Historic Sites in Baker County

The history of Baker County

Baker County was created from Early County by legislative acts in December 1825 and named for Colonel John Baker, a Revolutionary War officer. Its first county seat was at Byron, but an 1831 act established a new seat named Newton, after Sergeant John Newton, another soldier of the Revolution. Before the Civil War, Baker's original territory was divided to form all or parts of Calhoun, Dougherty, Miller and Mitchell counties. The county's lands had belonged to the Muscogee (Creek) people, and in July 1836 Georgia militia defeated a band of Muscogee fighters in the Chickasawhatchee Creek swamp, one of the last engagements of the Creek War of 1836. The Flint River runs through the county, and its floods repeatedly damaged the courthouse in Newton in 1925, 1929 and 1994. Several plantation-era sites are listed in the National Register of Historic Places, including Pine Bloom Plantation, home of Governor Alfred H. Colquitt, Tarver Plantation and Notchaway Baptist Church with its cemetery. In the twentieth century Coca-Cola magnate Robert Woodruff developed Ichauway Plantation as a quail-hunting preserve; the property is now home to the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center, which studies longleaf pine ecosystems.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiahistory.com