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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 of course, your data contributions. If you have data that you would like
to have posted on this website, please contact us.
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data online and are interested in helping this project be as successful as our Illinois websites are.
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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.
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
Only the links in color are active.
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