History

Early History

From early recorded history, the region that would become known as Northeast Georgia was a vast forested wilderness sparsely inhabited by Creek and Cherokee Indians. Before European settlement, Northeast Georgia was a pristine, sylvan landscape lightly traced with Indian trails. These trails provided fragile connections among isolated Native American tribes that lived in the forest. They were also the means for explorers, backwoodsmen and trappers to scout out the area and bring back knowledge of the interior to people living in the cities and settlements along the Atlantic coast.

Around the time of the Revolutionary War, when the thirteen American colonies wrenched their freedom from Britain, pioneers dreaming of permanent settlement gradually began to press their way westward. When the war ended, Georgia acquired a large area of land the size of Rhode Island through a treaty with the Cherokees in 1783.

In order to encourage settlement on the frontier, Georgia awarded land grants to Revolutionary War soldiers in payment for their military service to the new country. Drawn by the hope of owning their own land and starting a new life, many families took advantage of this opportunity. Most of these pioneer people were Protestants of Scotch and Irish descent who emigrated from North and South Carolina along with a smattering of others from as far away as Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

With their families, they crossed the Savannah and Tugaloo Rivers at Abbeville, S.C., and settled along river beds, creeks and streams. Others chose to establish homesteads along ridge tops. These settlers found security in the thought that a commanding view of the valleys below would serve as protection against marauding bands of Indians who might seek to attack their small isolated communities.

In 1784, an act of the Georgia Legislature divided the area into two new counties called Franklin and Washington. Franklin County was named in honor of the Revolutionary War patriot, esteemed elder statesman and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin. It became Georgia’s ninth county and has the historical distinction of being the first one to be formed after the Revolutionary War.

In a far-sighted decision, the same act that established Franklin County ordered the county surveyors to set aside twenty thousand acres of land to establish a college or seminary. The establishment of Franklin College in Athens fifteen years later was the foundation for the University of Georgia.

This blending of people from the various coastal states resulted in scattered communities of small, self–reliant farms. The early pioneers who settled in Franklin County were by nature strong and independent and able to withstand the rigors of frontier life. They not only survived but eventually prospered.

Before too long, the Georgia settlers discovered that Franklin County was far too spread out and unwieldy to govern effectively. In order to correct this problem, the state of Georgia began the process of breaking down the region into smaller counties. During the next 100 years, the Georgia legislature carved out twelve more counties from the original area: Jackson (1796), Clarke (1801), Walton, (1803), Gwinnett (1818), Habersham (1818), Hall (1818), Hart (1853), Banks (1858), Barrow (1914), Madison (1811), Oconee (1875), and Stephens (1905). The Treaty of Beaufort with South Carolina in 1787 ceded three counties – Pickens, Oconee (the original Oconee), and Anderson to South Carolina – and defined the boundary line between the two states.

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