Historic Sites in Cook County

The history of Cook County

Cook County was created in 1918 from part of Berrien County, through a constitutional amendment ratified by voters that November. It is named for Philip Cook, who fought in the Seminole Wars, rose to general in the Confederate army, represented Georgia in Congress from 1873 to 1883, and served as Georgia's secretary of state from 1890 through 1894. Adel, the county seat, grew up at a railroad junction and was first known as Puddleville because of its waterlogged streets. It was incorporated and renamed in 1889, and according to local lore, postmaster Joel J. Parrish spotted the word Philadelphia printed on a sack and took the letters for the new name from its middle. The towns of Cecil, Lenox, and Sparks were founded around the turn of the twentieth century as stops on the Georgia Southern railroad, while the community of Laconte dates to 1853. Adel's post office holds Plantation Scene, a New Deal mural painted by Alice Flint in 1941, and the 1930s Sowega Building, known locally as the Watermelon Building, houses the chamber of commerce. Reed Bingham State Park, shared with Colquitt County, surrounds a 375-acre lake. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gene Patterson, a former editor of the Atlanta Constitution, grew up on a farm near Adel.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org