The history of Conn’s Creek Baptist is closely tied to its founder, Samuel Conn, and to the broader story of Georgia’s expansion into Cherokee Nation lands. While details of Conn’s life are uncertain, records show that he and his wife, Elizabeth, acquired land in the early 1830s in what is now Cherokee County, near the community of Ball Ground. Local accounts suggest he had a good relationship with the Cherokee people and may have been part Cherokee himself. One story recalls that Samuel traded a pack of ponies to a Cherokee chief for a tract of land crossed by a creek. There he built a cabin, later a house, and donated part of the property for a school and a church—both of which remain today.

Life between settlers and the Cherokee in the 1820s and 1830s was uneasy, and the discovery of gold heightened tensions. Sixes Mine, located at present-day Sixes Mill, became one of the first mining operations in the region, producing some of the purest gold in Georgia. Additional mines opened along the Etowah and Little Rivers. The 1835 Treaty of New Echota, signed by a small Cherokee faction and ratified by the U.S. Senate by a single vote, forced the Cherokee to relinquish their land. In 1838, the Georgia Guard and U.S. Army began rounding up Cherokee citizens for removal west, an event remembered as the Trail of Tears.

Samuel Conn first built a one-room log house on a high knoll about two miles from the current site of Conn’s Creek Baptist Church. Over time, he expanded it into a two-story home with twin fireplaces. A community leader and entrepreneur, Samuel farmed the surrounding land, operated a grist mill in Pickens County, and served as a deacon of Conn’s Creek Baptist for 26 years. He and Elizabeth raised thirteen children who lived to adulthood, including six sons who served in the Confederacy.

In 1873, tragedy struck when the loft of Samuel’s barn, filled with corn, collapsed on him. Trapped beneath the grain, he suffocated. His death marked the end of a life deeply woven into the history of Conn’s Creek and the early settlement of Cherokee County.