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Welcome to The Sarretts of Georgia. As a genealogical repository for the descendants of Cliff and Lucile Sarrett, my paternal grandparents, this collection of "family things" paints a very clear picture of from whom and whence we came.
The work is not finished, as no family history can ever be, but this format gives us the opportunity to easily publish, share, and update. At the same time, our information is also accessible to millions of people. Since our site went online in January 1998, dozens of distant cousins have found us and come forward to share names and dates, photos, and personal memories. And it continues. As time permits, I'm adding these new findings to our thousand-piece puzzle.
The slide show on our home page includes George Montgomery
Sarrett and Elizabeth Frances "Bettie" Pittard, my great- |
grandparents, and their descendants and spouses. George M. is also prominently featured on the right side of our home page. The framed photos at the bottom of the main page all include our ancestors. For more, click on the pictures or visit the individual family photo albums. Until we can upload a "tree," the text is designed so you can easily follow the inherently confusing ancestral flow. Just remember that except for family roster pages the names in boldface type are in our direct lineage.
Have fun and please sign our guest book. Beside a place to record visits, the guest book has emerged as an active bulletin board for posting inquiries and is, therefore, a valuable source for researchers. Don't miss it.
Thanks for visiting,
Kay Sarrett Borden
Marietta, Georgia USA
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Notice a change?
Frequent visitors may notice that some pages jump or shift after a few seconds. The movement is the result of the page being redirected to a new URL or web address.
We have discovered the practical limit to the amount of data that can be squeezed into a website. Our family site has become so large that it now crashes our page design program, so to remedy the situation, we are redesigning to create sub-sites for each family section.
Thanks for your patience as we clean house and reorganize. You may want to replace frequently visited page addresses with the new URLs in your bookmarks or favorites, but it's not necessary. You will still be able to access your bookmarked or favorite pages as always. |
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Memberships
Membership in the following organizations helps research efforts and preserves family history landmarks.
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Bartow County Genealogical Society - This collection of books, records, and family and church histories is open to the public and staffed by volunteers who help researching members and non-members alike free of charge. The $20-per-year membership includes a quarterly journal. Bartow County Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 993, Cartersville, GA 30120-0993, (770) 606-0706 or (770) 382-6676.
Cassville Historical Society (formerly Cassville Heritage Association) - Chartered to preserve the history of old Cassville in Bartow County, GA. Runs the Cassville Museum containing photos and information |
about our family. Membership is $15 a year.Cassville Historical Society, PO Box 46, Cassville, Ga 30123
.The Surratt Society - Dedicated to preserving the Surratt House Museum and collecting works of research into the assassination of President Lincoln. Leading up to and after the assassination, the Surratt House played a pivotal role in the events and lives of some distant relatives accused of conspiracy--one was hanged for it. All tours of the house are by volunteer costumed docents. With a modestly priced yearly membership, you receive The Surratt Courier, the monthly newsletter. The Surratt Society, Surratt House Museum, 9118 |
Brandywine Road, PO Box 427, Clinton, MD 20735.
Etowah Valley Historical Society - Also incorporated as the Bartow County Historical Society, EVHS has undertaken to help enhance awareness of the rich history, heritage, and traditions of Bartow County, GA where all of our ancestors lived. Their office and research facility, located in the historic 1903 Bartow County Courthouse at 115 West Cherokee Avenue, Cartersville, GA, is well worth a visit. Hours: Monday through Friday, 1:30 - 4:30 PM, Saturday 1 - 5 PM. Send individual annual membership dues of $20 to Etowah Valley Historical Society, P.O.Box 1886, Cartersville, Georgia 30120. |
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| NOV 5, 2005 - On Nov 5, 1864, Federal troops torched the town of Cassville, GA. The destruction was so complete, the once largest town and cultural center of north Georgia was never rebuilt. The Cassville Historical Society remembers the event each year near the anniversary date by covering the hillside occupied by the Old Cassville Cemetery with candles at sunset. Many of our ancestors are buried in the cemetery. It's also known as the Confederate Cemetery at Cassville, where the remains of 300 unknown Confederate soldiers are buried. Most died as the result of wounds suffered in the Battle of Chickamauga. |
Dedicated to the nearly 7,000 northwest Georgia volunteer soldiers, who served first under Gen. Seth M. Barton then Gen. Marcellus A. Stovall during the war between the states. The 40th, 41st, 42nd, 43rd, and 52nd Georgia Infantry Regiments mustered in at Camp McDonald (Kennesaw, GA) in early 1862 and became part of the Confederate Army of Tennessee.
As a private in Co. I of the 40th, our only civil war soldier ancestor, Samuel L. Pittard, served in Barton's Brigade at Cumberland Gap, Perryville, Chickasaw Bayou, Baker's Creek/Champion Hill, and during the seige of Vicksburg. After the fall of Vicksburg, Sam was |
| released from further duty in the 40th and enlisted for a six-month stint as a private in Co. D of the 10th Battalion Georgia Cavalry State Guard. During the Atlanta Campaign he served as a private in Turner's Mississippi Light |
Artillery along with his brother, Tom, and two nephews. Membership in the General Barton & Stovall History/Heritage Association is open to descendants and interested parties for $40 annually.
