Lee County

Family of James Martin and Hester Bogan

James Martin and wife Hester Bogan Martin came from Union Dist S C to Jasper County Georgia ca 1821; they remained there until 1831 when they moved to the lower part of the 5th District of Randolph County. (A James M Martin living Wilder’s Dist. Jasper County drew Lot No. 137 in the 5th Dist Lee County in 1827 and this land fell into Randolph County when that county was formed from Lee Co). Easter (Hester) Bogan Martin, wife of James Martin, was the daughter of Isaac Bogan, a Revolutionary War Soldier of Union, S. C. James and Hester Martin … Read more

The Chehaw Affair

By E. Merton Coulter; Regents’ Professor Emeritus of History, University of Georgia There once stood in Southwest Georgia near Leesburg (northeast of Leesburg) Georgia an immense live oak whose trunk was reputed to be nine feet in diameter and whose boughs measured 120 feet across. The Chehaw Indians who had a village nearby were said to have held their council meetings under this giant tree. In 1912 the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a granite boulder here bearing the follow description: “CHEHAW Large Indian town, home of the Chehaws. A friendly agricultural people of the Creek tribe, who aided … Read more

The Chehaw Indians

By Dr. Lee W. Formwalt; Albany State University Our earliest documentation of the Chehaw Indians goes back four and half centuries to 1540 when southeastern Amerindians encountered Europeans and Africans for the first time. Hernando de Soto and his band of Spanish adventurers came across the Chehaw or Chiaha Indians on Zimmerman’s Island in the French Broad River in present-day Tennessee. By the early eighteenth century, however, the Chehaw had moved south to the Ocmulgee River where they had greater access to the British traders operating out of Charles Town, Carolina (now Charleston, S.C.). A number of Lower Creek Indians … Read more