# Georgetown Market?



## Redneck Machismo (Nov 7, 2008)

This may be off topic but I read on the internet that during colonial times there was a town called Georgetown where there was market that is still standing today.  The article I was reading was about the history of Georgia's capitals and it was written in I believe 1988.  So I guess the market was standing as of twenty years ago.  When the Georgia capital moved to Louisville one of the reasons that area was decided upon was because it was at the cross roads of roads leading to Savannah, Augusta and Georgetown.  Has anyone ever heard of this place?


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## allenww (Nov 8, 2008)

*Georgetown*

Been interested in Georgia history all my life. I was waiting for an answer to your question, because I had not known of Georgetown.  

When you received none, I looked in my books and came up dry.

Surely someone with help both of us out. 

      wa


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## Miguel Cervantes (Nov 8, 2008)

Can you provide a link to the article you are reading?


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## Miguel Cervantes (Nov 8, 2008)

Georgetown is located directly across the river/lake from Eufala Alabama. As to a market?? I've never been there.


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## allenww (Nov 9, 2008)

Tried the Hargrett museum.   From 1788 (Purcell Map) to 1831 (Anthony Finley Map) there is a Georgetown located across the Ogechee from Lexington, just north of "Waynesboro".

Scooter1's Georgetown makes more sense than that.

                         wa


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## Redneck Machismo (Nov 10, 2008)

scooter1 said:


> Georgetown is located directly across the river/lake from Eufala Alabama. As to a market?? I've never been there.



I saw this Georgetown on the map and I don't believe it to be the one I am asking about.  The market was supposed to have been built in the 1750's and this area wouldn't have been part of the colony at that time.  Thanks!


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## Redneck Machismo (Nov 10, 2008)

allenww said:


> Tried the Hargrett museum.   From 1788 (Purcell Map) to 1831 (Anthony Finley Map) there is a Georgetown located across the Ogechee from Lexington, just north of "Waynesboro".
> 
> Scooter1's Georgetown makes more sense than that.
> 
> wa



I bet this is the right one.  I wonder what town or county that would be part of now?


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## Redneck Machismo (Nov 10, 2008)

Below is a link to the article I am refering too.  Just do a control F and type in Georgetown.

http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/capital.htm


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## Redneck Machismo (Nov 11, 2008)

allenww said:


> Tried the Hargrett museum.   From 1788 (Purcell Map) to 1831 (Anthony Finley Map) there is a Georgetown located across the Ogechee from Lexington, just north of "Waynesboro".
> 
> Scooter1's Georgetown makes more sense than that.
> 
> wa



From looking at modern maps it looks like the old ones you are referencing are either wrong or really out of scale.  The Ogeechee river doesn't come anywhere near modern Waynesboro.  In addition Lexington must be another town like Georgetown as it is not on modern maps either aside from one near Athens that can't be the right one.  Oh, well I guess I will keep looking.  Thanks for the help!


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## JustUs4All (Nov 11, 2008)

Several old Georgia maps show a Georgetown between Louisville and Warrenton near the Ogeechee River.  The book Georgia Place Names lists three Georgtowns including this one which is described as "northwest of Mitchell in Glascock County, now a ghost town.

There is the Old Market (in my youth called the Old Slave Market) in Louisville.  Surely that article was referring to the market that still stands in Louisville.


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## Redneck Machismo (Nov 11, 2008)

JustUs4All said:


> Several old Georgia maps show a Georgetown between Louisville and Warrenton near the Ogeechee River.  The book Georgia Place Names lists three Georgtowns including this one which is described as "northwest of Mitchell in Glascock County, now a ghost town.
> 
> There is the Old Market (in my youth called the Old Slave Market) in Louisville.  Surely that article was referring to the market that still stands in Louisville.



I would have thought the same thing as I was aware of the slave market in Louisville, however the article clearly mentions it as being a seperate place?  Actually the context of its mention is in regard to the location of the town of Louisville as the capital.  

"The actual site selected for the capital was the intersection of three roads--those to Savannah, Augusta, and now-forgotten Georgetown, where a market, built in 1758 and still standing today, stood."

So according to this the Georgetown market would be much older than even the town of Louisville much less the slave market.  I'll figure it out eventually.


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## JustUs4All (Nov 11, 2008)

I have copies of some maps that I downloaded from the UGA library at     www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps.  The problem is with the resolution of some of the later maps. I have not looked at all the maps.  You might find more information there. 

1779 map shows neither Georgetown nor Louisville.

