Historic Sites in Hancock County

The history of Hancock County

Hancock County was established on December 17, 1793, from parts of Greene and Washington counties and named for John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Set between the Oconee and Ogeechee rivers along the route of the old Upper Trading Path, it attracted Revolutionary War veterans from Virginia, the Carolinas and New England. Sparta, founded in 1795 and incorporated in 1805, became the county seat and welcomed the Marquis de Lafayette in 1825. By 1830 cotton cultivated by enslaved people had made the county wealthy, and planter David Dickson became known for experimental farming methods. Academies at Mount Zion, Powelton and Sparta gained reputations far beyond Georgia. All three of the county's delegates to the 1861 secession convention voted against leaving the Union, though they later backed the Confederacy, and in November 1864 Union cavalry under Judson Kilpatrick burned cotton and destroyed farms here. William J. Northen, who moved to the county in the 1850s, was elected governor in 1890. In 1921 writer Jean Toomer worked as a substitute principal at a Black industrial school in the county, an experience that inspired his landmark 1923 book Cane. The Hancock County Courthouse, built in 1881–83, was gutted by fire in 2014 and restored and rededicated in 2016.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org