The Cunningham Mess, part 1: The Arrest

From The History of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780, by Edward McCrady, published 1901, Macmillan & Co., ltd., South Carolina, pp. 86-87:

1775
On the day the Congress met, the 1st of November, it was informed that Captain Robert Cuningham [sic] had been taken into custody and brought to Charlestown. He had been arrested under orders from Major Andrew Williamson upon the affidavit of Captain John Caldwell, charging him with seditious words. Cuningham having been brought before the Congress did not deny that he had used the words with which he was charged; he did not believe, he said, that Captain Caldwell had perjured himself; but though he did not consider himself bound by the treaty at Ninety-Six, he averred "that he had since behaved himself as peaceably as any man, and although he had opinions he had not expressed them but when asked." Upon this frank statement Captain Cuningham was committed to the jail of Charlestown by a warrant under the hand of William Henry Drayton as President; Thomas Grimball the Sheriff was directed, however, to afford him every reasonable and necessary accommodation at the public charge. But he was enjoined not to suffer him to converse or correspond with any person whomsoever, or to have the use of pen, ink, or papers unless by express leave from the Congress. The arrest of Cuningham was deeply resented by the people of the Upper Country, and in connection with another matter, which occurred about the same time, occasioned further trouble and a far more serious disaffection of the people in that region. They were led to believe that the Revolutionists on the coast were intriguing with the Indians to bring them down upon the frontier settlements because the people there hesitated to join them against the King.

Georgia Enters The Revolution

From Our Country, a "Household History for All Readers," Vol. II, by Benson J. Lossing, published 1877:

Georgia, tardy in joining the Continental movement, felt the flame of patriotism warming the hearts and minds of her sons early in 1775. In February, the inhabitants of the parish of St. Johns, in that province, chose Lyman Hall to represent them in the second Congress, and he took his seat as such at the middle of May. In July the Provincial Convention that had been formed adopted the American Association, and chose delegates to represent the whole province in the Congress; and then the bright galaxy of the "Old Thirteen" was perfected. The royal governor, Sir James Wright, had tried in vain to suppress the rising tide of republicanism in Georgia. So early as May, 1775, when it was suspected that he was about to imitate General Gage, by seizing the ammunition of the province, several members of the Council of Safety and others broke open the magazine, sent a greater portion of the powder to Beaufort, South Carolina, and hid the remainder in their own garrets. When the governor and the Tories were preparing to celebrate the king's birthday, on the 4th of June, by firing the cannon on the battery in Savannah, some of the leading Whigs spiked the guns there, and hurled them to the bottom of the bluff. Not long afterward, a letter written by the governor to General Gage, asking him to send troops to Georgia to suppress the rising rebellion there, was intercepted at Charleston. The republicans were greatly exasperated; and a day or two afterward they seized a British ship at the mouth of the Savannah River, with thirteen thousand pounds of gunpowder on board. The spirit of resistance waxed from stronger and stronger, until, in January, 1776, the Whigs resolved to endure the adverse influence of the governor and the Tories no longer. Joseph Habersham, a member of the popular legislature, with some armed volunteers, seized Governor Wright and made him a prisoner on parole at his own house. A sentinel was placed before it, with orders not to allow any intercourse between the governor and the Loyalists. During a stormy night in February, Sir James escaped through a back window of his house, walked five miles down the borders of the river with a friend, and then entering an open boat, fled in the pelting rain, under the cover of darkness, for shelter to the British vessel-of-war Scarborough, lying in Tybee Sound. [John] Stuart, the Indian agent for the Southern Department, had fled for safety to St. Augustine. He had incurred the bitter resentment of the patriots by trying to execute an atrocious order from Gage, as commander-in-chief of the forces, in these words:
"The people of Carolina in turning rebels to their king have lost all faith; improve a correspondence with Indians to the greatest advantage, and even when opportunity offers make them take arms against his majesty's enemies, and distress them all in their power; for no time is now to be kept with them; they have brought down all the savages they could against us here, who, with their riflemen, are continually firing upon our advanced sentries; in short, no time should be lost to distress a set of people so wantonly rebellious; supply the Indians with what they want, be the expense what it will, as every exertion must now be made on the side of government."
Gage had borne the same false testimony concerning the employment of the savages by the Americans, to the British ministry, as an excuse for his barbarous recommendations to make allies of them with the British army. At the same time the British emissaries were among the savage tribes of the north trying to form alliances with them, and to incite them to war against the Patriots. 
So was ended royal rule in Georgia.

