Historic Sites in Lamar County

The history of Lamar County

Lamar County was created in 1920 from land transferred out of Monroe and Pike counties. Its name honors Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, a Putnam County native who went on to represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate, serve as secretary of the interior, and sit as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The land had belonged to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation until a treaty signed on January 8, 1821, by Chief William McIntosh and others ceded the territory that became Monroe, Pike, and Crawford counties. Settlers from Virginia, the Carolinas, and older Georgia counties soon followed. Barnesville, the county seat, was founded in 1826 and named for Gideon Barnes, who kept a tavern there. During the Civil War the town became a place of care for wounded Confederate soldiers, among them William B. Bate, later governor of Tennessee. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Barnesville's carriage factories earned it the nickname "Buggy Capital of the South," with one firm expecting to ship at least 1,200 buggies in 1897, a legacy still marked by the annual Buggy Days festival. Gordon Institute, founded in 1872 and named for General John B. Gordon, trained military students for generations and grew into Gordon State College. The Neoclassical courthouse in Barnesville was built in 1931.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org