Historic Sites in Appling County

The history of Appling County

Appling County was created by the Georgia legislature in December 1818 from land the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had been forced to give up in the 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson and the 1818 Treaty of the Creek Agency. It honors Colonel Daniel Appling of Columbia County, a War of 1812 officer who died in 1817. The original county was enormous, stretching from the Altamaha River toward the St. Marys River, and its territory was later divided to form all or part of a dozen other counties, including Ware, Coffee, Wayne and Pierce. Holmesville served as the first county seat, but the Macon and Brunswick Railroad, completed through the county in 1870, gave rise to the station towns of Surrency, Graham and Baxley, and the seat later moved to Baxley, incorporated in 1875 and named for storekeeper Wilson Baxley. Early settlers raised livestock and small crops, while pine timber and naval stores tied the county to the coast; loggers lashed logs into large rafts and floated them down the Altamaha to the sawmills at Darien. Cotton, tobacco and later blueberries shaped the farm economy. The county's literary history includes Caroline Miller, whose novel of pioneer life, Lamb in His Bosom, won the 1934 Pulitzer Prize, and author Janisse Ray. The neoclassical revival courthouse in Baxley dates to 1907–1908.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiahistory.com