Historic Sites in Irwin County

The history of Irwin County

Irwin County was created in 1818 on land the Muscogee (Creek) surrendered under the 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson, one of seven counties the legislature established that year. It honors Jared Irwin, the governor remembered for rescinding the fraudulent Yazoo Act. The original county was immense, and Lowndes, Thomas, Worth, Coffee, Berrien, Wilcox, Tift, Turner and Ben Hill counties were all later formed at least partly from its territory. Irwinville served as the county seat from 1831 until 1907, when voters moved the seat about ten miles southeast to Ocilla, a busy railroad town. Early settlers lived by subsistence farming and hunting before turning to cattle and later to cotton and fruit raised for market. The county's best-known moment came at the close of the Civil War. Early on May 10, 1865, men of the 1st Wisconsin and 4th Michigan cavalry regiments surrounded the camp of fleeing Confederate president Jefferson Davis about a mile north of Irwinville and took him prisoner without a shot fired by his party. The site is now the Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site, a thirteen-acre park with a museum and trail. Irwin County also holds a place in Southern music history as home of the South Georgia Singing Convention, founded in 1875 by William Jackson Royal.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiaencyclopedia.org