Brig. Gen. Andrew Pickens (1739-1817)

Andrew Pickens was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on September 19, 1739. Like many early Scots-Irish immigrants, Andrew's family moved south, traveling the Great Wagon Road in search of new land. Records show they lived first in Augusta County in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, later in the Waxhaws along the North Carolina-South Carolina border, and, eventually, in the Long Cane settlement in Abbeville County, South Carolina, bordering Georgia.
In the Long Canes, Pickens married and started a family. He not only farmed and raised cattle, he became acquainted with his Indian neighbors through a prosperous trading business. As the American Revolution approached, Pickens, as many of his Scots-Irish neighbors, became an ardent Patriot.
It was in the Long Canes, too, that he emerged as a military leader, first in expeditions against the Cherokee, who had allied with the Loyalists in hopes of retaining their lands. In 1779, Pickens would distinguish himself in a Revolutionary War battle. That year, British commander Sir Henry Clinton sent British soldiers to South Carolina and North Georgia to encourage Loyalist support. Colonel Pickens and his three-hundred man militia, in efforts to aid the Patriot cause, overtook and defeated a much larger force of 700-800 men under Colonel James Boyd at Kettle Creek in North Georgia just south of the Long Canes.
The victory at Kettle Creek slowed the recruitment of Loyalists, but by 1780, the British dominated as they took Charleston, captured the southern continental army, and swept inland from coastal Carolina. The situation looked so gloomy, that Pickens and other militia leaders surrendered to the British, and, on oath, agreed to sit out the war under British protection.
Pickens’ parole did not last. When Tory raiders destroyed much of his property and terrorized his family, Pickens gathered his militia again and resumed guerrilla activities against the British. He played a key role in defeating British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens, January 17, 1781. The victory came at a crucial time for Patriots in the South who had been repeatedly forced to retreat. Pickens, who with his militia arrived as reinforcements, urged Major General Daniel Morgan to make a stand. According to one source, Pickens offered to stand alone with his militia if necessary. Morgan was convinced to make a stand and relied heavily on Pickens’ militia in the ensuing battle. The militia, in fact, got off two shots before their planned retreat, something not done in previous battles, and re-formed to help envelop the enemy. The bravery of the militia, combined with the well-disciplined Continental troops and Colonel William Washington’s cavalry, won the day in this pivotal battle.
After the Revolution, Pickens acquired land in frontier South Carolina on the banks of the Keowee River, across from the old Cherokee town of Seneca. There, he built a house he called Hopewell and lived the life of the backcountry elite. There, too, he served as a political middleman between the Cherokees and the new American nation. Pickens had borrowed heavily from Cherokee warfare skills, and applied those skills in partisan warfare, including the victory at Cowpens. For his "spirited conduct" at Cowpens, the Continental Congress presented Pickens with a sword, and the State of South Carolina promoted him to Brigadier-General in the state militia.

(Source: "Andrew Pickens," by G. Scott Withrow, http://www.nps.gov/archive/cowp/pickens.htm)

The Siege of Williamson's Fort

From South Carolina Revolutionary Battles: Part I, Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina:

In the final days of October [1775], the Council of Safety had dispatched a wagon load of ammunition as a present for the Cherokees. Patrick Cunningham's band of Tories had intercepted the shipment at Mine Creek, in present Saluda County, and had taken possession of it. If the Patriots were apprehensive that the Indians might side with the King's men in this struggle, the Loyalists were equally suspicious of the Patriots' motives in sending them ammunition. Before long, both factions were again massing troops.
The conflict finally came on November 19-21 at Ninety Six. The Patriot army under Major Andrew Williamson and Major James Mayson hastily erected a stockade fort at Savage's old field, the plantation of John Savage, some distance west of the court house town. They were invested by a Loyalist force three times their number, commanded by Major Joseph Robinson and Captain Patrick Cunningham. Thus commenced the siege of Williamson's Fort not to be confused with William's Fort or Williamson's Plantation, which will be mentioned later. During the course of the fighting, both sides sustained a number of casualties, and James Birmingham became the first South Carolina Patriot to die in the cause of Liberty. The affair ended in a truce on the evening of the 21st.

