Coosa, GA news and local guide

Nearby was the Haweis Mission to the Cherokee, where Dr. Elizur Butler, a physician and minister, and his wife, Esther Post Butler, arrived in 1826, sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Esther Butler, born in Connecticut on September 15, 1795, died in 1829 and is buried near Coosa. In 1831 Dr. Butler was arrested for living in the Cherokee Nation without swearing allegiance to Georgia and obtaining a license from the governor, and with Samuel Worcester he was sentenced to four years of hard labor at the state penitentiary in Milledgeville. Governor Wilson Lumpkin pardoned him in 1833, almost a year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law under which the missionaries were arrested. Butler returned to Haweis but was forced to leave the next year, cared for the Cherokee during removal and served western missions until his death in Arkansas in 1857. Sources Wikipedia: Coosa, Georgia The Historical Marker Database: Dr. Elizur and Esther Butler, Missionaries to the Cherokees (Georgia Historical Commission)