the entire area into nine new counties: Cass (later renamed Bartow), Cobb, Floyd, Forsyth, Gilmer, Lumpkin, Murray, Paulding and Union. In addition, they reconstituted a much smaller Cherokee County. The surveyors were instructed to identify Cherokee houses, buildings, cleared land, fruit trees and improvements such as fish traps, mills, stores and ferries. The information regarding these is housed in the Georgia Department of Archives and History. Many white settlers and land speculators simply desired the land. Some claimed the Cherokee presence was a threat to peace and security. Some states, like Georgia in 1830, passed a law which prohibited whites from living on Native American territory after March 31, 1831, without a license from the state. This law was written to justify the earlier removal by the military of the white missionaries who were helping the Native Americans resist removal. @I 3 f @f Chapter One f The Gold Lottery of 1832 was the seventh lottery in the Georgia Land Lottery, a lottery system used by the State of Georgia between the years 1805 and 1832 to distribute land. It was authorized by the Georgia General Assembly by an act of December 24, 1831, a few years after the start of the Georgia Gold Rush. The act specified that approximately one third of the 160-acre (0.65 km2) land districts to be distributed by lottery under the act of December 21, 1830, (the sixth land lottery), be designated as gold districts of 40 acres (160,000 m2) each and to be distributed in a separate lottery. The drawings for the Gold Lottery of 1832 occurred between October 22, 1832, and May 1, 1833, and applied to land that had been owned by the Cherokee Indians.