Historic Sites in Marion County

The history of Marion County

Marion County was established in 1827, two years after the Treaty of Indian Springs, from parts of Lee and Muscogee counties on land that had belonged to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. As Georgia's seventy-second county, it was named for General Francis Marion, South Carolina's "Swamp Fox" of the Revolutionary War. Settlers who drew land in the 1827 lottery built a cotton economy, and the county grew fastest during the 1840s and 1850s; by 1850, 3,604 of its 10,280 residents were enslaved. The county seat moved twice, first from Horry to Tazewell in 1838, and then to a settlement called Pea Ridge, which was renamed Buena Vista in honor of Zachary Taylor's victory in the Mexican War. The courthouse built at Tazewell in 1848 served only briefly but still stands, and it later housed a Masonic lodge. After the Civil War, emancipation forced a reordering of the county's political, social, and economic life, and the Buena Vista and Ellaville Railroad was completed in 1884. Marion County is the birthplace of Josh Gibson, the Negro League slugger often called the "Black Babe Ruth." Near Buena Vista stands Pasaquan, the brightly painted compound that folk artist Eddie Owens Martin, known as St. EOM, began creating in 1957; restored through the Kohler Foundation and Columbus State University, it reopened to the public in 2016.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.orgen.wikipedia.org