Historic Sites in Forsyth County

The history of Forsyth County

Forsyth County was created in 1832 from former Cherokee land and named for John Forsyth, governor of Georgia from 1827 to 1829. Cumming, the county seat, was incorporated in 1834. The Cherokee had lived in the region for centuries, but the discovery of gold in 1829 brought a surge of settlers, and in 1838 the Cherokee were forcibly removed to the West; Fort Campbell, within the county, served as an assembly point. During the gold era of the 1830s and 1840s, the Federal Road through the county supported roadside businesses. Forsyth saw no Civil War combat, and afterward its economy turned to cotton farming. In 1912, following an alleged assault, a white mob lynched a Black suspect, two Black teenagers were publicly hanged, and night riders spent weeks terrorizing African American families until nearly all had fled; the county's Black population fell from about 1,100 in 1910 to 17 by 1930. That legacy resurfaced in January 1987, when a small march honoring Martin Luther King Jr. was confronted by Ku Klux Klan supporters, and a Brotherhood March on January 24 led by Hosea Williams drew some 20,000 people under heavy police and National Guard protection. The completion of Georgia 400 in the 1980s transformed Forsyth into an Atlanta suburb along the shores of Lake Lanier.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.org