Callaway Place — 1814
Whitfield County, Whitfield County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
"Callaway Place" - 1814. Jesse Callaway, soldier of 1812, son of Joseph Callaway, soldier of '76, lived in this house from 1852 to 1867. The house, built with bricks made on the place, remained in the family until after 1900. It is said to have been built about 1814. Callaway, born in Wilkes County in 1796, was a Sergeant in Capt. Jones' Co., Col. Booth's Regiment, Ga. Militia, 1814-15. He was married 4 times and had 18 children, most of them having living descendants in Ga. Deeding this house to his son John in 1867 he moved to another house on his land 2 miles north, where he died in 1875 and is buried in a family cemetery. 155-29C GEORGIA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 1954
Erected by Georgia Historical Commission
The Story
Said to have been built around 1814 of bricks made on the site, this house was home to Jesse Callaway from 1852 to 1867 and stayed in his family past 1900. Born in Wilkes County in 1796, Callaway served as a sergeant in the Georgia Militia during the War of 1812, and was the son of a Revolutionary War soldier. Married four times with eighteen children, he left descendants across the state before deeding the house to his son and moving north, where he died in 1875.
Why it matters
The homestead ties one North Georgia family across two of the young nation's wars, illustrating how militia service and large farm families anchored the early frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Callaway Place carries us into the world of the early Georgia frontier, when north Georgia was still being settled and a family's fortunes rested on land, labor, and sheer endurance. The house is said to have been built around 1814 of bricks made right on the property — a detail that tells you how self-reliant frontier building had to be, with the very walls shaped from local clay.
This was the era of the young republic, when the men who had fought the Revolution were aging and their sons were coming of age in a nation still proving it could survive. The War of 1812 — sometimes called the second war of independence — fell squarely in these years, pulling militiamen from farms and homesteads into service.
A brick house that stayed in one family from its building until after 1900 is itself a kind of record: proof of a household that put down roots and held them across the better part of a century.
People & events
At the center of the story is Jesse Callaway, born in Wilkes County in 1796. He was, in the marker's phrase, a soldier of 1812 — a sergeant in a company of Georgia Militia in 1814 and 1815, serving under the officers named on the marker. And he was the son of a soldier of '76, his father Joseph Callaway having served in the Revolution.
That single family line — father in the Revolution, son in the War of 1812 — binds one household to the two wars that established and then secured American independence. Jesse lived in this house from 1852 to 1867, though the home itself predated him by decades.
His was a large life in the most literal sense: the marker records that he married four times and had eighteen children, most of whom left descendants across Georgia. In 1867 he deeded the house to his son John and moved to another home on his land about two miles north. There he died in 1875, and there he is buried in a family cemetery — the whole arc of a long life playing out within a few miles of ground.
Its place in the American story
It's tempting to walk past a marker like this because no famous battle was fought here and no household name lived inside. But that is exactly its value. The nation was not built only by its celebrated figures; it was built by families like the Callaways, who cleared land, raised enormous families, and answered the militia call when war came.
The pairing of a Revolutionary father and a War of 1812 son captures something true about the early republic: military service was often a family inheritance, passed from one generation to the next, and the citizen-militia was the backbone of American defense. Large farm families, meanwhile, were the engine that peopled and worked the expanding frontier.
Multiply this one homestead across thousands of similar places, and you have the real story of how the young United States took hold of the land between the mountains and grew into a settled nation.
If you visit
This is a home-site marker in the north Georgia countryside, and it invites you to think about domestic history rather than battlefields. If the setting still speaks of farmland and family land, that's fitting — this was a working homestead, not a monument.
Let the marker's details do the imaginative work. Picture bricks being molded and fired on the property around 1814, a household filling with a remarkable number of children, and generations of one family holding the same walls for the better part of a century. Few markers let you trace a single life so completely, from a birth in 1796 to a grave in a family cemetery not far away.
For a road tripper interested in how ordinary Americans actually lived on the early frontier, this is a quiet, rewarding stop — a reminder that the deepest history is often written in family lines and homemade brick rather than in headlines. Please respect that any structures or cemeteries nearby may be private property, and view them from public access.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Jesse Callaway
Themes & tags
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