The Battle of Kettle Creek

Kettle Creek flows into the Little River near the Tyrone community in Wilkes County. It likely takes its name from a local fish trap, called a kittle.

During the American Revolution several incidents occurred along its banks. The South Carolina militia established a station there in 1776; an Indian attack on Robert McNabb's Fort in November 1778 resulted in McNabb's death; and in the last days of the Revolution, the rebel partisan and horse thief Josiah Dunn met his death in a skirmish nearby.

The most important event to occur at Kettle Creek, however, took place on Sunday, February 14, 1779. On that morning 600 American supporters of the British cause, popularly known as Loyalists or Tories, encamped atop a hill in a bend of the creek. They were following an established trail to the nearby Quaker settlement of Wrightsborough en route to Augusta. Aside from the defensive qualities of the position, the hill offered the new arrivals food in the form of cattle penned there.

The leader of this expedition, James Boyd, an Irishman from Raeburn Creek, South Carolina, had traveled to Georgia with a British invasion force from New York. He carried an open commission (as a colonel) to recruit southerners for the British military from settlements behind the rebel lines. Boyd left Savannah sometime after January 20, 1779, and reached Wrightsborough, deep within the Georgia backcountry, by the 24th, looking for guides to the South Carolina frontier. Within a week he established a camp near present-day Spartanburg, South Carolina. With 350 recruits he set out for Augusta on February 5. During their march south along the Indian frontier, Boyd and his followers were joined by 250 North Carolinians under the command of John Moore.

The Loyalists were ineffectively pursued by small groups of rebel militiamen. Boyd's command captured Fort Independence and the outpost at Broad Mouth Creek in South Carolina, but they declined to attack the garrison of McGowan's Blockhouse on the Cherokee Ford of the Savannah River. The Loyalists crossed the river further north at Vann's Creek on February 11. The garrison of Cherokee Ford, with reinforcements, attacked Boyd's men at the crossing but were repulsed. As Boyd and his men camped at Kettle Creek on February 14, he dispatched his prisoners to Augusta. He could not know that the British troops sent there to rendezvous with him had that morning begun a withdrawal toward Savannah.

At the same time 340 South Carolina and Georgia militiamen, under Colonel Andrew Pickens of South Carolina and Colonel John Dooly and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke of Georgia, were preparing to attack Boyd's camp at Kettle Creek. They had been besieging Loyalist horsemen at Robert Carr's Fort on nearby Beaverdam Creek when they abandoned their prey to intercept Boyd's party. Four days of pursuit brought them almost to where they had started.

Pickens led his 200 men in a direct assault on the rocky hill on Kettle Creek, while Dooly and Clarke attacked the camp across the creek on the left and right respectively. Pickens's advance guard disobeyed orders and fired on the Loyalist sentries, announcing the attack. Boyd led his men in ambushing Pickens's troops while Dooly's and Clarke's men were entangled in the swamp.

Boyd fell mortally wounded, shot by a party of Georgia militiamen who had become lost and found themselves in the Loyalist camp. With their leader down, the Loyalists panicked and were driven across the creek. Boyd and nineteen of his men were killed, and twenty-two others were taken prisoner. Pickens and Dooly lost seven men, and fifteen were wounded. Counting the Loyalists who went home and later surrendered to local authorities, about 150 of Boyd's men were eventually taken prisoner. They were held at Augusta and later at Ninety Six, South Carolina. Five of their number at Ninety Six and two others in North Carolina were eventually hanged.

