Historic Sites in Lowndes County

The history of Lowndes County

Lowndes County was created on December 23, 1825, from land districts of Irwin County, and in its early years it reached all the way south to the Florida line. It was named for William Lowndes, a South Carolina lawyer and congressman whose father, Rawlins Lowndes, had been a leader in that state during the Revolutionary War. The county seat moved several times. Courts first met at a tavern near present-day Morven, then at Franklinville, and later at Troupville. In December 1859 the legislature authorized a new seat, and Valdosta was established on land that had belonged to William Wisenbaker; the first train passed through the new town on July 4, 1860. Between 1890 and 1916 Valdosta was the largest inland market for Sea Island cotton in the world, until the boll weevil arrived in 1915. Timber, turpentine, and textiles sustained the economy, and Valdosta hosted the world's second Coca-Cola bottling plant and, from 1936, the headquarters of the American Turpentine Farmers Association. South Georgia State Normal College, founded in 1906, grew into Valdosta State University, and Moody Air Force Base opened on September 15, 1941. The county's history also includes racial terror: during a lynching rampage in 1918, a white mob murdered Mary Turner, a young mother who was eight months pregnant, near Folsom Bridge on the Little River.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org