When our children were younger we would have outings to Athens, Georgia on a regular basis to visit with family and to attend University of Georgia football games. From time-to-time we would quiz the children on the history of the area with one of our favorite questions. Typically we would ask this question as we approached a Hess service station at the intersection of highways US 78 and Georgia 8 on the west side of town.

Our question went something like this: "In 1808 where was the edge of the western frontier of the United States?" The obvious answer from the map on the right is "Just about where the Hess station was on the western edge of Clarke County, Georgia." Everything west of that point was Cherokee or Creek Lands. In later years the discovery of gold in north Georgia and expanding population pushed those boundaries much further west.

The importance of this question is the understanding that our oldest known relatives were concerned with survival, not record keeping. So our inability to document ancestors earlier than 1808 may have come from the requirements and limitations of everyday living.

The map on the right shows the actual boundary lines in Georgia in 1808. Clarke County had recently been carved from Jackson and Franklin Counties. Never a large county, it would shrink even more in 1875 when Oconee County was carved from Clarke, making Clarke County the smallest county in Georgia (shown in blue on the map).

DNA proves that our Whitehead ancestors were in Ireland around 400 A.D., but could have easily migrated to England, Scotland, or Wales before coming to America.

Once we get to the United States, our search is complicated because Georgia has historically been the state with the largest number of households with the surname of Whitehead. We know from current DNA research that there were distinct Whitehead lines in Georgia, but there may have been as many as three different unrelated lines in Clarke County. It is not clear that the Whiteheads in Clarke County knew that they were not related since we have records of interactions on legal documents.

The earliest American relatives we have been able to track is Sandford A. Whitehead and his wife Elmina Ann Wise. Family tradition, and census records, indicate that he was born in Georgia. We know more about the Wise family at this point, and much of our Whitehead ancestry remains clouded.

We do know that Sandford's mother was identified as Elizabeth Whitehead in several Clarke County documents and records, but her maiden name is at this point a mystery. Elizabeth Whitehead and her husband had two children, Sandford and his older sister Rebecca. While they were technically born in Clarke County, by the time of their death Clarke County had been split into Clarke and Oconee Counties, and the area around their home was officially in current day Oconee County.

Sandford and Elmina Whitehead had 10 children and continued to live in Clarke and Oconee Counties until their deaths. They are buried at Ray's Chapel United Methodist Church in Oconee County, Georgia. Many other Whitehead Relatives are also buried in this church cemetery.

Rebecca Whitehead married Richard Adams in 1823 and they had 11 children. We know little about their children but believe that more will come to light with more research. After their marriage they lived in and around Clarke and Jackson Counties in Georgia. We dot not know their place of burial as of November 2007.

Sandford and Elmina Whitehead had six boys and four girls. We are descended from James Edward Whitehead, their sixth child and fourth son.

Sandford and at least three of his sons served in the Confederate Army. Sandford was too old for service and returned home after a brief service. One son, John Parks Whitehead, died at the siege of Petersburg, Virginia. After Sandford returned from the war he served as the executor for the estates of many Whiteheads in the area, indicating that there was at least a perceived or real connection between the families.

We know the death location of eight of their children. Six of the eight died in Oconee County, John Parks Whitehead died in Virginia, and Simeon H. Whitehead died in Bartow County in northwest Georgia. So the family did not migrate outside of Georgia in the next generation and this permanence in north Georgia lasted for many generations.