Pike County celebrates 200 years, looks to future

Early Pike County pioneers guided their horses and buggies along narrow Native American trails through the wilderness to carve out homesteads for them and their families. Through backbreaking labor, they cleared the land, built cabins and barns and planted crops. Out of necessity, they banded together to create small communities – and each area of Pike retains its own unique characteristics to this day. Pike features five towns, including Concord, Meansville, Molena, Williamson and Zebulon but there have been many more communities over the years, including Bain, Beeks, Drewrysville, Driver, Finchers, Flat Rock, Flat Shoals, Harmony, Hope, Jenkinsville, Jolly, Jordon, Jugtown, Laetitia, Liberty Hill, Neal, New Hope, Revere, Rose, Rose Hill, Van Buren, Vega, Weaver and Zera, among others.
The rolling hills and open acres of Pike are still dotted with remnants of the hardscrabble past where weather-worn log cabins, barns and other buildings from the early 1800s still stand.

Pike County was established in 1822, after the Creek Nation signed the Treaty of Indian Springs, deeding thousands of acres of unspoiled land to the state of Georgia. A land lottery was used to distribute the property in the five new counties created by the treaty. In the land lottery, tickets were numbered by lots and blank tickets were placed into boxes. Those entitled to draw tickets included all free white males 21 or older, including every married man with children, widows with children and all families of orphaned minors. Many drew blank tickets but the ‘fortunate drawers’ were required to pay the state treasury $4 for every 100 acres in their lot within 12 months of the lottery. Those fortunate ones built bonds with the land and others in the county and many of their descendants still reside here today.

The first settlers in Pike were an independent and headstrong group, much like the man for whom the county and county seat were named: Zebulon Pike. He was an intrepid explorer and military officer who lost his life in battle in 1813. In the History of Pike County 1822-1932, Lizzie Mitchell shares a story recorded by her father in the Pike County Journal in 1895. Capt. J.H. Mitchell settled in the area in 1821 and wrote about the first county election which was held in a crude, dirt floored log cabin on Potato Creek in 1822. “I can see the early settlers wending their way the first Monday in February 1823 to the place appointed for the first election for organizing the county; some on horseback, perhaps many on foot, each with his trusty rifle, following the Indian trails or tracks made by the surveyors a short while before.”

The first Pike officers, commissioned Feb. 25, 1823, were: Willis Whatley, Sheriff; John H. Broadnax, Clerk of Superior Court; William Myrick, Clerk of Inferior Court; and Joel Moore, Coroner. James Lowery, Surveyor, was commissioned Jan. 9, 1824.