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Members of General Barton & Stovall History/Heritage Association at McGavock Confederate Cemetery, Carnton Plantation, Franklin, TN during the organization's Fifth Congress in 2006. |
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Marlene's article about our family appeared in the Gwinnett County Section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution Nov 13, 2002.
COMMUNITY COLUMNIST
Share Thanksgiving with family, those in need -- I will
Marlene O'Brien - For the Journal-Constitution Wednesday, November 13, 2002
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It's that time of the year when most families look forward to the holidays and family gatherings. In my family, we usually get together at Thanksgiving.
It all started when I was a child. My mother and her seven siblings and our families would all meet near their old homeplace in Bartow County, near Cassville. It was not the usual Thanksgiving dinner.
We didn't have turkey. In nice weather, they would set up the dinner outside on tables. It was more like an end-of-the season picnic.
My uncles and some of the older boys would bring their rifles and hunt, but it was rare if they killed anything.
The children liked to play at the springs and drink the water that poured from underneath the rock hill above Crowe Springs. Of course, one or two of us would get the nerve to take off our shoes and socks and go wading in the icy water.
Sometimes our folks would cut down a pine tree to take home and use for our Christmas tree.
This Thanksgiving ritual continued for several years after World War II, but children grow up and
families go on to other celebrations. My mother insisted that her six children carry on the annual
gathering.
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Four generations
It didn't matter where it was held, and many times the only place large enough was in someone's basement. After my mother passed away, some family members found other things to do or places to go on Thanksgiving.
Last year we all got together at my nephew's home in Loganville where he set up tables in his large three-car garage. There were four generations represented. It was a great success, and he has invited us back this year.
My sister is in charge of the food this year and will see to the turkeys, ham and cornbread dressing. Plans will be made as to who will bring the sweet potato souffle, green beans and pumpkin pies. There'll be lots of other vegetables and desserts and maybe some new recipes to try. If everyone comes, we will have more than 60 kinfolk, with a few friends along, too.
It's not just the food that attracts us, although it rates high on the list. We are a family and we care about each one and want to be together occasionally. We don't meddle unless we are asked, but we're just nosy enough to want to know if everyone is doing OK.
We've had our troubles this year with some family members going through major surgeries, cancer, broken bones, caring for elderly parents, as well as the death of a parent. But like the unsinkable Molly Brown, "We ain't down yet."
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Don't be home alone
We've had celebrations this year too with the births of four babies. In my family, we have faith in God, believe in marriage, bringing up law-abiding children and working for a living. So far, we have a good record including three marriages that have lasted more than 50 years each, and two marriages about to reach 40 years.
If you can't be with your family for the holidays, volunteer your time so that other folks can be with
theirs. There are several organizations in metro Atlanta that prepare meals for the homeless and others in need. I'm sure they could use some help.
We like to contribute groceries to the Southeast Gwinnett Cooperative Ministry in our Snellville neighborhood, and there are other co-op groups throughout Gwinnett. They have a big need for
food and funds now that many families are hurting due to job layoffs.
Whatever you do to celebrate the holiday, remember to give thanks for what you have and for thefreedom that we enjoy in this country.
> Marlene O'Brien, a former medical specialist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lives in Snellville and is a regular colunist for the Gwinnett Section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
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| The following article by Dr. David Parker appeared in the April 20, 2002 issue of The Daily Tribune News, Cartersville, GA. Dr. Parker is an associate professor at Kennesaw State University (Kennesaw, GA), and a regular columnist for the newspaper. |
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Dr. David Parker
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In Bartow, it’s one, big happy family
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Several years ago, my wife, Chantal, became interested in finding out more about her family. She searched the Web, read local histories and family genealogies, even visited the National Archives in East Point to read the old census material from North and South Carolina. She ordered Social Security records and death certificates, and corresponded with other family members, several of whom she’d never met. Before too long she had established a couple of her family lines several general back.
Along the way, she learned more than just names and dates. Several ancestors in eastern North Carolina were “turpentine hands,” and more were sharecroppers. Some were literate, some apparently were not. One, a mill worker, killed his daughter when she came home married. She was 13.
The more Chantal learned, the more she wanted to know. But she kept running into brick walls. People would appear on the census as adults, never having been recorded before; or more frustrating, they would be there as children, then disappear. She joked they must have entered a witness protection program and assumed a new identity, so completely had they disappeared.
During one of these frustrating times, Chantal asked if she could trace some of my family, just until she could break through one of the walls on her side. I told her to go ahead, if it would make her happy.
