Thursday, November 29, 2012

G Is for Giles County

I had several options for the letter G, but I chose to use Giles County, Tennessee so that I can blog about a location in the Volunteer State.

The Mosley family came to middle Tennessee from Wilkes County, Georgia. At first, they lived in Bedford County. By 1830, they were in Lincoln County. Then in the 1840 census, they are residing in Giles County. 

Sometime around 1840, Walton Harris found his way from Kentucky down to Giles County. The family tradition says that he was on a cattle drive and stopped to water the horses when he saw Margaret and fell in love with her, returning to become her husband after the drive was completed. This is one of those legends that is difficult to prove but there is a bit more detail attached to the story than I've outlined here which proves that something similar happened or that the family is really good at storytelling.

Walton and Margaret continued to make their home in Giles County until sometime after 1855 when they moved to Itawamba County, Mississippi. Their son Charles Newton Harris returned to Giles County a few years later where he lived out his life, dying in the community of Cedar Grove.

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