These records are poor school and academy lists of school children or their parents from 45 Georgia counties for the years 1826 through Local officials created the lists as a census in the various counties, transmitted the lists to the Governor so he could use the lists as the basis to allocate the annual poor school fund. The allocation was distributed to the counties per their number of poor white children. A poor white family in 1823 was defined as those persons paying less than $.50 tax above the poll tax. The format of the lists varies but may include: 1) student or parent's name 2) age 3) grade level 4) attendance and 5) curriculum. For a perspective on a list from a particular year, see Georgia Laws for that year.

This series has been microfilmed and is available in the Microfilm Library. However, in the process of microfilming the records, several pages of data were "lost," that is, were inadvertently not filmed. Those documents, wholly or in part, for three counties were not filmed include: - Jones County (Poor Schools, 1829, pp. 2 and 3, Folder 49a) - Ware County (Poor Schools, 1833, first leaf, Folder 70c) - Warren County (Poor Schools, 1832, two leaves, part of a list of teachers and part of a list of students, Folder 72a)