Two hundred and seventy of Boyd's command escaped the Battle of Kettle Creek and safely reached the British army. They were formed into the North Carolina Royal Volunteers under John Moore and the South Carolina Royal Volunteers (later the second battalion of the South Carolina Royalists Regiment). Both units virtually disappeared by the summer of 1779 because of desertions and transfers.

The Battle of Kettle Creek provided the rebel cause with a victory, however small, in the midst of a string of much larger defeats. The British had expected thousands of loyal southerners to rally to their flag and restore the whole South to the king. However, Boyd proved only able to assemble 600 men, some of whom were criminals in flight. Other men who traveled with him were allegedly coerced into joining under threats to their lives and property.

After Kettle Creek, British leaders should have realized that practical Loyalist military support in the South, if it ever existed, had disappeared.

(from: New Georgia Encyclopedia, "Battle of Kettle Creek", by Robert Scott Davis Jr., Wallace State College, Hanceville, Alabama; http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1088)

Francis Salvador (1747-1776)

Francis Salvador was born in London in 1747, the fourth generation of Salvadors to live in England. His great grandfather Joseph, a merchant, established himself as a leader of England's Sephardic community and became the first Jewish director of the East India Company. When George III ascended the British throne, Joseph Salvador arranged an audience for the seven-man delegation that officially congratulated the king on behalf of the Jewish community.
Even before Francis Salvador's birth, his family developed interests in America. Salvador's grandfather teamed with two other leaders of the London Jewish community to raise funds to send some of London's destitute Jews to the new British colony in Savannah, Georgia. The Georgia trustees subsequently voted to ban Jewish immigration to Georgia but not before grandfather Salvador and his two associates had landed forty-two Jewish settlers in Savannah in July 1733. When the founder of the colony, James Oglethorpe, intervened on behalf of the Jews, the trustees decided to let them stay. The Salvador family then purchased personal land holdings in South Carolina.
As a young man, Francis Salvador was raised in luxury in London. He was well educated by private tutors and traveled extensively. At age twenty, he married his first cousin, Sarah, and took his place in the family shipping firm. The devastating effects of a 1755 earthquake in Lisbon, where the family had extensive interests, weakened the family fortune. The failure of the East India Company completed its ruin. By the early 1770's, virtually the only thing left of the Salvador family's immense wealth was the large plot of land they had purchased in the South Carolina colony.
In 1773, in an attempt to rebuild the family fortune, Francis Salvador moved to South Carolina. Intending to send for his wife Sarah and their children when he had prepared a proper home for them, Salvador arrived in Charleston in December and established himself as a planter on a seven thousand acre tract he acquired from his uncle. Salvador found himself drawn to the growing American movement against British rule and unhesitatingly threw himself into the patriot cause. Within a year of his arrival, at the age of 27, Salvador was elected to the General Assembly of South Carolina. He became the first Jew to hold that high an elective office in the English colonies. He would hold the post until his sudden death.
In 1774, Francis Salvador was elected as a delegate to South Carolina's revolutionary Provincial Congress, which assembled in Charleston in January 1775. The Provincial Congress framed a bill of rights and prepared an address to the royal governor of South Carolina setting forth the colonists' grievances against the British crown. Salvador played an important role in the South Carolina Provincial Congress, which appointed him to a commission to negotiate with Tories living in the northern and western parts of the colony to secure their promise not to actively aid the royal government.
When the second Provincial Congress assembled in November 1775, Salvador urged that body to instruct the South Carolina delegation in Philadelphia to vote for American independence. Salvador played a leading role in the Provincial Congress, chairing its ways and means committee and serving on a select committee authorized to issue bills of credit to pay the militia. Salvador was also part of a special commission established to preserve the peace in the interior parts of South Carolina, where the English Superintendent of Indian Affairs was busily negotiating treaties with the Cherokees to induce the tribe to attack the colonists.
When the Cherokees attacked settlements along the frontier on July 1, 1776, massacring and scalping colonial inhabitants, Salvador, in an act reminiscent of Paul Revere, mounted his horse and galloped nearly thirty miles to give the alarm. He then returned to join the militia in the front lines, defending the settlements under siege. During a Cherokee attack early in the morning of August first, Salvador was shot. He fell into some bushes, where he was subsequently discovered and scalped. Salvador died forty-five minutes later. Major Andrew Williamson, the militia commander, reported of Salvador that, "When I came up to him after dislodging the enemy and speaking to him, he asked whether I had beaten the enemy. I told him 'Yes.' He said he was glad of it and shook me by the hand and bade me farewell, and said he would die in a few minutes."
His friend Henry Laurens reported that Salvador's death was "universally regretted," while William Henry Drayton, later Chief Justice of South Carolina, noted that Salvador had "sacrificed his life in the service of his adopted country." Dead at twenty-nine, never again seeing his wife or children after leaving England, Salvador was the first Jew to die waging the American Revolution. Ironically, because he was fighting on the frontier, he probably did not receive the news that the Continental Congress in Philadelphia had, as he urged, adopted the Declaration of Independence.

