Historic Sites in Carroll County

The history of Carroll County

Carroll County was created in 1825 from Muscogee (Creek) land ceded under the Treaty of Indian Springs, an agreement signed by Creek leader William McIntosh that led a faction of his own people to kill him that same year. McIntosh Reserve, set aside for him in 1825, is now a county park. The county is named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland, then the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Carrollton, established in 1829, is the county seat. Its early frontier years were troubled by a gang of horse thieves known as the Pony Club, who were eventually driven out by settlers calling themselves the Slicks. Gold was found near Villa Rica in 1830, and hundreds of miners were at work by 1832 before the diggings faded. Carroll sent more men to the Confederate army than any Georgia county except Chatham, though no significant fighting took place locally. Cotton and textiles shaped the following decades: mills operated from the 1840s, and the county led Georgia in cotton production in 1928, 1929, 1932, and 1938. The Fourth District A&M School, opened in 1906, grew into the University of West Georgia, and Southwire, founded by Roy Richards, became a major copper wire manufacturer.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.org