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Athens-Clarke County, Georgia
A Proud Member of
the Genealogy Trails Group
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Hello and welcome to the Genealogy Trails website
for Athens-Clarke 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 of course, your data contributions. If you have data that you would like
to have posted on this website, please contact us.
We're looking for folks who share our dedication to putting
data online and are interested in helping this project be as successful as our Illinois websites are.
If you think you might be interested in joining our group,
view our Volunteer
Page for further information and instructions on signing up..
If you would like to be kept informed of our state and county
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Any data we come across will be added to this site.
We regret that we are unable to perform any personal research for you.
Clarke County was created in 1801 by an act of the Georgia General Assembly on December 5. The county was named
after Revolutionary War hero Elijah Clarke and included 250 square miles of land that was originally part of Jackson
County.
Clarke was most recognized for being credited with the 1779 victory at the Battle of Kettle Creek in Wilkes County.
The Elijah Clarke Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a monument in his name in the middle
of Broad Street in Athens that still stands today.
The city of Athens began as a tiny settlement and trading post that emerged at Cedar Shoals, where an ancient Cherokee
trail crossed the Oconee River. On January 27, 1785, the Georgia General Assembly created the University of Georgia
as the first chartered state-supported university in the United States. It was not until the summer of 1801, though,
that five men traveled to the area to look for an appropriate site for the University. One member of the delegation,
John Milledge, purchased 633 acres on the hill above Cedar Shoals and donated it to the University. He renamed
the area Athens in honor of the Classical Greek center of culture.
The original Clarke County Commission had selected Watkinsville, now in Oconee County,
as the county seat. All county offices and county business, including the courts and jail, later moved north to
Athens when the seat was moved on November 24, 1871. The state legislature
created Oconee County from the southwest section of Clarke County and named Watkinsville as its seat. Oconee gained
one-third of Clarke's population and three-fifths of its land.
Cities and towns
Athens --- Winterville --- Bogart
Only the links in color are active.
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