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Gordon County, Georgia
A Proud Member of the Genealogy Trails Group
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Hello and welcome to the Genealogy Trails website
for Gordon County, Georgia.
This County is available for adoption.
Our goal at Genealogy Trails
is to help you track your ancestors through time and place by transcribing genealogical and historical data and
placing it online for the free use of all researchers.
This is a continuation of
our original, Illinois Genealogy Trails History and Genealogy Project and we are excited about this opportunity
to expand into other states. We welcome your feedback and comments, and your data contributions.
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who share our dedication to putting data online and are interested in helping this project be as successful as
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If you have data that you would like to have posted on this website, please contact us.
Any data we come across will
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Gordon County was created on February 13, 1850 by an act of the
Georgia General Assembly. The new county was formed from portions of Cass (later renamed Bartow) and Floyd counties.
All lands that would become Gordon County were originally occupied by the Cherokee Indians -- and, in fact, the
area was home of New Echota, capital of the Cherokee Nation. Even while Cherokees remained on their homeland, the
General Assembly enacted legislation in December 1830 that provided for surveying the Cherokee Nation in Georgia
and dividing it into sections, districts, and land lots. Subsequently, the legislature identified this entire area
as "Cherokee County". An act of December 3, 1832 divided the Cherokee lands into ten new counties --
Cass (later renamed Bartow), Cherokee, Cobb, Floyd, Forsyth, Gilmer, Lumpkin, Murray, Paulding, and Union. Cherokee
lands were distributed to whites in a land lottery, but the legislature temporarily prohibited whites from taking
possession of lots on which Cherokees still lived.
It was not until December 29, 1835 that Georgia had an official basis for claiming the unceded Cherokee lands that
included the future location of Gordon County
In the Treaty of New Echota, a faction of the Cherokees agreed to give up all Cherokee claims to land in Georgia,
Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina and move west in return for $5 million. Though a majority of Cherokees opposed
the treaty and refused to leave, the U.S. and Georgia considered it binding. In 1838, U.S. Army troops rounded
up the last of 15,000 Cherokees in Georgia and forced them to march west in what came to be known as the "Trail
of Tears."
Gordon County's original 1850 boundaries were changed numerous times between 1852 to 1877, during which time the
legislature transferred portions of Cass (Bartow), Floyd, Murray, Pickens, and Walker counties to Gordon County,
while transferring land from Gordon to Floyd and Murray counties.
Georgia's 94th county was named for William Washington Gordon (1796-1842), the first Georgian to graduate from
West Point and first president of the Central of Georgia Railroad [source:
wikipedia.org]
The county seat is Calhoun, Georgia
Cities and towns
Calhoun -- Fairmount -- Plainville -- Ranger -- Resaca
Red Bud -- Oakman -- Sugar Valley -- Oostanaula
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Online Data
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African American History
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Biographies
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Births
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Cemeteries
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Census
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Church Histories/Records
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County Records
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Court Records
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Deaths
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Family Bibles
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History
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Land Records
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Marriages
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Military
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Native American Data
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Newspaper Data
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Obituaries
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Wills/Probates
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Website Updates:
Oct 2009: East Damascus Church Cemetery Burials
Sep 2009: History and burials in Chandler, Fain, Russell, Resaca, Harmony and Longstreet Cemeteries; African-American
History; Cherokee History; Story of Elias Boudinot and Harriet Gold; Cherokee Land Lottery; African American Biographies;
1850 Slave Census Schedule
10 Jan 2008: MURRAY death notice |
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