Historic Sites in Union County

The history of Union County

Union County was carved from the original Cherokee County in 1832, as white settlement pushed into former Cherokee Nation lands in the north Georgia mountains. State representative John Thomas is credited with suggesting the name Union, and Blairsville, incorporated in 1835, became the county seat. Cherokee heritage lingers in local place names: Choestoe comes from a Cherokee word for rabbit place, and Frogtown recalls Walasi-yi, the home of a legendary great frog. At Track Rock Gap, six table-sized soapstone boulders are covered with hundreds of carved symbols, including animal and bird tracks and geometric figures; archaeologists have proposed dates ranging from the Archaic period to the Cherokee era. The first settlers, many of them Virginians, lived in relative isolation until roads built in the 1840s connected farms to outside markets, and early enterprise centered on blacksmith shops, distilleries and mills. The county's delegates voted against secession in 1861, though many local men later joined Confederate units. Union County was home to Governor Joseph E. Brown, poet Byron Herbert Reece, and Arthur Woody, the forest ranger remembered as the barefoot ranger. The 1899 courthouse on the Blairsville square, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, now houses the Union County Historical Society.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiahistory.comblairsville-ga.gov