Allreds of Pickens Co., GA – The Allred Family

Newsletter Issue #43, pg 9, Summer 2000

The Allreds of Pickens County, Georgia
submitted by Linda Allred Cooper

**Excepts taken from the book History of Pickens County written by Luke E. Tate.**

One of the prominent families of Pickens was the Allreds. There were three brothers, Elias (#3), John and Lemuel J., who removed to Pickens sometime in the 1840's from Habersham County. In 1889-91, Elias was a man of independent means and a Baptist Minister. John Allred was a Baptist Lay-man and substantial farmer, and a United States Commissioner, living at Mineral Springs. I had no personal acquaintance with either of these two, but I formed a close friendship with Lemuel J. Allred, and although he was seventy-five and I was about twenty, we visited each other frequently.

Lemuel J. Allred represented Cherokee County in the legislature from 1851-1854, while that county still contained part of Pickens. His opponent in the first elections was James Harbin, of Waleska, a great-uncle of mine.

Uncle Jim had told me before I met Mr. Allred that it was a close race, Allred's majority being only four votes which finally developed in the "Dug Road" District (now in Pickens), where Allred had served gingerbread and apple-cider at the polls.

Mr. Allred was defeated for his third term, but on the day that his successful opponent left Canton for his legislative duties at Milledgeville, Mr. Allred appeared to go down with him. Gov. Joseph E. Brown had appointed him to the position of executive secretary, a position he held to the end of Brown's administration at the close of the Civil War.

From 1872 to his death, Mr. Allred was a doorkeeper of the Georgia Senate. He was probably te best-posted man in Georgia as to the public men in the state from 1853 to 1893, about which latter date he died. I heard a great many fascinating tales from his lips; it is a great pity that he did not keep a diary.

I know Brantley Allred, a cousin of Lemuel J. He was the father of three mighty pretty girls, Palestine, Adora and Adina, the first of whom still survives and is the wife of one of the county's fine citizens, a Mr. Cagle.