1797 and 1798 maps show Georgetown on the Ogeechee River northwest of Louisville and southeast of Greensboro and about half way between the two.  On this map it appears that Georgetown was on the east side of the river while another town named Lexington was on the west side.

1829 & 1831maps show Georgetown northwest of Milledgeville and southeast of Warrenton  where the Ogeechee makes a fork.  Using current maps, the most likely looking fork that matches the 1829 map seems to be where Long Creek enters the Ogeechee just north of Jewell, but the maps below seem to show it just a little to the south of where Jewell is.

1834 & 1836 map shows Georgetown similarly located and near the spot where Washington, Hancocn, and Washington Counties all touch.

1852 map shows Georgetown similarly located and south of Mayfield in the approximate location of Jewell.

Maps of 1861 and 1862 would probably answer the question definitively, but my resolution on them is not good enough to read the place names in this area and I do not find it on a later map.

At this point I believe the Georgetown you seek was located on the east bank of the Ogeechee River and either at the spot where Long Creek forks just north of Jewell or where somewhere just to the south of there.


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## allenww (Nov 12, 2008)

Spent the evening looking at all the online maps I could get my hands on.  The one you have selected is indeed the one mentioned.
First, because the others are in parts of the state that were Indian land at the time (1750)and didn't exist, and second because the Ogeechee Georgetown was on the main trail north from Louisville, and is on all the old maps until 1862. 

      wa


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## JustUs4All (Nov 12, 2008)

Triangulating off of Warrenton, Sparta, and Mayfield on the 1852 map and looking at the shape of the road from Warrenton to Georgetown on that map I believe that Georgetown was very near the spot where present day GA-123 approaches nearest to the Ogeechee and touches the county line.  This place is called Shoals on a more modern map.  Shoals Primitive Baptist Church is located here.  The highway makes a right angle corner there to go back away from the river.  l  would bet that Shoals is the present day location of the old Georgetown.


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## Redneck Machismo (Nov 12, 2008)

I was working on this last night and it looks like we all figured it out at the same time.  The conclusion I came to is the same: it's on the east side of the Ogeechee just below the shoals in the northwest corner of Glasscock county.  If you go to google and type in "Glasscock county Georgia Georgetown" a pretty good bit of information comes up.  

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gaglasco/georgetn.htm

According to this article Georgetown was originally an Indian trading post in the mid 1700’s and was also settled by German immigrants who later moved to Pennsylvania.  Later the significance of the area was trade navigation on the Ogeechee.  Due to the shoals Georgetown was the furthest navigable point on the river.  Later more western land acquisitions made other rivers like the Oconee more valuable for trade than the Ogeechee.  I suppose this was the beginning of the end for Georgetown and the town of Lexington which was on the other side of the river.  The article also mentions that the post office for the area was located in Georgetown until it was moved in 1861.  I guess that is when the town basically was phased out.  

The only question I have remaining is what about the "market, built in 1758 and still standing today,?"  Could it have been torn down within the last twenty years?  Was the author mistaken and it never exisited?  I don't know?  Thanks for all the help!!!  I know it would have taken me a long time to figure it out without it!  I’ll let ya’ll know if I can find anything out about the market.


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## JustUs4All (Nov 12, 2008)

I will bet that the market referred to in the is the one in Louisville.  I have just re-read the sentence above referring to the market.  It is a poorly constructed sentence, but it is describing the market as being where the three roads intersect in Louisville.  If we just place a dash after the word Georgetown in the sentence the meaning becomes clear.  See below:

"The actual site selected for the capital was the intersection of three roads--those to Savannah, Augusta, and now-forgotten Georgetown -- where a market, built in 1758 and still standing today, stood."

Additionally, the website for the Old Market in Louisville states that it was originally thought to have been built in 1758, but now it is believed to have been built in the 1790s.

Do I have any takers on the idea that the market referred to is actually the one in Louisville?

Good stuff.  I like history just about as much as deer hunting.  This , and a little other work, has kept me out of the woods this morning.


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## Redneck Machismo (Nov 12, 2008)

I agree, I love the history too.  I need to get back and finish that degree..... Anyway you probably are right if you look at the sentence that way.  Just a simple gramatical error in a poorly written sentence.  I know I had a history professor in college that would be very proud of you for thinking of that.  I wish I would have thought of it!


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## JustUs4All (Nov 12, 2008)

Thanks.  Are you from that area?


