Historic Sites in Murray County

The history of Murray County

Murray County was created in 1832 as Georgia carved counties out of Cherokee Nation lands, and it originally sprawled across more than 1,400 square miles of the state's northwest corner before later counties reduced it. It was named for Thomas W. Murray, a former Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives. The area had been home to prominent Cherokee families, above all the Vanns. Moravian missionaries opened a mission at Spring Place in 1801, and the Cherokee leader James Vann built a two-story brick house beside the Federal Road that is regarded as the first brick home in the Cherokee Nation and survives as the Chief Vann House Historic Site. An 1834 Georgia law allowed Cherokee landholdings to be forfeited, one of the pressures that led to the forced removal of 1838 and 1839 known as the Trail of Tears. Spring Place served as the first county seat, but after the Louisville and Nashville Railroad was built through Chatsworth in the early twentieth century, the seat moved there, and a neoclassical courthouse was completed in 1917. Murray's delegates initially voted against secession, though the county went on to support the Confederacy. During the Depression the Civilian Conservation Corps developed Fort Mountain State Park, known for its puzzling stone wall, while talc mining and later carpet manufacturing shaped the local economy.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.orggeorgiaencyclopedia.org