Historic Sites in Harris County

The history of Harris County

Harris County was created on December 14, 1827, from parts of Muscogee and Troup counties, on land that had belonged to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation until the Treaty of Indian Springs of 1825. It is named for Charles Harris, a Savannah attorney and former mayor who was the son-in-law of Revolutionary War patriot Lachlan McIntosh. After the Muscogee were forced out, white settlers from eastern Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia and Pennsylvania arrived to claim land lottery parcels. Hamilton, incorporated in 1828, is the county seat, and its neoclassical revival courthouse dates to the early twentieth century. The county's past includes grave racial violence: on January 22, 1912, a mob seized four Black residents, Dusky Crutchfield, John Moore, Eugene Harrington and the Rev. Burrell Hardaway, from the Hamilton jail and hanged them after they had been arrested without evidence in the killing of a white planter. The Pine Mountain range begins in the county, and it is home to Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park, the largest state park in Georgia, and to Callaway Gardens, founded by Cason J. Callaway near the town of Pine Mountain. Lake Harding and a reconstructed 1830s gristmill at Butts Mill Farm also draw visitors.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.orgzinnedproject.org