George Wahington Slover
Dialville, Cherokee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(March 27, 1816 -- August 22, 1864) Baptist minister and carpenter. Of French descent, he was born in Jefferson County, Tennessee. Said to have built the Atlanta Hotel depicted in "Gone with the Wind", famous novel of the South during the Civil War. Moved to Cherokee County in 1848, where, on April 8, he helped found the Rocky Springs Baptist Church. He also served as pastor. On March 2, 1837, at Danridge, Tennessee, he married Adelia Wood. They had seven children.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Tennessee in 1816, George Washington Slover was a Baptist minister and skilled carpenter said to have built the Atlanta hotel later immortalized in "Gone with the Wind." He moved to Cherokee County in 1848, where he helped found the Rocky Springs Baptist Church and served as its pastor. With his wife Adelia Wood he raised seven children before his death in 1864.
Why it matters
Slover embodies the frontier preacher-craftsman who literally and spiritually built the communities of antebellum East Texas.
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Related people
- · George Washington Slover
- · Adelia Wood
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Rocky Springs Missionary Baptist Church
Dialville, TX
Just three years after Texas joined the Union, a group of newly arrived settlers gathered in Thomas J. Lindsey's home in 1848 to organize this Baptist congregation under Elder Walter Ross. The bubbling springs nearby likely gave the church its name, and a log cabin soon rose on the site as a place of worship. Its first pastor, the Rev. George Washington Slover, was said to have built the Atlanta hotel later depicted in the novel "Gone with the Wind."
Jones Cemetery
Rusk, TX
John R. Jones and his wife Mary came from Jackson County, Alabama in 1853, established a farm, and built a log cabin on land in Cherokee County. When John died in 1857 he became the first person buried in what grew into the family cemetery, joined by Mary in 1864 and by generations of descendants — farmers, ranchers, and veterans of both the Seminole Wars and the Civil War. The ground stayed in Jones hands as a quiet testament to a pioneering family's role in settling the area.
Little Bean's Cherokee Village
Rusk, TX
In the winter of 1819–1820, Chief John Bowles led about sixty Cherokee families from Arkansas into East Texas, and near this site a leader named Little Bean founded a small settlement. The community lived here for two decades until 1839, when the Republic of Texas forced the Cherokee to remove to Indian Territory in present Oklahoma; Little Bean, who died that year, is believed to be buried nearby, and the land was later opened to Anglo settlers.
Jarratt Cemetery
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When Devereux and Polly Ann Jarratt came from Virginia to settle this East Texas ground in 1850, their sons set aside a burial plot in 1858 — its first grave that of a nameless transient worker known only as Mr. Watts. Added to by many hands over the following century, the cemetery became a shared resting place formally organized by descendants and neighbors in the 1960s.