Due to some local prominence, especially in Gilmer County, Georgia, and Ellijay specifically, his name has found it’s way into some obscure references and recorded in the annals of the State. For what it’s worth, but primarily to partially fulfill some of my continuing interest in recording anything of interest regarding family, I have copied what has been found to date for my Great-Grandfather, Samuel Jones.
The first reference here is from what the Georgia Archives calls their Master Card Index file, with but brief mentions of names and topics. Just when and how this was compiled I have no idea but assumedly the indexes were extracted from some other data sources and of course do not elaborate very much at all. If time and energy allow perhaps another visit to the Archives in Atlanta might reveal more detailed information. But for now, this is what is available online. The following image is a copy of one of two card indexes found for the man.
There is little room for doubt that this is our ancestor. What I consider to be reliable family trees that have been found on the Internet refer to Samuel’s time spent as a judge of the inferior court of Gilmer County. Inferior Court assumedly meaning the lowest court, perhaps similar to a Justice of the Peace or even some municipal courts. An inferior court as I understand it requires no official recording of the proceedings and primarily only records the charges and the judgments, if that.
So in interpreting what is written here the significance of the roman numeral VII following the name escapes me for now. The data is obviously a compilation of of the periods that he was assigned the duty of judge. Without the aid of an official explanation perhaps the individual dates were dates of official duties or of a renewal of a swearing in process. Regardless, the entries cover a period of several years beginning in March of 1836 through perhaps December of 1855, a period of some nine years. Further research in the Archives will probably clarify these dates to be an uninterrupted span of duty or perhaps individual short periods of assignment. Someone accessing our Family History many years past obviously did a considerable amount of research for some of the accounting of his activities found in his short biography online are now easily confirmed. That is always a good thing in my estimation for at times I truly wonder how reliable some of the sources really are. What I have personally found in the online Archives really adds to my feeling of the accuracy of what I consider my baseline of the family tree found some ten years ago.
The next Master Index file card cannot be easily verified, but based on dates, location and rank, specifically Captain Samuel Jones, reflected in many online family trees, I am rather confident that this is also our ancestor. Lumpkin county is the county where Samuel was a sheriff and was the location where the family began it’s Georgia history, most likely in or near the town of Dahlonega, after leaving South Carolina some 50 to 75 miles to the east.
During this period of our Countries history, and not only in the State of Georgia, Militia Service was compulsory. Men of good health and of the proper ages were well organized and trained to some level of capacity strictly from the necessity of protection from either Indians or marauders of any sort. They were the “Minute Men” of their time and the forerunner of our current National Guard units.
Dahlonega was the center of commerce during the period of the Georgia Gold Rush beginning in 1828 on what was Cherokee Indian land, and was described as a wild west area. Lumpkin County was formed from a portion of Habersham County in 1832 and Samuel Jones was elected the first sheriff of the county and served for two years or less. That information also passed down in other family trees has also been verified in History of Lumpkin County, For the First Hundred Years by Andrew Cain and published in 1932. He is listed in the appendix as the first sheriff and sworn in on March 9, 1833. The author relates that “Sheriff Samuel Jones stepped to the door and sang out “Oh yez, Oh yez, the Superior Court of Lumpkin County is now open”. This was contained in the authors description of the opening of the first court session in Lumpkin County in August of 1833, some eight months after it was formed in December of 1832.
The first seven of eleven children that Samuel and his wife Narcissa Tate spawned were born in Habersham and later Lumpkin Counties. Lumpkin County was carved out of a portion of Habersham County. This card index reveals that his time served in the Militia ended in 1835 suggesting he was not directly assigned in a military capacity to the expulsion of the Indians during the period of the “Trail of Tears” of 1838-1839. There is some vague reference that Samuel was appointed to sell assets of some Cherokee families and to forward the funds to Oklahoma to be given to the owners of the personal assets, but I am not sure that this responsibility was of a military capacity. This apparently occurred after he had moved his family some 30 miles further west in Georgia to Gilmer County, where he and his family first appear in the U.S. Census of 1840. The seventh child, Willis, was the first born there in 1837. Our Grandfather A.H. Jones was the last child born, in Ellijay, Gilmer County, in 1843. All this establishes the time of the move to Gilmer County between 1835 and 1837. In all likelihood Samuel was also a member of the Gilmer County Militia but that requires further research.
These are but the first of a small handful of what can be found of Samuel in the Georgia Archives. More will be posted as I collect them and ponder any of the questions that arise from them.
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