“Through the natural order of birth, life, and death, each of us is a wayfarer, a transient guest in this magnificent land of ours. The following pages are concerned chiefly with Walton County, Georgia, and her wayfarers, especially those men and women who, as they paused here, were not content to be mere cogs in the wheel…more worthwhile than faded signatures on the register…”

So begins Wayfarers of Walton, the 885 page history of Walton County written by gifted author and beloved community historian Anita B. Sams. The herculean task of pre-internet era research took ten years to compile and included more than 60 visits to the Georgia Archives in Atlanta and countless hikes through local cemeteries. As she told the Atlanta journalist Celestine Sibley, “I frequently wondered which of us would survive, but on June 26 (1967), the publication day, I declared myself the worn and weary winner!” Unlike some historical publications, it is highly readable, “laced with earthy anecdotes, humor, touches of pathos, tales of good times and bad” and was hailed as “perhaps the best county history in Georgia.” Anyone who has browsed its pages will agree that more than 50 years later it remains an important resource for our local/state history and a valuable quilt piece sewn into our patchwork community story! 

Anita Launius Butts Sams was born in Walton County on May 22, 1913 to Elizabeth Alberta Launius Butts and Joel Winkfield Butts, Jr. Even as a young girl, Anita was an avid reader, writer and artist. She wrote poetry and short stories, publishing her first poem at the age of 12! After graduating from Monroe High School, she attended the University of Georgia and in 1936 earned a degree from the Henry Grady School of Journalism. 

In 1938, Anita married Robert Smith Sams and moved to Charlotte. When Robert entered WWII in 1941, Anita returned home to Monroe and continued her lifelong work as a writer and respected community leader. She penned countless history and society columns for the Walton Tribune, including “Book Nook” and the church news section, “Walton Ways.” She served as a founder, trustee and president of the Historical Society of Walton County, which generously loaned to the Museum her extensive collection of historical research for use in this exhibit. 

Anita Sams brought that same keen interest in history and writing skill to her other major work, With Unabated Trust, a collection of Civil War love letters from future Governor Henry McDaniel to his fiancee, Hester Felker, who preserved them in her bonnet box for decades. Sams compiled and edited these treasured letters, and the work was published in 1977 by the Historical Society of Walton County to high acclaim as “one of the most detailed accounts of the war as seen through a soldier’s eyes.” In 1981, the Monroe community presented a dramatic reading of With Unabated Trust as a joint venture of the Historical Society and On Stage, Inc.  This unique dramatic adaptation, written and directed by Glenn Pelham, was performed by a concert of 80 people, all Walton residents, in the format of a reader’s theater and Greek chorus.

Anita Butts Sams died on July 6, 1993 in Monroe after a long illness. Although she and Robert had no children of their own, she was beloved by countless friends and family, including her two nieces, Susan Butts Foster and Barbara Butts Beardsley who generously loaned most of the mementos of her life and work on display here. 

In the 1967 foreword to Wayfarers in Walton, Anita Sams wrote: “Time has obscured much which should be between these covers. But it is with pleasure that I have this part in preserving some of Walton County’s facts and legends for the current generation and for future wayfarers who will come this way.”