Community of Buckhead
Buckhead, Morgan County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
On the occasion of its Bicentennial, Morgan County placed this marker here to commemorate the community of BUCKHEAD. One of the earliest settlements in Morgan County, the area around Buckhead was still in close proximity to Native American Territory in the early 1800s. According to local lore, a group of hunters tracking game crossed the Oconee River from Greene County and found this area to be ideal for settlement. To attest to their good fortune, the head of a buck deer killed by the hunters was hung in a tree. Though the town of Buckhead was formally incorporated by the Georgia legislature in 1887 and recorded in 1908, the earliest documented reference to this community dates to 1819 in an account ledger for a general store located here. By 1823, a post office had been constructed, and by the 1830s, the Georgia Railroad came through Buckhead. A Methodist Church was organized in 1824, and a Baptist Church in 1890. A four-room school house that had ten grade levels, employed eight teachers, and possessed an auditorium was constructed in 1900. Buckhead also enjoyed a thriving commercial center that included four general stores, two drug stroes, a bank, a cotton buyer's office, three restaurants, a barber shop, a livery stable and a hotel. Industries included a cotton gin, a grist mill, and a blacksmith shop. Several large fires have taken their toll on Buckhead through the years destroying many of its old buildings. Additionally, the agricultural economy has shifted from cotton production to dairy operations. BECAUSE OF THE INDIVIDUALS WHO TAKE PRIDE IN THIS COMMUNITY, BUCKHEAD IS RECOGNIZED AS A SIGNIFICANT PART OF OUR COUNTY HISTORY
Erected by Morgan County, Georgia
The Story
Buckhead grew up on the edge of Creek country in the early 1800s, when—by local lore—hunters crossing the Oconee River hung a buck's head in a tree to mark a fine spot to settle. A general-store ledger records the community by 1819, a post office followed by 1823, and the Georgia Railroad reached it in the 1830s, giving rise to a bustling town of stores, mills, churches, and a ten-grade schoolhouse. Fires and the shift from cotton to dairy farming eventually thinned its old streetscape.
Why it matters
Buckhead traces the familiar arc of the inland Georgia crossroads town—from frontier settlement to railroad-fed cotton center—that shaped the antebellum and postbellum Piedmont.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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In the summer of 1787, amid frontier tensions along the Oconee River, Creek warriors crossed into the young settlement of Greensborough—then just twenty cabins, a log courthouse, and a fort—and burned it, killing many inhabitants. The violence flowed from the disputed Treaty of Shoulderbone Creek of 1786, which the Creeks bitterly resented. Some of those involved were later captured and jailed, though the record of their fate runs out.
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