(Source: "Francis Salvador: Martyr of the American Revolution", by Michael Feldberg, director of the American Jewish Historical Society, Jewish World Review Feb. 12, 2001)

Gen. William Moultrie (1730-1805)

Until 1760 William Moultrie had a fairly undistinguished career as a member of South Carolina's provincial assembly. But after playing a central role in putting down a Cherokee uprising, he became a leader in his colony's military affairs. Early in the Revolution his expertise won him command of the Continental army's Second Regiment. Moultrie commanded the fort on Sullivan's Island on June 28, 1776, and he was successful in repulsing the British fleet when they tried to enter Charleston harbor. It is said that during the bombardment of Fort Sullivan, General Charles Lee continuously tried to micromanage Moultrie's situation from a distance. While the battle raged, Lee sent a letter to Moultrie by an aide, saying, "If you should unfortunately expend your ammunition without beating off the enemy or driving them on the ground, spike your guns and retreat with all order possible; but I know you will be careful not to throw away your ammunition." Moultrie, instead, asked for more gunpowder. In appreciation of his efforts the fort was subsequently renamed after him. He was promoted to brigadier general in the Continental service, and thereafter operated independently. After the fall of Savannah (1778), he decisively defeated the British forces at Beaufort in February of 1779. Moultrie was captured by the British after the fall of Charleston in 1780 and sent as prisoner to St. Augustine. Exchanged in 1782, he was then promoted to major general.
Following the war, William Moultrie was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1783. In 1784, he served as Lieutenant Governor. He was then elected governor for a two-year term in 1785. While governor, Moultrie created the county court system, and relocated the South Carolina capital from Charleston to Columbia in 1786. He was elected to the State Senate in 1787. He was elected to his second two-year term as governor in 1792, and retired from public office in 1794. In 1802 his Memoirs of the American Revolution were published in two volumes. William Moultrie died in Charleston on 27 September 1805 and was interred at Windsor Hill Plantation.

The Call for the Overmountain Men

From King's Mountain and Its Heroes, by Lyman Copeland Draper, pub. 1881, P.G. Thomson, page 84:

"When Colonel [Charles] McDowell became convinced that Ferguson's movement to the north-western portion of South Carolina, threatened the invasion of the North Province also, he not only promptly raised what force he could from the sparsely populated settlements, on the heads of Catawba, Broad and Pacolet rivers, to take post in the enemy's front and watch his operations; but dispatched a messenger with this alarming intelligence to Colonels John Sevier and Isaac Shelby, on Watauga and Holston, those over-mountain regions, then a portion of North Carolina, but now of East Tennessee; urging those noted border leaders to bring to his aid all the riflemen they could, and as soon as possible.
Sevier, unable to leave his frontier exposed to the inroads of the Cherokees, responded at once to the appeal, by sending a part of his regiment under Major Charles Robertson; and Shelby, being more remote, and having been absent on a surveying tour, was a few days later, but joined McDowell, at the head of two hundred mounted riflemen, about the twenty-fifth of July, at his camp near the Cherokee Ford of Broad river."

