Historic Sites in Candler County

The history of Candler County

Candler County was created by the Georgia General Assembly in 1914 from portions of Bulloch, Emanuel, and Tattnall counties. It honors Allen D. Candler, governor from 1898 to 1902, who is remembered for compiling and editing volumes of Georgia's colonial and Confederate records. Metter is the county seat. The town's unusual name dates to a post office requested by local farmers, when physician Dan Kennedy submitted the name, a word his son later said Kennedy had invented, and postal officials chose it. Before Metter grew, the nearby community of Excelsior on Ten Mile Creek served as the area's cultural center in the 1880s and 1890s, organized around an academy and supporting its own newspaper, but it declined after the railroads bypassed it. A rail line through Metter around 1898, later acquired by the Central of Georgia Railway, drew people and business to the new town, and its leaders spent years campaigning to break away from the surrounding counties, failing in 1905 and 1908 before finally succeeding. Farming defined the county into the mid-twentieth century, with timber, cotton, tobacco, and poultry as mainstays. Surviving landmarks include the 1921 courthouse, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the 1916 jail, and the 1910 Old Metter High School, purchased by the county historical society for museum use.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgcandlerhistoricalsociety.orggeorgiahistory.com