Historic Sites in Berrien County

The history of Berrien County

Berrien County was created by the Georgia General Assembly on February 25, 1856, from parts of Coffee, Irwin and Lowndes counties. It is named for John Macpherson Berrien, a Savannah lawyer called "the American Cicero," who served as a judge, U.S. senator and U.S. attorney general under President Andrew Jackson and was the first president of the Georgia Historical Society. He died less than two months before the county was formed. The county seat, Nashville, honors General Francis Nash of the Continental Army. The county developed as a farming region producing tobacco, corn, cotton, peanuts, vegetables, livestock and forest products. World War I left a deep mark: Berrien County suffered an unusually heavy loss of life, especially in the 1918 sinking of the troopship HMS Otranto. To honor its dead, the county commissioned the first Spirit of the American Doughboy statue by Americus sculptor Ernest Moore Viquesney; completed in 1921 and unveiled in 1923 once funds were raised, the design was later copied in communities across the nation. Other historic places include the 1898 courthouse in Nashville and the Alapaha Colored School, which served Black students from 1924 to 1953 and now houses a library and museum.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiahistory.comgeorgiahistory.com