Historic Sites in Jefferson County

The history of Jefferson County

Jefferson County was organized in 1796 from parts of Burke and Warren counties, becoming Georgia's twenty-third county, and it was named for Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation's first secretary of state. Its county seat, Louisville, was planned from the start as Georgia's permanent capital and was named for King Louis XVI of France in recognition of French support during the Revolution. It served as the capital from 1796 until 1807, when the government moved on to Milledgeville, and the town's early sessions rang with bitter arguments over the Yazoo land fraud. Louisville's old Market House, restored by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, is said to have been used for the sale of enslaved people before the Civil War. Cotton was the leading crop, and by 1860 enslaved African Americans made up well over half of the county's residents. During William T. Sherman's March to the Sea in late 1864, Union soldiers burned stores and houses along Louisville's Broad Street. Jefferson County was home at various times to governors William Schley and Howell Cobb, and novelist Erskine Caldwell spent part of his young adulthood there. The Neoclassical courthouse designed by W. F. Denny and completed in 1904 still stands in Louisville.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiaencyclopedia.org