Historic Sites in Long County

The history of Long County

Long County was among the last counties Georgia created. On August 14, 1920, the legislature proposed a constitutional amendment to form it from part of Liberty County, and when voters ratified the measure on November 2, 1920, Long became the state's 159th county. It was named for Crawford Long, the physician who first used ether as an anesthetic in surgery, at Jefferson on March 30, 1842. The area once lay within colonial St. John's Parish, and paths worn by Muscogee (Creek) people became its earliest roads, among them the Old Barrington Road. During the colonial period, General James Oglethorpe established frontier forts along the Altamaha River to guard against Spanish and Native American threats. The county seat, Ludowici, began in the 1840s as a stop on the railroad. In 1903 William Ludowici opened a ceramic plant in the town, and in 1905 residents renamed the community in his honor. Ludowici is the only incorporated municipality in the county. Several historic buildings recall the county's past, including Jones Creek Baptist Church, which dates to 1856; Walthourville Presbyterian Church, built in 1884; the Ludowici Well Pavilion of 1907; and the Long County Courthouse, a Neoclassical Revival building completed in 1926.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.org