Tag: Waleska
Waleska is a city in Cherokee County, Georgia, United States. The population was 616 at the 2000 census.
The first white settlement in the Waleska area began in the early 1830s. Among these first pioneer settlers were the Reinhardt, Heard and Rhyne families, who moved into the region looking for fresh, fertile farm land. At first, these settlers lived among the Cherokee population already established in the area, but by 1838 all of the Cherokee had been forced westward to Oklahoma in the U.S. Government relocation movement known as the Trail of Tears.
Early settler Lewis W. Reinhardt established a church in 1834 in the settlement known as Reinhardt Chapel and befriended many of the native Cherokee population. When the Trail of Tears forced the movement of Warluskee, the daughter of a local Cherokee Chief and friend of Reinhardt’s, westward, he named this settlement in her honor.
By the early 1850s, the Sharp family had moved into the area from Walhalla, South Carolina. In 1856, John J…
