George Harris was the son of Thompson Harris (1784-1870) and Nancy Ursery (1784-. He was born in Appling County, Georgia after which the family lived in Clinch County. The Harris home and farm in Clinch County, Georgia was on lot 325 in the 7th District which lot was traversed by the county line between Clinch and Ware Counties when Clinch was created in 1850 from Ware County.

This property is situated about three miles north of the present village of Argyle. He was granted this lot form the state on June 3, 1849; also granted the adjoining lot 324 on October 3, 1848. He sold lot 324 to his brother, William Harris, November 2, 1849, and then lived on lot 325 until he sold that parcel of land to Richard Bennett on August 12, 1852.

George was a blacksmith and in addition assisted his father Thompson Harris in constructing covered bridges. His father was known throughout Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. A trademark of their bridges was the integrated use of iron and bored wooden pegs to hold the timbers together.

There is a family tale handed down through many generations relating to frontier life. The event happened during the time the Harris family was residing in Clinch County. George Harris was away leaving his wife Julia and the children home alone in a pioneer homestead. Speculation would be that he was away with his father building bridges or hunting. During one night panthers roaming from the nearby Okefenokee swamp menaced the home ranging closer and closer to the cabin. To keep the predators from entering the home a frantic family prayed through the night and burned their beds, and chairs keeping a large fire going. The tactic flushed the space with light and served to repel an attack by the curious cats.

About 1860 he removed to Echols County. He lived there until his death in 1894. His wife Julia Ann survived him about twelve years.

George Harris and his wife are buried in Union Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery in present day Lanier County in unmarked graves.(In 1919 that part of Echols County became Lanier County). Union Church was also called Burnt Church for many years in the nineteenth cemetery.

The church records of Union Church show that George and Julia were received and baptized into its membership August 7, 1841, and were dismissed by letter March 12,1842. They became members of Providence Primitive Baptist Church near their home soon after that church was constituted in 1844. Their subsequent records cannot be traced due to the loss of church records.


Civil War Service: Confederate States
George Harris served in the War Between the States. He enlisted in Co I, 4th Georgia (Clinch's) Cavalry Regiment in the fall of 1862 and served as a Private through May 1865 when his command was surrendered at No 7 on the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad near Screven Georgia and later discharged at Thomasville, Georgia in May 1865. George's son James Harris joined this same unit as a Private in 1863 and served with his father through the end of the war.

Julia Ann applied for a Confederate Widows pension in 1908,1909 in Berrien County, Georgia.