Our History
Land and Change in Rabun County: A Close Look at Community in 1975 Adapted from Foxfire, vol. 9 no. 1, Spring 1975
I
n 1975, Foxfire released a special edition of the magazine that focused on change in their community. This was created as part of a larger project funded by a grant from the Office of Environmental Education. Three recent Foxfire graduates at the time, Mary Thomas, Barbara Taylor, and Laurie Brunson, spearheaded this project, and focused in on Betty’s Creek. Laurie Brunson wrote of the experience: “What had started out as a topic of local interest was now, we felt, an important subject relevant all over in its comment on the effects of the seemingly never ending changes we all face in the already incredible and ever increasing pace of life we endure.” Their work looks at the way in which a small, isolated, close-knit community evolved and how increases in the pace of life changed such a community. They studied how relationships with the landscape altered as younger generations started to sell off family land. The following is an excerpt from their interview with long-time Rabun County resident Margaret Norton.
Margaret Norton cards wool for spinning, 1972
“My grandfather was named Doc Burrell and he come here from South Carolina or somewhere over in there. His wife was a Carter, Sally Carter, and he used to own this land that’s right here (the Rock House at the Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, Georgia). Before Carroll Latimer owned it, Grandpa Burrell owned it. That was on my daddy’s side. My daddy’s name was Rom Burrell. Rom owned some land up the road from here (he didn’t own this up here because his daddy sold it before he was big enough to own land). You know that old house that’s up on the left hand side of the road as you go down? Well, that’s ours. That’s where we was born and raised. Now the way he got a hold of that is he married, well, my mother was born there. He married Love Beavert and he inherited half of the land and him and her bought the other half. There was just two heirs in to it, which was Love and Faye. Faye was my mother’s niece. And my daddy bought her part of the land so therefore it all belonged to him. Now Rom Sr., my daddy, was brother to Decatur and he owned what is now Moon Valley. Now my Grandmother Burrell had a sister by the name of Lou Lindsay and he took care of Lou Lindsay and she gave him what she had. She had that land up there and she was a Carter before she married Mr. Lindsay and he didn’t live very long. She was Sally’s sister and they come from Towns County, Georgia. I’ve lived here on Betty’s Creek all my life. I was borned in that house on the left hand side of the road as you go down. The only place I’ve ever moved was from down there up to where Richard, my husband, is. I’ve seen all the changes as they come along up here on Betty’s Creek.
Margaret Norton during an interview with a Foxfire student, 1967
Before the pavin’ of the road, this was just a small settlement and all the families and the farmers owned their land. Now lots of the land has been sold out and now they have new families moved in here, or they are in the process of movin’. They have bought land up here and are building houses. If people sell their land, the mountains might get overcrowded. They don’t sell it for the money. They sell it because the tax is so high that they are not able to pay it. So many people are wanting land; I don’t know why now. You know, Rabun County was established on land at fifty cents an acre and back in them days, people didn’t have no problem over lines. They would say, “Your land is here,
82 - www.laurelofnortheastgeorgia.com - August 2022
