HIGH TOWER STORY LINE
Opening   The Perrys  Antebellum Forsyth   A Yeoman's World   War

The thirty years between James Perry's birth in 1840 and his son Asaph's arrival, in 1870 were, of course, chaotic and disruptive. The United States cleaved in half just as James reached adulthood. Small farmers like James' father Lewis were sold on the Southern secession and the resulting Civil War by the fiery rhetoric of secessionists like Joseph Brown, patriarch of Cherokee County, later Aspah's home.

The Civil War would consume millions of people, both young and old. Southern norms, which paced life for men, women, and children, black and white, were altered. In Forsyth County, this change came on top of the already monumental change brought by the Cherokee Indians' north Georgia land cession in the 1835 Treaty of New Echota.

A New South would gradual emerge in North Georgia in the years after the Civil War. The idealized Antebellum South, fixed in mythology by stories such as Gone with the Wind, never existed in Forsyth, much less other parts of the South, and, more importantly, these stereotypical portrayals of southern hierarchy and patronage never had a chance to exist in Forsyth County, given is relative youth. But, change did come and Asaph Perry would be a prime example of how that change manifested itself in families across the South.

NEXT: A Yeoman's world