Col. Isaac Shelby (1750-1826)

Born in Frederick County, Maryland, near Hagerstown, Isaac Shelby was the son of Evan Shelby and Letitia (Cox) Shelby. The family moved to western Virginia in 1772 and ran a trading post. He was a lieutenant in Lord Dunmore's War in 1774. The next year he surveyed land in Kentucky and settled there in 1776. During the American Revolutionary War, Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, appointed Shelby to secure provisions for the army on the frontier. He was elected to the Virginia legislature in 1780. He served as a lieutenant, captain, and colonel in the War and fought with distinction, particularly at the Battle of Kings Mountain.
Along with James Williams and Elijah Clarke, Col. Shelby led a force of Overmountain Men from Fort Watauga (near present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee) to victory at the Battle of Musgrove's Mill in South Carolina on August 19, 1780. By securing their defensive patriot position on the banks of the Enoree River, Shelby, Williams, and Clarke were able to defeat a much larger force consisting of two hundred British Loyalists and three hundred British provincial regulars.
On September 26, 1780, a greater number of the Overmountain Men again assembled at Fort Watauga and formed a militia under Col. John Sevier and Col. Shelby. These Patriot troops days later crossed the Appalachians at Roan Mountain and successfully engaged the Ferguson's Loyalists at Kings Mountain, a southern battle recognized as one of the turning points of the American Revolution. In an address before this October 1780 battle, Col. Shelby encouraged his men to fight in frontier fashion: "Let each one of you be his own officer, taking every care you can of yourselves, and availing yourselves of every advantage that chance may throw in your way. If in the woods, shelter yourselves and give them Indian play! Advance from tree to tree, pressing the enemy and killing and disabling all you can."
After the creation of the Southwest Territory and the State of Kentucky during the early 1790s, Isaac Shelby enjoyed an even more prominent Kentucky career. He was chosen governor in 1792 and again in 1812. Between his terms as state executive, he served as sheriff of Lincoln County, Kentucky, from 1796 to 1798. His last significant contribution to the region came in 1818 when he, Andrew Jackson, and others negotiated the "Jackson Purchase," which removed control of the western districts of Kentucky and Tennessee from the Chickasaw Indians. To honor this service, the Tennessee General Assembly named Shelby County (Memphis) for him. He died in Lincoln County, Kentucky, in 1826.

Thomas "Kanawah" Spratt (1731-1807)

Thomas "Kanawah" Spratt was born in 1731 onboard ship while his parents and older sisters were crossing the Atlantic from Ireland. Thomas was his parents' only son, and lived to become a legendary figure in their region of the Carolina frontier. According to Carolina historian Louise Pettus:

Some writers say that Thomas "Kanawah" Spratt was on his way to settle in either Abbeville [South Carolina] or Fairforest (near present-day Spartanburg) when the Catawba Indians persuaded him to settle among them. The nickname "Kanawah" was given to Spratt by the Catawbas. Spratt fought with the Indians on several occasions, and it is said that on an expedition in the area of present-day West Virginia, Spratt displayed such courage that the Indians named him for the nearby river. That's the same way the Catawba chief earned the name "New River."
The Catawbas were greatly attached to Spratt. Evidence was given of that in a tale about Spratt participating in the signing of the famed Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence on May 20, 1775. Spratt was to be a signer but "instead of dipping into an ink well, he dipped into a gallon jug." Spratt was placed in the county jail, and when some Catawba Indian friends heard of it, they "got on their horses, rode up to the jail, ripped off two or three planks and took Kanawha out, put him on his horse, then they raced their steeds around and around the court house several times––yelling and whooping––after which the Catawbas and Kanawah headed their horses back down Nation Ford Road for their homes in what is now Fort Mill."

