Remembering History

Often, when I travel the roads of North Georgia, I wonder what this land was like two hundred years ago, not long after white settlers began arriving here from Virginia, the Carolinas and the Georgia coast, before the Trail of Tears and long before the Civil War.

We have some knowledge from William Bartram’s writings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bartram

And more from contemporary writings by authors such as Robert Skarda, whose “Scull Shoals: The Mill Village that Vanished in Old Georgia” recounts a late 18^th-early 19^th century settlement along the Oconee river in northeast Georgia, including Georgia’s first paper mill. The book is available from Friends of Scull Shoals.

The area around Cleveland, where Loganberry Heritage Farm is located, belonged to the Cherokee nation; the pre-white settlement of Scull Shoals was part of the Creek lands. Unlike the Cherokees, who are an independent tribe, the Creeks were a confederation of tribes who were considered hard to distinguish from one another and whose names were so difficult to pronounce that, it is said, white settlers simply called them “Creeks” because of their location along creeks and small rivers.

The history of North Georgia is colorful, riven by brutal, unconscionable acts, and fascinating for a newcomer to the area.