Pea Ridge, Marion County GA

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Before 1830, the site occupied by the present town of Buena Vista was a primeval forest.  When a settlement at last bloomed amid the solitudes it was called Pea Ridge.  The nucleus for this settlement is said to a cake stand, at which an occasional traveler now and then stopped to appease his hunger, and near this stand, Mr H K Lamb, the pioneer merchant of Pea Ridge, afterwards built a store.  This was followed by three grog-shops, each of which flourished like a green bay tree, after the manner of the wicked, until a great revival broke out at a camp meeting conducted by Blakely Smith.  As a result the taverns were closed.

Proofs of a former occupancy of this region by the Indians still abound in numerous flints, arrowheads and fragments of pottery; and likewise on the names bestowed upon running waters.  Many citizens in the county recall a number of Indians who remained in Marion until death removed them; among them was a famous conjurer and medicine man called “Old Chofe” who held despotic sway over the negroes, due to his supposed powers.

Over on Kinchafoonee Creek, the Butts family established when the county was first organized.  Later on, other staunch pioneer settlers began to drift into the region, bringing with them fine old Marion County names:  Powell, Wallace, Mitchell, Green, Wells, Blanton, James, Burkhalter, McMichael, Miller, Munro, Stevens, Webb, McCall, McCorkle, Drane, Matthews, Brown, Melton, Lowe, Herndon, Mathis, Gill, Rogers, Sheppard, Dunham, Crawford, Harvey and Merrell.  Professor James Monegan, an Irishman, was the first teacher at Pea Ridge.  He is still vividly recalled by a former pupil, Mr Benjamin Powell, who lives within a stones throw of where he lived as a boy.  Professor Tom Peter Ashmore, of Greer’s Almanac fame, was also an early educator.    Hardy Mitchell came from North Carolina in 1840; and during the first year, lived in what is now the court-yard of Buena Vista.

But the most dominant figure among the early settlers of Pea Ridge was David N Burkhalter, who removed to Pea Ridge from Tazewell in 1845.  Mr Burkhalter was a Methodist Preacher, a large property owner, and a man of wide influence in public affairs.  He was one of the first citizens of the county to represent Marion in the State Legislature.  It was long before any railroad penetrated that section and he usually made the trip to Milledgeville behind two mules.  While a resident of Tazewell, he built a church for the Methodists, but on changing his residence to Pea Ridge, he moved the church too.

John Burkhalter, the latters father, was a revolutionary soldier, whose grave on a plantation a few miles out from Buena Vista is soon to be marked by Lanahassee Chapter of the DAR.  Mr Burkhalter was one of the earliest pioneer settlers  in the County of Marion, and a man from whose loins have sprung a host of descendants including the present chief magistrate of Texas, Gov O B Colquitt.

Source: Georgia’s Landmarks, Memorials and Legends by Lucien Lamar Knight, 1914

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