Historic Sites in Columbia County

The history of Columbia County

Columbia County was created on December 10, 1790, from the northern part of Richmond County, in territory that had formed part of the colonial parish of St. Paul, and its name honors Christopher Columbus. Appling, chartered in 1816 and named for War of 1812 hero Colonel Daniel Appling, is the legal county seat, though county government now operates largely from Evans. Human history here runs deep: Stallings Island in the Savannah River holds an archaeological site documenting an Archaic Period culture that flourished more than 4,000 years ago, and it is one of the oldest sites in the nation known to contain pottery. In the colonial era, Daniel Marshall organized Kiokee Baptist Church in 1772, the first Baptist church in Georgia, and Quakers established Wrightsborough in 1768 on land that became part of McDuffie County in 1870. William Few and Abraham Baldwin, Georgia's delegates who signed the U.S. Constitution, and Declaration of Independence signer George Walton all lived in what became Columbia County. Plantation agriculture dominated the antebellum years, and by the 1850s nearly 8,300 enslaved people lived in the county, more than twice the white population. The Georgia Railroad, built through the area in the 1830s, later gave rise to the towns of Harlem and Grovetown, and Harlem is the birthplace of film comedian Oliver Hardy.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org