TROUP TRIVIA

George Michael Troup is the most popular non-athlete in the 218-year history of Laurens County.  Troup was the most dominant politician of pre-Civil War Georgia, if not the entire 19th Century. He died at his Rosemont home in Treutlen, formerly Montgomery,  County, on April 26, 1856.  One might say that if the state wanted to change its name, it would keep the name and change the namesake from King George III, and instead name it for the venerable scion. 

Troup is the only person in the history of Georgia to have served in the Georgia Legislature, the National House of Representatives, the United States Senate, in the office of Governor of the State of Georgia along with being the namesake of a Georgia County, two Georgia cities, and a square in the City of Savannah.  He lost two presidential campaigns, both at an advanced age.  Troup’s image was engraved on at least six obsolete bank notes used by banks around the country before the Civil War, again, the only Georgian to receive that high honor.  George Troup is generally regarded as the father of State Rights in America, although his core group of supporters in Laurens and Montgomery County voted heavily against secession from the Union in 1860. 

Gov. Troup, as he is most commonly known, was among the few Georgians to have a county, a city, and a Savannah Square while he was still alive. In 1823 and 1825, Troup became the last governor to be regularly elected by the legislature and the first to be elected by popular vote.  Promising a Civil War, Troup openly defied the President. John Quincy Adams, who enjoined the State of Georgia from removing Indian tribes to Oklahoma.  

The most well-known “Valdosta” in Georgia is the southwest Georgia city, which was established in December 1860. Some forty-five years before, United States Senator and future Governor of Georgia, George M. Troup, established his 5000-acre-plus plantation on the east side of the Oconee River, just about where the current Interstate 16 crosses the river.  Troup named his massive plantation for Val-de-Osta, an Italian valley where Emperor Napoleon battled with the Austrians. Senator from Georgia, and a United States Congressman from Georgia.  George Troup is the only man in the history of Georgia to have a county and two county seats of Lowndes County, Valdosta, and Troupville.

Troup’s Laurens County plantation houses, Vallambrosa,  Valdosta, and Thomas Crossroads, were ravaged by fire, wind, and time.  Vallambrosa, the palatial former home of Georgia Governor and United States Senator George M. Troup, was destroyed by fire in the autumn of 1880.  The home, located east of Dudley on U.S. Highway 80 and across Highway 80 from Northwest Laurens Elementary School, was managed by Robert Wayne, husband of Troup’s granddaughter Augusta Wayne.  Included in the losses were many photographs, documents, heirlooms, and furniture owned by the Troup family.  Several of the ancient oaks lining the road to the house were destroyed.  However, many of those oaks still remain today.   A strong tornado struck the Valdosta home place of former Georgia Governor George M. Troup on the Old River Road in early March 1891.  Several outhouses and barns were completely destroyed.  Hundreds of trees were uprooted. The governor’s last surviving home, Thomas Crossroads, at the intersection of two ancient Indian trails, the Old Macon Road and the Old Hawkinsville Road,  was destroyed by fire in the 1990s.

 

Anne Carter married a young lawyer, George M. Troup, of Savannah.

Mrs. Troup was the daughter of Edward Carter and Mary Champe.  A family legend is that when Thomas Jefferson returned from France, he pronounced that Ann and her sister Mary were the most beautiful women he had seen on his travels to Europe.  Ann Carter Troup’s paternal grandfather was John “King” Carter.  That moniker resulted from Carter’s vast holdings in money and land. His daughter Ann married “Lighthorse” Harry Lee, who, in turn, with her husband, became the parents of Robert Edward Lee, the iconic Confederate General of Civil War fame.  General Lee and Anne Troup, by the genealogical charts, were first cousins.  By the way, General Lee and President Thomas Jefferson, both of whom descended from Katherine Banks Royall Isham, their charts show that these two highly regarded sons of Virginia were second cousins twice removed. 

Gov. Troup was honored with the naming of one of the county’s first bridges, Troup’s Bridge, which crosses Turkey Creek on Old Hawkinsville, the ancient Lower Uchee Trading Path. Dublin’s first large hotel, the Troup House, was erected on the southeast corner of South Jefferson Street in the 1870s.  A street running from Academy Avenue to Telfair Street was named in his honor in the early 1900s.