She started with Dora Surratt, my father’s maternal grandmother. After 10 minutes on the Internet one night, she’d found her, Dora E. Surratt, born in 1877, married to the Rev. Alfred McKinny Hamilton in 1896 (“Mack” Hamilton was first in what became a long line of Hamilton/Parker Methodist preachers.) We knew this was my great-grandmother. We had visited her grave just a few weeks before, after my father’s funeral.
Chantal found Dora Surratt on one of these Web programs where you click on a name and it takes you to the next generation back. Chantal clicked, and up came Dora’s father, Daniel. She kept clicking. Daniel was the son of Spencer, son of Beverly, son of Sarah (Beverly was probably a bastard, as no father was listed and the mother had her maiden name), daughter of Allen, son of Samuel, son of Joseph. Joseph Surratt was born in France in 1659, and immigrated to Prince George’s County, Maryland, where he died in 1715. Joseph was the first Surratt in America, and he was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. And he was from France!
Chantal, bless her heart, who had so wanted to find her family and could not, in 10 minutes had taken one line of my family back more than three centuries and 10 generations.
I had never cared much for this sort of thing, at least with my own family. I always enjoyed hearing about other people’s stories, though I found it odd that people who wouldn’t talk to members of their immediate family practically worshipped those more distant kin.
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But now I started thinking. How much of Joseph Surratt was in me? I quickly did the math. We have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and so on. It turns out that Joseph Surratt was one of my 1,024 g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-grandparents (No wonder I had trouble with French in High School; it was pretty diluted by the time it got to me).
The next day I repeated Chantal’s clicks on the web, going up from Dora to Joseph Surratt, then back down, through one of Joseph’s other sons. Joseph had a great-grandson, John Harrison Surratt, who married Mary Elizabeth Jenkins. Mary Surratt, the wife of my third cousin, six times removed, was hanged for her alleged participation in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. Mary’s son, also named John (and my third cousin, seven times removed), was probably more involved in the conspiracy, but fled the country; by the time he returned, a few years later, the hysteria had died down and he was found innocent in a civil trial.
So I have a president killer in the family. Granted, it’s a distant relationship. There must be a million people related more closely to John Surratt than I am. Still, it’s interesting to see the connections.
But the story gets better. George M. Sarrett, Jr. (six generations removed from the original Joseph Surratt; the family name has several variant spellings) was born in 1856 in Tennessee. He moved to Bartow County in the 1880s and married Bettie Pittard. A miner and farmer, he died in 1923 of tuberculosis and is buried (with a number of other Sarretts) in Cassville Cemetery. George’s great-granddaughter, Kay Sarrett Borden (my seventh cousin, once removed; she and my father had the same g-g-g-g-g-g-grandfather), lives in Marietta and has researched her Bartow County family, including the Carlisles, Leaks, Pittards, Dillards, Thompsons, and Sarretts. This past weekend, at the Cassville Confederate memorial service, Kay showed me several graves. She’s related to those people, and that means that I am, too--much more distantly, of course, but the connections are there.
When we moved to Cartersville, we quickly realized that everyone who has been here more than a generation or two is related, one way or another. I envied that. Now, thanks to the diligence of Kay Borden and others, we can say “Howdy, cousin” to half the people in the county. It’s a nice feeling.
And all this from one family “line.” If we knew as much about our other lines -- the Wrights, Brigmans, Parkers, Hamiltons, Roberson, Willoughbys -- we’d probably discover we’re related to the other half as well.
Maybe this is the most valuable thing about genealogy: it reminds us that we’re all connected. Whether or not we realize it, (and we found this out only because of the diligence of Kay Borden and others) we’re all related, all of us part of the human family.
--David Parker is an associate professor of history at Kennesaw State University and a regular columnist for The Daily Tribune News. His column appears on Sundays.
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| Sarrett couples celebrate 153 years of marriage |
The following appeared in the Cobb Section of the Atlanta Journal Constitution Nov 5, 1998:
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The following appeared in the Forsyth County Georgia newspaper in Nov 1998:
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| Couples of 50-plus years, George and Caryl, Christine and Carl and Ed and Mary Sarrett |
Brothers shatter odds with long marriages
A Forsyth County man and his brothers have beat the odds by living long enough and blissfully enough to each celebrate 50 years of marriage. In an age when statisticians report that fully half of all marriages wind up in divorce and death ends many others, Forsyth County resident Ed Sarrett and his two brothers, Carl and George, can claim 153 years of matrimonial bliss among them.The trio achieved the feat on Thursday, Oct 29, when George and Caryl Franklin Sarrett of Smyrna celebrated their golden anniversary.
The other two Sarrett brothers have already surpassed the half century mark. Carl and Christine Pickett Sarrett of Gainesville, Fla. celebrated 50 years on Feb. 3, 1996 and on Mar 30, 1997 Ed and Mary Hornbuckle Sarrett renewed their vows in Atlanta where all but Caryl Franklin, a native of Tuscaloosa, Ala., grew up.
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