Camp Creek

It most likely lay on Camp Creek, not far from Scottsboro. From about 1807 to 1811 Gillah Freeney was living on the land of his uncle, Tillman Buckner, on Camp Creek. This was a land lot originally granted to John Bunkley, though I do not know its number (it's probably near lot number 200, Baldwin District 1). Around 1810 Tillman Buckner died and apparently left his nephew with about half of that land lot, which contained at least one mill. Although he advertised the land and mills for sale in 1814, he seems not to have had any takers, and he kept the land until 1817. He then moved to another tract of 200 acres on the Oconee River in 1818, and then he died the following year.

Baldwin Inferior Court Minutes for Monday, 5 March 1810:

"Ordered that the road leading from the Garrison road near where E. Lunsterds lives crosses the same to Buckner & Freeney upper mill be kept open."
 
 

Rocky Creek

Georgia Journal, 7 Nov. 1820:
"Baldwin County ...
For Sale, on accommodating terms, 250 acres of land, on the Oconee river, five miles above Milledgeville, adjoining Goddin and Borland's land. It has a mill and very valuable Fishery.
William B. Freeny"

   Goddin is undoubtedly James Godwin, or Goodwin, who owned the tract right on the Oconee as far south as the mouth of Rocky Creek. Abram Borland owned a lot of land in Baldwin in the early 1800s, including 214 acres on the Oconee in GMD 105. But he seems to have moved his residence to another district after 1810, so I don't have records on him after that year. He evidently kept his lands on the Oconee, however, until at least 1820. In the 1820 tax records James Godwin's lands adjoined those of Elijah Freeney Jr, who then owned 696 1/2 acres on the Oconee. This appears to be the original 258 acres of Freeney estate plus a few hundred more that were bought in the year or two before 1820, some of which stretched down to the Oconee, while the original estate was on Rocky Creek drainage, just to the northeast of the Godwin land.

 This was on the estate of Elijah Freeney (father of Gillah and of my ancestor, Nancy Freeney), and was located somewhere on some 250 acres of land on Rocky Creek, near where it flows (flowed) into the Oconee. All of that is under Lake Sinclair now. It was owned by Elijah's widow, Nancy, who later married John Johnson Sr.

submitted by
Mark Byington