Clayton has been around a long time, probably longer than many people think. The town’s history begins with the Cherokees and ends, at least for now, with tourism and a Main Street lined with boutiques. A good deal has transpired in between. As the homeland of the Cherokees for hundreds of years, northeast Georgia was
Sinking Mountain is located about seven miles northwest of Tallulah Falls. Some people claimed the mountain was sinking a few inches every year. They swore you could feel the mountain moving under your feet. Others dismissed this claim as sheer nonsense. But we are getting ahead of our story about the Hostess of Sinking Mountain.
African-Americans were among the earliest residents of Rabun County. They were slaves. Rabun County was created by an act of the Georgia legislature in 1819. The new county’s land was offered to white settlers through the Land Lottery of 1820. Unique to Georgia, this lottery system distributed 250-acre parcels in the county’s river valleys, which
The June 2022 newsletter contains historical photographs of Clayton scenes from Main Street and Savannah Street going back to the early twentieth century. Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format. 2022 June Vintage Rabun
Although some politicians equate paying taxes with patriotic duty, few people celebrate their payments into the government till. That proved to be the case in 1907 when Rabun County’s Ordinary, the county’s chief executive responsible for everything from taxation to roads and bridges, ordered the imposition of a special tax to finance the construction of
At one time, Rabun County was dotted with nearly 30 gold mines as prospectors hoped to strike it rich with the yellow metal. Unfortunately for the Rabun miners with dollar signs dancing in their heads, more money was put into the ground than ever taken out. However, that was not the case elsewhere in north
Standing a lanky six-feet-five, Logan E. Bleckley was not known to frequent barbershops. His hair hung loosely around his shoulders, and his generous beard flowed down his chest. When asked about his appearance, he replied that Moses also wore his hair long, which also had the benefit of protecting his neck. Bleckley was a student
An editorial in the Clayton Tribune once declared, “Robberies, fights, shootings, knifings, street scuffles. They are all part of the contemporary history of Rabun County and Clayton.” It sounded like this was a pretty rough and lawless place. While some serious crimes were committed, there is a lighter side to some of the criminal activity
The December 2021 newsletter includes photographs from the early twentieth century when Rabun County and many areas of the Southern Appalachians were clear cut by industry-scale logging. Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format: 2021 Dec Vintage Rabun
Singing conventions with large, enthusiastic crowds were Rabun County’s rock concerts back in the day. Think hymnals instead of the Rolling Stones In reporting on the three-day Rabun County Singing Convention in 1931, the Clayton Tribune wrote, “The attendance on Friday was rather small but on Saturday the crowd had grown almost to the capacity
When Rabun County was founded in 1819, the local supermarket was the family farm. People ate the vegetables they grew, the animals they raised, the game they hunted and the fish they caught. Surviving in the isolated mountains of northeast Georgia was no easy task. Pork, squirrel and venison were favorite meats. Vegetables were eaten
Geography is a key factor shaping the development of a country or region. As an island nation, England turned to the ocean and became the world’s greatest maritime power by the eighteenth century. American pioneers saw the endless flat expanses of the Great Plains and turned it into the country’s breadbasket. On a still smaller
Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the U.S. presidency in 1933 at the depth of the Great Depression. National unemployment stood at a staggering 25%. FDR’s landslide election was a plea for help from a desperate and demoralized nation. Upon being sworn into office on March 4, 1933, FDR launched what became known as “The Hundred Days,”
Rabun County built four courthouses between 1824 and 1908 even though the county was sparsely populated, poor and isolated from the world. One more went up in the mid-1960s. This total does not include the oak tree that served as the county’s first hall of justice. When Rabun was established in 1819, the population of
The topics in the June 2021 edition of the Rabun County Historical Society’s Vintage Rabun newsletter are: Clayton’s Vintage Hotels Museum Re-opening Use the link below to download the newsletter in PDF format: 2021 June Vintage Rabun
Rabun County was remote and isolated, populated by subsistence farmers scratching out a living on hardscrabble mountain land. The Tallulah Falls Railroad opened Rabun and the surrounding region to the outside world. The TF also brought badly needed jobs. Working on the TF involved backbreaking labor for paltry wages, typically about one dollar per day.
Corn has been the main crop of Rabun County farmers since the first white settlers arrived over 200 years ago. Gristmills were built by Rabun farmers to grind the county’s corn harvests into meal for bread, grits and hominy. The output from gristmills also was used for something more potent than Johnnycakes. Virtually every Rabun
The earliest white settlers, Scots-Irish from Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, arrived in northeast Georgia in the late eighteenth century. They farmed the land to survive, but those settlers were not the first to raise crops in the fertile valleys and river bottomlands of what would become Rabun County. Already living in the north Georgia
Rabun County is host to four houses on the National Register of Historic Places. Two became inns, or boardinghouses as they once were called, as a direct result of the Tallulah Falls Railroad. One is a farmhouse, serving as a vivid reminder of how poor, subsistence farmers lived in the Georgia mountains in the late
Clayton was barely a speck on the map. The few roads that existed were no more than old Cherokee trails. People caught vast numbers of jumping fish in baskets. An encyclopedic work published in 1849 provides a detailed snapshot of life in a rugged, remote and sparsely populated Rabun County within 30 years of its
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81 North Church Street
Clayton, Georgia 30525
(706) 782-5292