Carroll County, Georgia 1830 Federal Census, p 220
Joel Leathers1 male age 30-39
2 females age 0-4
1 female age 5-9
1 female age 20-29

Houston County, Texas 1840 Tax List
Joel D. Leathers

Posted by Jerry Clark on 16 December 2004


Joel Leathers (1795-1849) of Carroll County, GA, was a member of an organi zed gang of thieves. This information is available from sources not like ly to have been found by standard genealogical research. After the Cherok ee Indians were expelled from Georgia in 1838, individual Indians submitt ed claims to the Federal Government for compensation for property stol en by citizens of that state. Many of the claimants knew the names of t he persons who purloined their property. Some claims papers are now in t he National Archives and others in the Tennessee State Library and Archive s.

Cherokees' livestock roamed freely in the woods and valleys on tribal lan d, with the domesticated animals marked with brands and markings showing i ndividal ownership), thus providing easy pickings for predation. The India ns called their tormentors the "Neenoskuskee" (meaning "robbers"), and t he Georgia Legislature dubbed the thieves "The Pony Club." Members of t he Pony Club were supposed to be banned from participating in the Georg ia Land Lottery or to join the Georgia state militia, known as the Georg ia Guard. Members of the Leathers family did both.

In 1829 Joel Leathers of Carroll County, GA wrote to Col. Hugh Montgomer y, US agent to the Cherokees, that he was "frightened" of 400 famili es of intruders who had settled in Carroll County (recently ceded by the C reek Indians). Leathers warned that these intruders were a lawless and unr uly bunch of land grabbers [CONGRESSIONAL SERIAL SET #197, 21ST CONGRES S, 1ST SESSION, HOUSE DOCUMENT].

Leathers had a place located at Leather's Ford on the Chestatee River ne ar Dahlongega, GA where the "Gold Digger's Road" crossed the river. He h ad another store on Salaquoya Creek in the Cherokee Nation. The Cherokee t owns of Sixes and Dahlongega were in the area where gold was discover ed in 1828, resulting in America's first full-blown gold rush. This eve nt became the main reason for Cherokee removal According to Cherokee claim s, Leather's stores frequently served as storage areas for many horses, ca ttle, and hogs stolen from the Indians:
1) Leathers stole 2 horse, a wagon, and hogs from Thomas McDonald (a Chero kee)
2) Joel Leathers ("a noted thief") took a horse from Bear Meat
3) Joel lived 15 miles from Ned Crittenden (Cherokee), & took Ned's ho gs to Carroll County
4) 1829 Joel had cattle (worth $72) belonging to Rachel Baldridge, Salaquo ya Creek
5) 1830 Joel had hogs belonging to Nanny, Hightower River
6) 1831 Joel had hogs belonging to Arnulla and Bill Vann to the Sixes go ld fields
7) Feb. 10, 1831 the Georgia Guard entered the gold mining districts to ar rest a score of illegal golddiggers, but had to fight off an attempted res cue by 50 armed men. This episode became known as the "Battle of Leather 's Ford. The "daring and outrageous manner of their resistence" was l ed by "the vilest of the vile". Was this leader Joel Leathers? [from WHIT ES AMONG THE CHEROKEES, by Mary Bondurant Warren, p 67]
8) 1831 Joel took cattle of Nancy Baldridge (Cher.) to Carroll County
9) 1832 Joel took cattle ($26) of Tekancesky
10)1832 horses stolen from Sour John were taken across the Chestatee Riv er at Leather's Ford
11)1832 Leathers, "a captain of the noted pony club" stole the great co at (worth $20) of George Blackwood (Cher.) at Sixes Town
12)1834 Joel took 2 hogs ($12) of Sawney of Hickory Log to Sixes
13)1834 Joel killed 2 hogs ($36)
14)1834 Joel Leathers & Richard Blackstock stole a horse ($80) from Chi ld Toter of Hightower Town and in 1835 26 hogs($78) from Child Toter
15) Joel stole 6 hogs ($18) from Suwucha of Hightower. Joel was a memb er of the "noted pony club"
16) Joel stole 25 hogs ($135) from Susannah Tarapin of Hickory Log

