John W. Henley was born March 26, 1852, in Dahlonega - one year before Pickens County was formed. While attending the North Georgia Agricultural College, at the age of 23, Henley walked through Jasper on his journey from Dahlonega to Resaca for a teaching assignment. The following year, he came back to Jasper to teach school at Jasper First Baptist Church (NOTE: there were no Public Schools in Jasper in 1876.) He opened the Jasper Institute (a private school at the time) in 1879 and sold it in 1884, at which time it became a public school.
That same year, he studied law under the Honorable George Brown of Canton, and passed the bar in the fall of that year. He began practicing law in Jasper shortly after. He was a founding member of the Mozart Singing Convention which later morphed into the Pickens County Singing Convention.
In 1903, J.W. Henley, produced a map of Pickens County that he had compiled from other sources.
In 1905, he was appointed Assistant District Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia by President Theodore Roosevelt and moved to Atlanta. In 1928, upon his death the Progress stated the following:
“He set in motion those influences which transformed Pickens from an ignorant, lawless community to the most law-abiding county in the state.”
Col. Sam Tate was one of his pallbearers at his funeral at the Woodward Baptist Church in Atlanta.
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His map made no mention of the sources he used. While researching Pickens County, I discovered his source material: The various maps of the original Land Lot survey of the Cherokee Territory created in 1832. In the section below, I demonstrate similarities between the 1832 survey and Henley’s map of 1903, and how they further merged with later maps made by E.C. Perrow.
Abner Wise's Map of 1832 (Note: the shaded areas are the mountains. The trees are indicated by abbreviations (Ch.= Chestnut, R.O. = Red Oak,), The numbers are those of the Land Lots.
Special attention should be noted for Land Lot 261. The Ch. (which indicates chestnut trees) shown throughout the mountain of Grassy Knob (Later Mt. Oglethorpe) is exactly where Chestnut Cove was located on the Tate Mountain Estates map by E.C. Perrow from 1929.
A section of E.C. Perrow's 1929 map of Tate Mountain Estates
J.W. Henley's 1903 map of the same area. The dotted line is a road. The shapes of the mountains are nearly identical as are the shapes of the Land Lots. The creeks are slightly different and the mountains are now named. Chestnut Cove - an area within Bent Tree is presently located in Land Lot 261.
If you look at the area that is Bent Tree in the two maps above, you'll see the similarities in a full-page, shorter rendering from James Smith's book on the Land Lottery below.
Section 5th District, 2nd Section of Gilmer County, as shown in James F. Smith's book on the Cherokee Land Lottery of Georgia. Note how the mountains and streams all match on the 1832 maps.
To establish a sense of where Bent Tree is on the maps above, Look closely at Land Lots 319 - 314 going west to east. Then look at LL 314 - LL 226 at a diagonal moving east to northwest. Then look at LL 226 - LL 222 east to west. Finally, follow LL 222 south to LL 314. This area is roughly the size of Bent Tree (It's actually a little larger due to the fact that the land lots that makeup Bent Tree do not completely fill all of the included Land Lots.
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