"The Mountain Men," per Teddy Roosevelt

From The Winning of the West, Vol. 3, by Theodore Roosevelt, published 1900, G.P. Putnam's Sons:

"Having reduced South Carolina to submission, the British commander [Ferguson] then threatened North Carolina; and Col. [Charles] McDowell, the commander of the whig militia in that district, sent across the mountains to the Holston men praying that they would come to his help. Though suffering continually from Indian ravages, and momentarily expecting a formidable inroad, they responded nobly to the call. Sevier remained to patrol the border and watch the Cherokees, while Isaac Shelby crossed the mountains with a couple of hundred mounted riflemen, early in July. The mountain men were joined by McDowell, with whom they found also a handful of Georgians and some South Carolinans; who when their States were subdued had fled northward, resolute to fight their oppressors to the last. The arrival of the mountain men put new life into the dispirited whigs."

Rabun County's Native History

As early as 1760, explorers came to the area of Georgia now known as Rabun County. In the 1700s, the Cherokee population in the area was so heavy that this portion of the Appalachian Mountains were sometimes called the "Cherokee Mountains." Early explorers and settlers divided the Cherokee people into three divisions depending on location and dialect: Lower, Middle, and Over-the-Hill.
There were at least four Cherokee settlements in what would become Rabun County: a Middle settlement called Stikayi (Sticoa, Stekoa) was located on Stekoa Creek, probably southeast of the present-day Clayton. An Over-the-Hill settlement called Tallulah was located on the upper portion of the Tallulah River. There were also two Cherokee settlements of unknown division: Chicherohe (Chechero), which was destroyed during the Revolutionary War, located along Warwoman Creek, east of Clayton, and Eastertoy (Eastatowth, Estatowee) which was located near the present-day Dillard.
Despite the prominence of Cherokee, there is evidence of other Native Americans in the region before them. A mound similar to others across North Georgia (e.g., the Etowah mounds) is located about one mile east of Dillard, Georgia, and is likely a remnant of an earlier mound-building culture known as the Mississippian culture.

(source: Wikipedia)

Counties of Georgia

May 20, 1733: The original Creek land cession to Georgia founder James Edward Oglethorpe formally recognized English colonial proprietorship of lands extending up the west side of the Savannah River (the border of South Carolina) to the Fall Line region and into the Piedmont.

1758: Original Georgia lands were reorganized to form a series of parishes, including St Paul Parish in the lower Piedmont region west of the Savannah River around present-day Augusta.

1777: Richmond County created from the old St. Paul Parish; Wilkes County also created just to the north along the Savannah River from Cherokee/Creek land cession of 1 June 1773.

1784: Franklin and Washington Counties created on Georgia's northern and western frontier from Cherokee land cession of 31 May 1783 and Creek land cession of 1 November 1783; Georgia then extended from the Savannah River on the east to the Oconee River on the west.

1786: Greene County created from the northern Piedmont portion of Washington County.

1790: Columbia County created from part of Richmond County; Elbert County created from part of Wilkes County.

1793: Hancock County created from portions of Greene and Washington Counties; Warren County created from portions of Columbia, Hancock, Richmond, and Wilkes Counties; Oglethorpe County created from part of Wilkes County.

1796: Jackson County created from part of Franklin County; Lincoln County created from part of Wilkes County.

1801: Clarke County created from part of Jackson County.

11 May 1803-26 June 1806: Baldwin and Wilkinson Counties created from Creek land cessions of 16 June 1802 and 14 November 1805; with the distribution of this land in the 1807 Land Lottery, Georgia now extends west to the Ocmulgee River.

1807: Jones, Morgan, Putnam, and original Randolph (later Jasper) Counties created from portions of original Baldwin County.

1811: Madison County created from portions of Clarke, Elbert, Franklin, Jackson, and Oglethorpe Counties.

1812: Jasper County created from old Randolph County (renamed).

1818: Gwinnett and Walton Counties created from Cherokee land cession of 8 July 1817 and Creek cession of 22 January 1818.

15 May 1821: Fayette, Henry, Houston, and Monroe Counties created from Creek land cession of 8 January 1821; with the distribution of this land in the 1821 Land Lottery, Georgia then extended west to the Flint River.

24 December 1821: Newton County created from portions of Henry, Jasper, and Walton Counties.

1822: Bibb County created from portions of Houston, Jones, Monroe, and Twiggs Counties; Crawford County created from part of Houston County; DEKALB County created from portions of Fayette, Gwinnett, and Henry Counties; Pike County created from part of Monroe County.