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## allenww (Nov 12, 2008)

*One Last on Georgetown*

Your dash is the last puzzle piece.  Works like a charm and fits the facts. Never would have thought of it myself. 

      wa


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## allenww (Nov 12, 2008)

No.  

Just mentally from that time.


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## Miguel Cervantes (Nov 12, 2008)

This is one of the most facinating threads going right now.
I've spent hours on Google trying to find a map from 1862 that is actually legible.

You boys keep diggin, this is good stuff.


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## allenww (Nov 12, 2008)

You were in the hunt!

There is a state park - Hamburg Mill - "four miles from the shoals" and "six miles from the site of Georgetown".   May try to get down there sometime. 

But a citation said the site was now bare except for "the bases of two indian mounds and {not much else}".  I suppose folks of that era had little time for legacies.


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## Redneck Machismo (Nov 13, 2008)

JustUs4All said:


> Thanks.  Are you from that area?



No, I have never been there but I have been to places near there.  I was just reading that article about the history of Georgia's capitals.  Either I never knew or had forgotten how many capitals there had been before Milledgeville and I just noticed that one sentence mentioning Georgetown.  I guess forgotten places or ghost towns and obscure history has always interested me.  It's facinating how much history some of these small eastern Geogia towns have.


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## Elbonian (Jun 23, 2018)

I'm fascinated by this decade-old thread because the "Georgetown" referred to in the thread is actually near the Shoals on the Ogeechee. The historical marker for the Shoals talks about Lexington and gives the history of that area. See http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/topics/historical_markers/county/warren/shoals-on-the-ogeechee "First called Lexington, Shoals was the site of what was probably the first woolen mill and iron foundry in Georgia." The mill is dated to a 1794 land purchase, so presumably Lexington didn't exist at the time Louisville was first designated as the capital in 1786.

FYI, the 1758 date for the "slave market" in Louisville appears to come from the Library of Congress photo collection created in 1933. See http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ga0248/ to view the photo. I doubt that the actual structure in that picture was built before 1865. In fact, it is claimed to be rebuilt from an original dating from the 1790s. An interesting history is here: http://roadsidegeorgia.com/site/markethouse.html

The Warren County marker mentions Georgetown: http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/topics/historical_markers/county/warren/warren-county "What is claimed to have been the first iron works and woolen mill in Georgia was established near Georgetown." That place where the mill was established is now called Shoals (see above).

As one of you noted above: "Several old Georgia maps show a Georgetown between Louisville and Warrenton near the Ogeechee River. The book Georgia Place Names lists three Georgtowns including this one which is described as 'northwest of Mitchell in Glascock County, now a ghost town.'"

It would appear that the modern road which begins as Broad St. in Louisville and runs to the northwest all the way to the Shoals, where it crosses the Ogeechee, probably largely tracks the old road referred to in the founding of Louisville. (The road consists of Broad St., mergining into Grange Rd., continuing through Edgehill and taking the left fork on Edgehill Mitchell Rd., through Mitchell and all the way to Shoals.) From downtown Mitchell all the way to Shoals is about 2.5 miles, and the remains of Georgetown (if any exist) should be located somewhere near that stretch of road.

Shoals has always been a key spot for me because it is the site of the marriage of my 4th-great grandfather, David Clay, and his wife, Eve Harden, in the 1790s. The ceremony was officiated by another 4th-great grandfather, Major John Hatcher, who was then a Captain of militia and a notary for Warren County (this was long before Glasscock County was split off from Warren County). David's father, Percival Clay, had land nearby on Joe's Creek, as did Major Hatcher. I've never been able to clearly trace Eve Harden's family and I've long wondered if they owned land near the Shoals and if the wedding happened on their land. But in spite of purchasing the books by Daniel Nathan Crumpton, who reconstructed maps of old land grants that can be referenced to modern map features, I've never been able to solve that riddle. Now, I need to dig out those books and see if there are any references to Georgetown. If anybody knows exactly where Georgetown was located, it would be Crumpton: http://www.crumptonplats.com/


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## XIronheadX (Jun 23, 2018)

http://lat34north.com/HistoricMarkers/MarkerDetail.cfm?KeyID=149-4&MarkerTitle=Shoals on the Ogeechee&CountyNameKey=Warren
I share DNA with the family that started that foundry somehow.

George T on this 1818 map.https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3920.ct001135/?r=0.431,0.385,0.272,0.169,0 Straight across from Shoals.


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## JustUs4All (Jun 24, 2018)

An oldie but a goodie that I had forgotten about. Thanks for bringing that back up.  I enjoyed it all over again.


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