Historic Sites in Pickens County

The history of Pickens County

Pickens County was created on December 5, 1853, from parts of Gilmer and Cherokee counties and named for Andrew Pickens, the South Carolinian who served as a general in the American Revolution. Jasper is the county seat. The area lay within the Cherokee Nation when the Federal Road was opened across Cherokee lands in the early 1800s, and in 1819 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions founded the Taloney mission to educate Cherokee children. The same site later held Fort Newman, a stockade used during the removal of the Cherokee in 1838, after Georgia had already distributed their land to white settlers in the 1832 lottery. John M. Bozeman, who opened the Bozeman Trail to the Montana gold fields, was born in the area in 1835. The Civil War divided the county: Pickens men served in both Confederate and Union ranks, and local opponents of secession raised the United States flag at the courthouse. Marble became the defining industry. Quarrying began in the 1830s, and the arrival of the railroad in 1883 was followed a year later by the Tate family's founding of the Georgia Marble Company. Stone from the quarries near Tate went into the U.S. Capitol, the Georgia State Capitol and the New York Stock Exchange, along with many monuments in Washington, D.C.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiaencyclopedia.org