Burke County Georgia Research Tips File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Doug Bell Table of Contents page: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/burke.htm Georgia Table of Contents: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm RESOURCES: "The Families of Burke County, 1755-1855, A Census, " compiled by Robert Scott Davis, Jr. and Rev. Silas Emmett Lucas, Jr. Burke county Georgia is some of the most rocky ground a genealogist can have to plow. The above book has a lot of lists of Burke county citizens from state and federal sources. I would recommend using the 1820 forward federal censuses. Note everyone by your surname who appears on any census as well as the neighbors about 10 houses in each direction. With luck you can locate where a group of families moved in from unless the family is an early arrival. The TELAMON CUYLER COLLECTION University of Georgia Athens has documents relating to Burke county in a private manuscript collection. EVENTS IN THE LIVES OF BURKE COUNTY FOLKS as published in "The True Citizen" 1882 - 1900. by Jo Goodson Knight. BURKE COUNTY FOLKS 1882-1900 This has newspaper abstracts on Burke county families. Why would a newspaper in the 1880s help with an old family? Recollections of the oldest settlers were published in the 1870s and 1880s as nostalgia articles that contain lots of pre courthouse fire information. This also is the case for Washington and Wilkinson counties. Georgia is doing a good job of publishing newspapers. Another older book is History of Burke County, Georgia 1777-1950 by Albert M. Hillhouse. Check the land lotteries for Georgia to see if your Burke county family moved. The census can help with this as well. Sometimes a family relative will move to a county that hasn't suffered multiple courthouse fires like Burke. It may not be your direct line but they can provide clues. Burke county land was distributed by British crown grants in St. George Parish and by Georgia state headrights. Lists of these have been published. Someone in Atlanta needs to get the metes and bounds descriptions of all the land granted in Burke so they can be plotted on a modern map. This would allow a partial atlas of landowners to replace the lost deed books. The archives charges too much for us out of state folks to work on this. If you have an early Burke county before 1800 check also in Screven formed 1793 and Jefferson formed 1796. These counties were formed from Burke and still have their records. Court clerks can help you get married, probate a will, or record your property but they have virtually no experience in genealogy or history. Some will also tell you the courthouse burned to get rid of you. Davidson's History of Wilkinson County has a lot of information on early families. The deeds before 1854 burned in the fire. You still can get marriage records, probate records and court records back to 1820. There are censuses from 1820 forward and land lottery records. I believe 1805 covered Wilkinson county. You should also look for published newspapers and church records. Don't overlook the 1850 - 1880 federal census agricultural schedule and the 1850 - 1860 slaveowners schedule of the census. These tell you a lot of information about a family's land and slave ownership and farming activities found nowhere else. Burned counties aren't hopeless but they cost you a lot of money and time to trace a family there. You have to collect EVERY mention of the family along with relatives and neighbors. I am putting together a land atlas for Monroe county Alabama before its courthouse fire and would like to work on some projects for Georgia in the future. ======================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other presentation. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for FREE access. ==============