A History of Kenney Ridge and The Beloved Land

Overview

This history of Kenney Ridge and The Beloved Land is a work in progress. It is not only a record of human settlement, agriculture, and natural succession, but also a reflection of community vision—of how land once scarred by exploitation can be reclaimed, remembered, and reimagined. The narrative below focuses primarily on the pre-history of the Kenney Ridge Community. A full account of the latter has yet to be written.

Timeline

  • 10,000 years ago – megafauna, including mammoths, mastodons, bison, elk, ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats—hunted to extinction by Clovis-era people.
  • 800-1600 – Mississippian mound builders active in Georgia.
  • 1540s-1700s – European contact; disease and violence led to decimation of tribes; survivors and refugees formed Muscogee Confederacy.
  • 1700s – Kenney Ridge was winter hunting grounds for Muscogee Creeks; Tallassee Mico lived here as settlers arrived.
  • 1785-1794 – Oconee War: Decade of skirmishes between Muscogees and European settlers over land around the Oconee River.
  • 1786 – First European settlers founded Fort Strong and Tallassee Colony a mile north of Kenney Ridge.
  • 1802 – Kenney family arrived in Clarke County—from Virginia via Oglethorpe County.
  • 1839 – Charles Kenney purchased 342 acres, including present-day Kenney Ridge.
  • 1840s–1865 – Farm relied on enslaved labor; Civil War.
  • 1920 – Boll weevil devastated cotton on eroded land; decline of agriculture.
  • 1994 – Land purchased by Nancy Stangle from William Douglas Kenney.
  • 1995 – Kenney Ridge Community Land Trust established.
  • Today – Home to a thriving community and over 1,200 documented species of plants, animals and fungi.

Kenney Ridge Community

The vision for Kenney Ridge has evolved over time. The land (132 acres) was purchased in 1994 by Nancy and Phil Stangle from William Douglas Kenney (1918–2012), great-grandson of Charles Kenney. Nancy and Phil had begun purchasing 18 acres adjacent to the Kenney property since the early 1980s so they were familiar with the farm. They were also part of a group of young families who were looking for land to establish a community based on the cohousing model of shared community space along with individually-owned living space. Kate Blane and Dan Everett were also part of this group. Nancy and Skipper StipeMaas worked together to establish the Kenney Ridge community, putting in the road and utilities that were required. They provided community-owned open space and utilized sustainable approaches to land use in order to negatively impact the land as little as possible.  In 1995, other individuals and families joined the community and began to build homes, setting the foundation for the shared stewardship that continues today.

Human History

Native Americans

The human history of Kenney Ridge reaches far back. Before humans arrived about 14,000 years ago, the landscape supported an astonishing array of megafauna, including mammoths, mastodons, bison, elk, ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats. Clovis-era peoples hunted these animals to extinction and regularly burned forests, maintaining open woodlands. Mississippian mound builders were active in Georgia from approximately 800 CE to 1600 CE. This era is the last major prehistoric Native American culture in the region.

Following European contact in the mid-16th century, the ancestral societies were severely impacted by disease and conflict–—with up to 95% population loss-–leading to the decline and abandonment of many major centers. The survivors of various Native American groups regrouped into a loose Muskogee confederacy of autonomous towns for mutual protection and stability. The English colonists began calling them “Creek” because their main towns were situated along the Ochese Creek (now the Ocmulgee River). 

Long before European settlement, the land that is now Kenney Ridge lay in a transitional zone between Muscogee Creek and Cherokee peoples. Oral histories and accounts suggest that Tallassee Mico, or Tallassee King, lived on or near present-day Kenney Ridge, overlooking the Tallassee Shoals (named for him). Tallassee Mico used this area as winter hunting grounds, while his permanent community, Little Tallassee, was on the Coosa River in Alabama, about 150 straight-line miles due west of Kenney Ridge. Unlike some emergent Creek elites who embraced plantation agriculture, property accumulation, or intermarriage with Anglo-American families, Tallassee Mico represented the older Creek political order, rooted in matrilineal clans, village consensus, communal landholding, and decentralized governance.

Mico played a pivotal role during the first wave of white settlement. In 1783, following the Revolutionary War, the state of Georgia sought to secure Creek lands to fulfill its obligations to war veterans. In the interest of restoring trade and peace, Tallassee Mico met with Georgia officials in Augusta and proposed a compromise. Georgia immediately began surveying the land, disregarding Mico’s conditions and undermining established diplomatic protocols. The state did not seek ratification from the wider Creek Nation, presenting the agreement as final despite narrow representation. This sparked the Oconee War, a series of intermittent and violent conflicts between the state of Georgia and the Creek Nation between 1785 and 1794. Disillusioned, Mico spent the rest of his life as an enemy of Georgia, having witnessed the desecration of his people’s sacred “Beloved Forks” of the Oconee. 

