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This information is based on interviews conducted with Colonel Lemuel J. Allred and Mr. James Simmons, by the Ellijay Courier newspaper in 1887. Not long after Pickens County was carved out of Cherokee County and Gilmer in 1853 by legislation drafted by Colonel Lemuel Allred, a new town was proposed as the county seat. James Simmons, the former legislator who moved to the area in 1835 and lived in Colonel Haney Nelson's old Tavern along the Federal Road, originally proposed

In 1804, the Cherokee Indians had negotiated the terms of the creation of a Federal Road that ran between Tennessee to Augusta, Georgia. In exchange for settlers' passage through the Cherokee Territory, the Indians were allowed to operate taverns along their old Cherokee highway. In less than 30 years, in 1832, the Cherokee Territory was mapped out at the request of the government with the purpose of dividing the land into lots, giving away lots by a lottery system creating

An illustration of the game of Anetsa being played. Anetsa, a game that resembles lacrosse, was a Cherokee Indian game played by two teams of up to eighteen players on a 100-yard field. Normally this was played by a water source. They used wooden sticks (longer than a tennis racquet) with a depressed cavity made of deer sinew (looking similar to a spoon) On each end of the field, there were two poles erected with a pole spanning the top (similar to Football posts). The first