Historic Sites in Clayton County

The history of Clayton County

Clayton County was created on November 30, 1858, from parts of Fayette and Henry counties, in territory the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had ceded to Georgia in the 1821 Treaty of Indian Springs. It is named for Augustin Smith Clayton, a Virginia-born judge and 1804 graduate of the University of Georgia who represented Georgia in Congress from 1832 to 1835. Jonesboro, the county seat, was first known as Leaksville and was renamed in 1845 for Colonel Samuel Goode Jones. A railroad connected Jonesboro with stations at Morrow, Quick Station, later Forest Park, and Rough and Ready by 1846, and that line made the town a military target. The Battle of Jonesboro, which began on August 31, 1864, gave General William T. Sherman's Union army control of the railroad and supply lines serving Atlanta. Confederate soldiers killed in the fighting are buried in Jonesboro's Patrick R. Cleburne Memorial Cemetery. The town's Civil War experience provided background for Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone With the Wind, and the Road to Tara Museum displays a large permanent exhibition devoted to the book and film. In the twentieth century the county was transformed by Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which extends into Clayton. The county is also home to Clayton State University, founded in 1969, and to the Georgia Archives, which relocated to Morrow in 2003.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.org