Further local insight into this period can be found in Tallassee King by Roger Collins (1998), Tallassee History by Steven Scurry (2011), and Scurry’s 2024 talk, A History of the Beloved Land in the Late 18th Century. The perspective of Muskogee elder Winterhawk also adds depth to understanding this history.

European Settlers
By 1786, European settlers had arrived and established Fort Strong and the Tallassee Colony about a mile north of present-day Kenney Ridge. Prospect (Methodist) Church, across the road from Kenney Ridge, was built in 1812. Meanwhile, the University of Georgia was chartered in 1785, though land was not secured until 1801 (the same year that Clarke County, including current Oconee County, was split off from Jackson County). The Kenney family entered the scene in the early 1800s: James Kenney Jr., father of Charles Kenney, migrated to Clarke County from Oglethorpe County by 1802. In 1839, Charles Kenney purchased 342 acres—including the land now known as Kenney Ridge—from Sterling Coombs. At that time, some or all of the property lay in Jackson County, before Clarke County’s boundaries were redrawn specifically to include Kenney Ridge in 1874.

Agricultural History

Agriculture shaped Kenney Ridge from the start. Historic maps and aerial photos—such as the 1939 aerial image and the 2017 Lidar survey—reveal field patterns, terraces, and roads that reflect centuries of use.

By 1860, Charles Kenney’s farm was diversified and largely self-sufficient, with 150 improved acres (tilled for crops or cleared for grazing) and 250 unimproved (woodland used for timber or pig foraging). The Kenney’s grew wheat, corn, oats, peas, beans, sweet potatoes, and cotton, while also raising horses, oxen, cattle, sheep, and swine. 

The land quickly showed the scars of overuse. From the early 1800s onward, erosion stripped away the rich topsoil, leaving the familiar Georgia red clay. Terracing was introduced across the Piedmont between 1880 and 1920, with further improvements under the USDA Soil Conservation Service beginning in the 1930s.

Cotton dominated after the Civil War until the boll weevil arrived in Clarke County around 1920. Though some farmers persisted into the mid-20th century, cotton farming steadily declined under pressure from pests, urban development, and competition elsewhere. By 2002 only two cotton farms remained in Clarke County; by 2012, none.

Slavery and the Civil War

The Kenney family’s history is inseparable from the system of slavery. Census records show that in 1850, Charles Kenney enslaved nine individuals, most of them young girls. Despite their ages and genders, these human beings represented more than half the value of the farm. Over the following decade, Charles bought, sold, and pursued runaway slaves, including Mary and Laura, both young girls whose lives are partly documented through newspaper advertisements.

By 1860, Charles Kenney enslaved eight people, nearly all women, whose forced labor accounted for 59% of his farm’s value. Letters from the period reveal that his son, Samuel Pierce Kenney, fought for the Confederacy under Howell Cobb, sustaining wounds in 1862. In 1867, Charles and his sons voted against re-ratification of the U.S. Constitution, openly opposing Reconstruction.

Post–Civil War

The Reconstruction era (1865-1877) brought sweeping changes across Clarke County. The end of slavery for nearly 5,000 enslaved people in Athens and Clarke County resulted in the establishment of schools; new communities and neighborhoods for freed African Americans; independent Black churches; three Black newspapers; and a Black middle class of professionals, including doctors, dentists, and educators, began to emerge.

Yet systemic racism persisted well into the 20th century, documented in the 1915 Rural Survey of Clarke County, Georgia, with Special Reference to the Negroes. Racial violence continued into living memory, culminating in the 1964 lynching of Lemuel Penn in Athens.

Natural History

Flora, Fauna, and Funga

Today, Kenney Ridge shows the legacy of both agriculture and succession. Abandoned fields have filled with juniper, sweetgum, and loblolly pine, while mature upland forests now support oaks and hickories. Invasive species—privet, kudzu, Russian olive, Bradford pear, chinaberry, and Japanese stiltgrass—have spread widely, while the once-dominant American chestnut has vanished. The emerald ash borer now threatens the common ash trees. Bamboo, introduced by the Kenneys for farming, continues to spread.

Despite these challenges, biodiversity is rich. iNaturalist projects record over 1,200 species of plants, animals, fungi, and slime molds. Local naturalists have compiled species lists for butterflies, skippers, birds, landmark trees, and common native plants, along with decades of nature logs documenting seasonal change–—contributing to a deeper understanding of the land’s living heritage.

Geology

Kenney Ridge’s bedrock and soils are described in Dan Williams’ 2012 book, Rocks of the Tallassee Road Property, Athens-Clarke County, Georgia.