1824: Upson County created from portions of Crawford and Pike Counties.

1825: Butts County created from portions of Henry and Monroe Counties; Taliaferro County created from portions of Greene, Hancock, Oglethorpe, Warren, and Wilkes Counties.

1826-1827: Carroll, Coweta, Muscogee, and Troup Counties were created from Creek land cessions of 24 January 1826, 31 March 1826, and 15 November 1827; with the distribution of this land in the 1827 Land Lottery, Georgia then extended west to its present Piedmont boundary at the Chattahoochee River and beyond.

14 December 1827: Harris County created from portions of Muscogee and Troup Counties; Marion County created from portions of Lee and Muscogee Counties; Meriwether and Talbot Counties created from part of Troup County.

1828: Campbell County created from portions of Coweta, Carroll, DeKalb, and Fayette Counties.

1830: Heard County created from portions of Carroll, Coweta, and Troup Counties.

1832: Lumpkin County was created on December 3, 1832. The county was named for former governor of Georgia Wilson Lumpkin. Lumpkin's daughter, Martha Atalanta Lumpkin Compton, was the source for the city name of Marthasville (which was the previous name for Atlanta).

1837: Macon County created from portions of Houston and Marion Counties; White County was formed from Habersham and Hall.

1851: Spalding County created from portions of Fayette, Henry, and Pike Counties.

1852: Taylor County created from portions of Macon, Marion, and Talbot Counties.

1853: Fulton County created from part of DeKalb County.

1854: Chattahoochee County created from portions of Marion and Muscogee Counties.

1856: Haralson County created from portions of Carroll and Polk Counties.

1857: Glascock County created from part of Warren County.

1858: Clayton County created from portions of Fayette and Henry Counties; Banks County created from portions of Franklin and Habersham Counties.

1870: Douglas County created from portions of Campbell and Carroll Counties; McDuffie County created from portions of Columbia and Warren Counties; Rockdale County created from portions of Henry and Newton Counties.

1875: OconeeCounty created from part of Clarke County.

1905: Stephens County created from portions of Franklin and Habersham Counties.

1914: Barrow County created from portions of Gwinnett, Jackson, and Walton Counties.

1920: Lamar County created from portions of Monroe and Pike Counties.

1924: Peach County created from portions of Houston and Macon Counties.

1932: Fulton County absorbed old Campbell and Milton Counties.

Elijah Clarke (1742-1799)

Among the few heroes of the Revolutionary War from Georgia, Elijah Clarke was born in 1742, the son of John Clarke of Anson County, North Carolina. As an impoverished, illiterate frontiersman, he appeared in the ceded lands, on what was then the northwestern frontier of Georgia, in 1773.
Elijah Clarke's name appears on a petition in support of the King's government in 1774. However, he subsequently joined the rebels and, as a militia captain, received a wound fighting the Cherokees in 1776. The following year, he commanded militia against Creek raiders. As a Lieutenant Colonel in the state minutemen, Clarke received another wound at the Battle of Alligator Bridge, Florida. Then on February 14, 1779, as a lieutenant colonel of militia, Clarke led a charge in the rebel victory at Kettle Creek, Georgia.
All of Georgia and most of South Carolina fell to the British in 1780. Elijah Clarke and thirty men passed through the Native American lands to continue the fight in the Carolinas. As a partisan, Clarke led frontier guerrillas in inflicting a heavy toll against the British and American Loyalists at Musgrove's Mill, Cedar Springs, Wofford's Iron Works, Augusta, Fishdam Ford, Long Cane, and Blackstock's. Although he was not present at the battles at King's Mountain and Cowpens, his campaigns were partially responsible for both of those major patriot victories. Besides receiving several battle wounds, Clarke also survived smallpox and the mumps during the Revolution. The state of Georgia rewarded his services with a plantation. He also obtained thousands of acres of land grants, some by questionable methods, and participated in the notorious Yazoo land fraud of the 1790s.

(Source: The New Georgia Encyclopedia, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org)