George Samuel Reid Family Roots

Reference Sources for CHATTOOGA COUNTY, GEORIGA

NEW GEORGIA ENCYCLOPEDIA – CHATTOOGA COUNTY

Chattooga County

Chattooga County, in northwest Georgia, is the state’s ninety-third county. The 314-square-mile county borders Alabama and was established from parts of Walker and Floyd counties in December 1838 by the state legislature. The county is named for the Chattooga River, which flows through the area and is the smaller of two Georgia rivers bearing that name. (The larger Chattooga River forms part of the state’s northeast border between Georgia and South Carolina.) The county may be best known as the longtime home of folk artist and country philosopher Howard Finster and as the place where Sequoyah developed a written alphabet for the Cherokee language.

The county was originally inhabited by Creek Indians and then Cherokees; the first white men in the area were fur traders, hunters, and traveling missionaries, followed by Revolutionary War (1775-83) soldiers. The whites lived in fairly peaceful coexistence with the Indian population until 1829, when gold was discovered in north Georgia. In one of the saddest chapters in America’s history, the newcomers, backed by federal and state authorities, used force to dispossess the Cherokees of their land and then distribute it to white settlers in the 1832 Cherokee land lottery.

The county’s largest landowner and major promoter in the nineteenth century, John Fluker Beavers, sold ninety acres for the establishment of the county seat in March 1839. Originally called Selma, the seat was renamed Summerville in 1840 in recognition of its mild climate. The town was slow to develop, showing active growth only after the long-awaited arrival of railroad service to the county in the late 1880s. The county courthouse, built in 1909, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Lyerly was incorporated in 1891 and named after Tennessee bank president Charles Abner Lyerly, who had invested in real estate in the county. Lyerly was the first town in northwest Georgia to ship poultry to markets in other states.

Menlo was incorporated in 1903, although it had existed since 1883. Its founder, Captain Andrew J. Lawrence, named the town in honor of inventor Thomas Edison, whose workshop was located in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Lawrence formed the Edison Land Company to sell lots in town. In 1951 Menlo was awarded second prize in the Georgia Power Company‘s Better Hometown contest.

Trion, incorporated in 1869, was named after Trion Factory, the first cotton mill in northwest Georgia. Built in 1845-47, the mill was named by its three founders to commemorate their partnership. In 1858 it served the community as a hospital during an outbreak of typhoid fever. Unlike many other cotton mills, the factory was spared by Sherman’s troops during the Civil War (1861-65), reputedly because one of its owners, Andrew Perry Allgood, was a Union sympathizer who hosted General Sherman overnight in October 1864. Allgood received protection papers from Sherman in exchange for a promise to close the mill for the duration of the war. Ironically, in 1875 the mill did burn to the ground, raising questions about whether the fire had been set by people angered by Allgood’s Union sympathies. The mill was rebuilt and eventually became Mt. Vernon Mills Incorporated, the world’s largest indigo denim plant.

According to the 2000 U.S. census, the population of Chattooga County was 25,470 (86.7 percent white, 11.2 percent black, and 2.1 percent Hispanic), an increase of 14.5 percent since 1990.

Notable residents have included Finster, Sequoyah, and the attorney Bobby Lee Cook, who has worked on several famous trials, including that of Wayne Williams, who was convicted for the Atlanta child murders in the 1980s. In addition to practicing law, Cook has served as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives (1949-50), a state senator (1957-58), and a judge. He is also a member emeritus of the board of directors for the Georgia Innocence Project, which aims to free wrongly convicted inmates from correctional institutions.