Spring Place, Georgia, 1837

Amanda Caroline was born in Spring Place, Murray County Georgia in 1837. Amanda was the sixth of ten or eleven children. Her father James S. Edmondson bought the house built by James Vann, a vastly wealthy member of the Cherokee Indians, after the Cherokee were forced to abandon their lands in north and west Georgia. 

This map shows the 1830 boundaries of the Cherokee Nation in northwestern Georgia. Spring Place is located  on the upper left of the map, in the heart of the Cherokee lands. Courtesy of Georgia Info, Digital Library of Georgia

By 1834 the Cherokee removal was complete, and James Edmondson was already ensconced in Murray County as a property owner and a Justice of the Peace. The Vann House is now administered by the Georgia's Parks, Recreation, and Historic Sites. The house is considered important because James Vann built it, not because the Edmondsons owned it from about 1850 until sometime in 1863. But it does still exist, and it was the place where Amanda lived at least half her life until her marriage, and it where her Arkansas cousin Benjamin Hardin Newton came to stay in the spring of 1861, just before he enlisted in the Georgia Volunteers.  

You can read a bit more about the Vann House at http://gastateparks.org/info/chiefvann/