Abijah Timmons & Mary Sabra Turner “were born and raised in Worcester County, Maryland. They were raised up under moral influence or Episcopalian influence and joined the Methodist church at about twenty years of age and was lead to an acquaintance soon afterward at a Methodist meeting at a meeting place between their homes. And soon after this providential acquaintance [they] were married.”

In the latter part of November 1795, a few months after Abijah and Mary were married, they moved to Georgia where they settled down in Hancock County “on the waters of Beaverdam [Creek] near the confluence of the Beaverdam with the Shoulderbone Creek.”

“They having just married and [being] very poor, my father commenced work with his brother-in-law Joshua Turner, with whom he worked 2 or 3 years. They soon built a small but neat log house and called it after the name of my Uncle Joshua Turner— that is “Turners.”

-- From the opening paragraphs of Life Book by their son William Timmons
(see http://www.steen-frost.org/Pub/Docs/1873_Life_Book.pdf ).

See also, http://www.steen-frost.org/Pub/Places/Timmons_Homestead.tif for a map showing the confluence of the Beaverdam with the Shoulderbone Creek (near the intersection of today’s Georgia highways 16 and 77).

See http://www.steen-frost.org/Pub/Places/Timmons_Homestead.tif for a map showing the location of Abijah Timmons and Mary Turner’s omestead site in Hancock County, Georgia, “near the confluence of the Beaverdam with the Shoulderbone Creek.

This homestead site is near the intersection of highways GA 16 and GA 77, both of which are “Georgia Scenic Byways.” Approaching this intersection while driving southwest on GA 77 one crosses Whitten creek and Lundy creek, both of which drain to the southeast into Shoulderbone creek. At the junction of 77 and 16 there is a historic marker commemorating a treaty with the Creek Indians. (This marker spells it “Shoulder-bone”; an old map in the library used “Beaver Dam Creek.”)

A short distance SW on GA 16 is a bridge over Shoulderbone creek. On the north side of GA 16 is a waterfall with an old mill; on a hill on the opposite side of the creek is a house on the hill overlooking the creek.

Along GA 77 just north of the intersection with GA 16 are two dirt turnoffs, one leading to a farm house facing northwest; the other opening immediately in a field some distance in front of the farm house.

The Mary Vinson Memorial Library in Milledgeville contains a copy of an old map of Hancock County which shows clearly that the Beaverdam creek joins the Shouderbone creek about a mile northeast of the junction of highways 77 and 16.

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Karen Spencer writes that Abijah’s father spells his name with a “j” in his will, and it is spelled that way also in one other document. Later, Abijah’s grandson Thomas Holmes Timmons spells the name “Abigah” in “Ancestral Etchings,” his published account of the Timmons family history.

“During the last decade of the 17th Century this couple with a colony, emigrated to Georgia and located in Hancock county.”
-- Thomas Holmes Timmons, “Ancestral Etchings”