Historic Sites in Glascock County

The history of Glascock County

Glascock County was carved from Warren County in 1857 and named for Thomas Glascock of Augusta, a veteran of the War of 1812 and the Seminole Wars. Gibson, the county seat, was laid out on land donated by Calvin Logue and named for Judge William Gibson, who contributed $500 toward the first courthouse, finished in 1858 and replaced in 1919. Muscogee (Creek) people lived in the area until the Treaty of Augusta of 1783 opened it to white settlement. Even earlier, around 1750, German immigrants founded a village called Georgetown near the Ogeechee River, though its residents abandoned it in 1792 and moved to Pennsylvania. For generations farming shaped daily life, with cotton, corn, peanuts, beef, pork and poultry as mainstays. Railroads brought towns and small industries: the Augusta-Gibson-Sandersville line operated from 1885 to 1934, Mitchell was founded as a railroad town in 1886, and the Savannah-Atlanta Railway arrived in 1916. Local plants made boxes, brooms and fertilizer, peas were canned, and a chalk mine ran from 1910 to 1935. After World War II, lumber, kaolin processing and health care replaced agriculture as leading employers. In Edgehill, nineteenth-century homes such as the 1880 Kelley House still recall the county's farming past.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org