This rap sheet of Joel Leathers is intended to provide useful informati on about activities of an individual in the past. Other members of the Po ny Club were the Philpot family (Richard, James, and Reuben), the Yorks (A llen, Josiah, and Thomas), James Johnson, Asa and Nathan Upton, Alexand er Ramsey, William Shipley, John Goodwin, Jack and John West, Tom Hogan, J esse Humphrey, Joshua Smith, the Welch family (John, "Muk" [Mark?], and "P ink" [Pinckney?]), and the Tatums (Edward, Hugh, John, and Thomas). I welc ome any genealogical information about these men, to be used in further re search about the "Pony Club."


Mary Ann Wimsatt, The Major Fiction of William Gilmore Simms: Cultural Tra ditions and Literary Form (Louisiana State University Press, 1989), 123:
Simms wrote Lawson that Guy Rivers[, The Outlaw] was "a tale of Georg ia - a tale of the miners - of a frontier and wild people, and the even ts are precisely such as may occur among a people & in a region of that ch aracter" (L, 1, 55). The novel is based upon the gold rush that had tak en place in northern Georgia in the early 1830s and upon the activiti es of the notorious Pony Club. One of "the most abandoned gangs of whi ch the gallows was every cheated," the Pony Club specialized in terrorizi ng luckless settlers and stealing their horses; among the features connect ing it with Murrell is that branches of the organization excisted, so a co ntemporary writer claimed, in eveyr state then in the Union.
At the time he wrote Guy Rivers, Simms had not yet visited northern Georg ia; but he may have read about the Pony Club and the gold rush in the N ew York American, which ran articles and editorials upon the subjec t, or in the Western Herald, which was issued from a mining town in the he art of the gold-rush terriotry. ...
The activities of the Pony Club, which resembled those of the Murrell thu gs, gave Simms ample opportunity to contrast the fragile social and leg al structure on Georgia's upcountry frontier with the cirminial element en gaged in challenging it. Rivers, the vicious leader of the club, represen ts the wild Georgia upcountry and its criminal forces ...

Need to get:
"Intruders upon Indian Lands," New York American, 17 October 1833
E. Merton Coulter, Auraria: The Story of a Georgia Gold-Mining Town (Athen s, GA: 1956)

• Married: 17 FEB 1824 in Hall County, Georgia ^{5 2 6}

1. Nancy Ann Leathers b: 1827 in Carroll County, Georgia
2. James Leathers b: ABT 1832 in Georgia
3. Samuel Leathers b: ABT 1834 in Georgia

1. Title: 19th Century Georgia Leathers Family
   Author: Joyce Dashiell Cooper
   Publication: , , 27 May 1999
   Repository:
   Media: Electronic
   Text: Possible son, she is trying to prove
2. Title: Response
   Author: Joyce Dashiell Cooper
   Publication: , , 29 May 2000
   Repository:
   Media: Book
3. Title: E-mail correspondence from Jim Sulcer to Cathi Clore Frost
   Publication: Re: Samuel Leatherer, 29 October 2000 and 1 November 2000
   Repository:
   Media: Book
4. Title: 19th Century Georgia Leathers Family
   Author: Joyce Dashiell Cooper
   Publication: , , 27 May 1999
   Repository:
   Media: Electronic
   Text: date Nov 1849
5. Title: 19th Century Georgia Leathers Family
   Author: Joyce Dashiell Cooper
   Publication: , , 27 May 1999
   Repository:
   Media: Electronic
   Text: date 1824
6. Title: Hall County, Georgia 1819-1839 Marriages (Book A)
   Author: Sybil Wood McRay
   Publication: Published by the author, Gainesviile, GA 1968
   Repository:
   Media: Book
   Page: p 9
   Text: wife's name Mary Muckerath, married by David Tallant, JP