Historic Sites in Grady County

The history of Grady County

Grady County was established in 1905 from portions of Decatur and Thomas counties, becoming Georgia's 139th county. It honors Henry W. Grady, the Atlanta Constitution editor who became a leading voice of the 'New South' movement. The county seat, Cairo, began as a stagecoach stop called Miller's Station and grew after the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad began running through the settlement in 1859; it became a numbered railroad station in 1867 and was incorporated in 1870. Seminole people inhabited the area before white settlers from the Carolinas arrived along Indian trails in the 1820s, among them Baptist minister William Hawthorne, who settled on Tired Creek. During the Seminole Wars, some settlers in Florida moved north into this part of Georgia. Farming on sandy loam soils anchored the early economy, and after the Civil War sawmills and expanding rail service added timber and other forest products. The first courthouse, built in 1908, burned in 1980 and was replaced. Places listed on the National Register of Historic Places include Pebble Hill Plantation, the Cairo Commercial Historic District and Birdsong Nature Center, a former plantation that became a nature center in 1986. Baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo in 1919, and writer Vereen Bell is also counted among the county's notable figures.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org