Historic Sites in Crawford County

The history of Crawford County

Crawford County was created on December 9, 1822, from part of Houston County, on land the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had ceded in the 1821 Treaty of Indian Springs. It is named for William Harris Crawford, the Georgian who served as U.S. senator, minister to France, and secretary of the treasury. Nearly two decades before the county existed, federal Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins arrived in 1803 at the Creek Agency on the Flint River, a five-square-mile compound with a shop and plantation where he lived until his death in 1816. The county seat, Knoxville, lies on the old Federal Road, once the main stagecoach route between Washington, D.C., and New Orleans. Jefferson Franklin Long, born enslaved in Knoxville, won election to Congress in December 1870 and became Georgia's first African American member of the U.S. House, serving until March 1871. John Stith Pemberton, the pharmacist who invented Coca-Cola, was also born in Knoxville, and Joanna E. Troutman of Crawford County designed the first Lone Star flag. Roberta, the county's only incorporated city, began in 1886 as a railroad office and warehouse and was named by Hiram McCrary for his daughter. Incorporated in 1890, it became a thriving stop for travelers on the route to Florida. The county's 1851 courthouse served until a new one was completed in 2002.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org