Pickens County, GA
History
Pickens County, located at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains in north central Georgia, was formally created on December 5, 1853, from Gilmer and Cherokee counties. The county was named for Andrew Pickens, a South Carolinian who served as a general during the American Revolution.Prior to the coming of the Europeans, the Cherokee lands included Tennessee, Kentucky, northern Alabama and Georgia along with the western portions of Virginia and the Carolinas. As the white settlers moved in and epidemics of imported diseases ravaged their numbers, the Cherokee holdings gradually receded. The Cherokee sided with the British who had protected their territory during the American Revolution. After the Revolution, the Indians were forced to surrender claim to all lands south of the Savannah River and east of the Chattahoochee River in the Treaty of Long Swamp, signed in what is now Pickens County. This was the first Treaty between the United States and the Native Americans.
In 1832 new settlers obtained, through the Cherokee land lottery, lands in the area which then became a cultural intersection - a place where natives of the Tennessee and North Carolina mountains lived in proximity with hill country families from Georgia's Hall County.
Source: New Georgia Encyclopedia