Petty Cemetery, Fannin County, Ga.

Above, my g-g-grandfather, Elijah Petty (1806-1881).

Elijah Petty was a twin to Elisha Petty, born in Surry County, North Carolina, which is near in the northern part of North Carolina, near the Virginia border. His parents were considered early pioneers of Surry County. He moved to McDowell County, where his wife and my great-great grandmother Letty Lewis Petty died. He secondly married Sarah Parker.

I have been to Fannin County, Georgia, several times looking for the Petty cemetery. I knew it was there and even had directions I got from the book of Fannin County Cemeteries that is in the Georgia Room at the Main Library of Cobb County. I found the road it was supposed to be on and rode up and down it and could not determine in what thicket would a cemetery be.

Than, as happened more than once, I found it in a strange coincidental way. On a Petty bulletin board I talked to a lady Petty living out west someplace but grew up in Fannin County, and her parents still lived there. We could not determine just how close kin we were… we did not have the same progenitors, up to our great great great grandparents. Her father, decided to retire in Fannin County after his years with the Air Force. After he retired he was a school bus driver. Being a driver of a bus he rode higher than I normally do, and from his high perch in a bus dirver’s seat he could see over little humps or mounds along side the roads. He saw a cemetery. Just out of curiosity, he got out one day and looked and the surnames of most the residents were Petty, the same as his.

So, one year after a Hunter Reunion in neighboring Union County, I dropped by a telephone booth in Fannin County and called Mr. Petty. He said he was only about 5 miles away, so he and his wife drove out and met me. After we looked each other over and decided we were not the mugging or car-jacking type, they invited me to leave me car in the parking lot of a strip shopping center and we made the 18 mile trip down the road to the Petty cemetery. It was the same road I had been on several times…. Only thing, it was on the other side of a hump, that I couldn’t see over from the car.

So this is it.



This above picture is my g-g-grandfather’s 2nd wife, Sarah Parker (1818-1897). She married Elijah and had an instant family of 5 or 6 children. And in time she produced a bunch also.

More Petty relatives in residence: