A day spent exploring for old cemeteries, homesteads, mills, and whatever
other historical items I might come across. There's a lot of territory in here,
and I barely had time to visit half of the locations that I wanted to search.
1 - Dockery Family Cemetery
Seven graves, all marked by plain fieldstones.
|
 |
I'd assumed this graveyard found atop a wooded hill was the family
cemetery of the John & Sarah Jarrard clan, whose homestead was
nearby. But a modern stone identifies it as the Dockery Cemetery.
|
 |
Grave 1 headstone
|
 |
Grave 2 headstone
|
 |
Grave 3 headstone
|
 |
Grave 4 headstone
|
 |
Grave 5 headstone
|
 |
Grave 6 headstone
|
 |
Grave 7 headstone
This headstone was smaller than most of the footstones...
|
 |
Most of the Dockery Cemetery graves also had footstones.
This is Grave 1's footstone, with its headstone in the rear.
|
2 - Garrett Children Cemetery
Two infant graves, each with a head and footstone. One was the child
of Henry and Mary Garrett; the other the child of Ben and Bell Garrett.
|
 |
I looked for these graves a year ago, with no luck. This time I had a GPS point, but it brought me to the same spot, and I still didn't see anything! Then I looked closer at a pair of dead-falls lying in the middle of the area. Sure enough, two small graves were lying between the two trees, hidden by broken limbs. I cleared out a bunch of branches before taking these photos.
|
 |
Grave 1 - infant of Henry & Mary Garrett.
|
 |
Grave 2 - infant of Ben & Bell Garrett
Based on the date of Bell's death, this burial would be prior to 1933.
|
 |
View of the graves from under one of the fallen trees.
I cut a limb that was threatening one of the headstones.
|
 |
I based my ID of which grave was which on this photo from 2014.
I found the image online; it shows two engraved markers identifying the graves. There's no
sign of those markers now. Could someone have been so despicable as to steal them???
|
3 - Harkins Grist Mill on Cooper Creek
Along with the Cavender-Cochran Mill on the Toccoa River, this grist mill operated by Thomas Harkins and
his son-in-law John Shope was one of the two biggest mill operations in the Suches - Cooper Creek District.
|
 |
This was the site of the grist mill; it doesn't look like much now.
The water that powered the mill flowed down from the gully in the background.
|
 |
Two long flumes/ditches were dug along the mountainside.
One carried water diverted from Burnett Creek, the other from further upstream on Cooper Creek.
|
 |
Another section of the flume.
This is just before the flume ends, running into the head of the gully above the mill site.
|
 |
At places, the terrain wouldn't allow for a contour-following flume to be dug.
At these sections, wooden troughs were likely built to carry the water, supported by these stacked rock piers.
|
 |
Another view of the mill site, higher up the draw.
The flumes ended high above the mill, and the water fell steeply down, resulting in a head that
produced more power than would have been available from a waterwheel turning in the creek.
|
 |
Upper Burnett Creek Falls
Climbing up to the starting point of one of the flumes, I passed this pretty
waterfall. There is also another falls down closer to Cooper Crk.
|
4 - Logging-Timber Dam
Per "The Heritage of Union County", the Harkins Mill pictured above operated until the 1900s. Then a dam was built across Cooper Creek near the Shope house, and water-wheel powered this Harkins/Shope mill until around 1920. Also discussesed is another dam built by hand labor across Cooper Creek at the lower end of the Shope field. "It was made of mountain stones, and had sluice gates for the purpose of floating logs many miles to the Toccoa River, where they were sawed into lumber."
Based on these descriptions, I'm pretty sure that this substantial stone dam was the logging dam.
|
 |
Remains of the large rock dam, downstream from Shope Fields.
|
 |
View directly along the dam
Cooper Creek now breaches the old dam in the rear, while a sluice opening is in the foreground.
|
 |
Looking across Cooper Creek at the far end of the dam...
|
 |
View through the sluice opening at the dam.
|
 |
Section of the logging dam sluice
|
 |
Another section of the sluice
|
5 - Austin Harkins Cemetery
|
 |
Grave of Benjamin Austin Harkins
He served 53 days in 1838 with Capt. Samuel Patterson's Georgia Volunteers,
and in later years drew a pension for that service. Harkins died June 8, 1901.
|
 |
Austin Harkins' footstone
(He went by his middle name...)
|
 |
Fieldstone at one of two small graves next to Austin Harkins' grave.
These two unmarked graves are children of Payton Harkins.
John Payton Harkins, who went by Payton, was Austin's son.
|
 |
Marker for the second adjacent grave.
Pieces of a broken figurine were buried in the leaves/pine straw next to the stone.
|
 |
Overall view of the tiny graveyard
|
 |
A nice little rock-lined springhead sits not far from the graveyard.
It's at a nice flat spot; there was possibly a home nearby at one time.
|
6 - Austin Harkins Homestead
|
 |
Remains of the chimney at Austin Harkins' homestead.
The homestead is about a quarter mile from his grave site.
|
 |
I had first discovered this chimney-homesite in February 2021.
|
-->
