Historic Sites in Bulloch County

The history of Bulloch County

Bulloch County was created by an act of February 8, 1796, from parts of Bryan and Screven counties, becoming Georgia's twenty-first county. It honors Archibald Bulloch, a Revolutionary leader who became president and commander in chief of Georgia in 1776 and died in office in February 1777. The county lies between the Ogeechee River on the east and the Canoochee River on the west, and its original territory later contributed to Candler, Emanuel, Evans and Jenkins counties. The county seat was created in 1803 as Statesborough, a name later shortened to Statesboro. Early residents cut timber, distilled turpentine and farmed, and in the antebellum period cotton cultivation expanded with the labor of enslaved people, with the county's cotton harvest more than doubling between 1850 and 1860. Between about 1890 and 1910, railroads and new commerce transformed Statesboro into a regional agricultural and trading center, and more than a dozen Jewish merchants helped build its retail trade. In 1906 local citizens and the county raised $125,000 to win the First District Agricultural and Mechanical School, the institution that grew into Georgia Southern University. The Bulloch County Courthouse, designed in 1894, still stands in downtown Statesboro.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiahistory.com