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BURIAL PLACE OF GOVERNOR GEORGE M. TROUP, NEAR SOPERTON

was nominated by the temperance forces. Governor Johnson, however, was elected, receiving 53,478 votes against 43,228 cast for Judge Andrews, and 6,284 cast for Colonel Overby. The last-named gentleman is today revered as one of the great pioneer leaders in crusade of reform which has since swept over the state and is destined in the near future to sweep the nation.*

Two new judicial circuits were created by the State Legislature in 1854: the Brunswick and the Tallapoosa. To preside over the courts of the Brunswick Circuit, Hon. A. E. Cochran was the first judge elected, while the first presiding officer of the Tallapoosa Circuit was Hon. Denis F. Hammond.

In 1855, the Legislature created six new counties, to wit: Berrien, Colquitt, Haralson, Terrell, Towns and Webster. All of these, except the county last mentioned, were named for distinguished Georgians who had recently passed away: John MacPherson Berrien, Walter T. Colquitt, Hugh A. Haralson, William Terrell, and George W. Towns. Webster was named for the illustrious orator of New England, though the original name proposed for the county was Kinchafoonee, for a creek constituting one of its water courses.†

On May 3, 1856, ex-Governor George M. Troup, while visiting one of his plantations in what was then Montgomery County, now Wheeler, died in an overseer's cabin (on the Mitchell place). For more than twenty years, Governor Troup had lived in modest retirement on his favorite plantation, called by him, Valdosta, in Laurens. County, some few miles to the south of the present city of Dublin. Governor Troup owned something like ten plantations in this section of Georgia, most of them on the banks of the Oconee River; and for the times he was a man of princely means, though he cared nothing for ostentatious display. He was buried on the Rosemont plantation, in Montgomery County, beside a beloved brother, whom he survived. His grave in the midst of a dense thicket is approached by a path leading through a field of corn. It is marked by a substantial monument occupying the center of a walled enclosure; but this shrine of patriotism, sacred to all Georgians, is seldom visited because of its remoteness from any traveled highway. It is reached by a drive of seven miles from Soperton, a town. on the Macon and Dublin Road, between Dublin and Vidalia. Governor Troup was a man of eccentric habits, but fearless, upright, and uncompromising in his allegiance to principle. Altogether, he was one of the most unique, one of the most courageous, and one of the most patriotic of all the public men of Georgia; and his own rugged character is the only quarry which can furnish the memorial granite worthy to bear the name of Georgia's stout apostle of state rights: George M. Troup.

* H-J, 1855.

+ Supplementary data relative to these counties may be obtained from the section entitled "Georgia Miscellanies.'

Vol. II-7

SECTION V

THE PERIOD OF DIVISION, OR GEORGIA IN THE ASSERTION OF STATE RIGHTS

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