Historic Sites in Pierce County

The history of Pierce County

Pierce County was created in 1857 from parts of Appling and Ware counties and named for Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president of the United States. Muscogee (Creek) people once lived in the area but were expelled after the outbreak of the War of 1812 by forces under General David Blackshear, acting on federal orders, and Blackshear cut a military road through the region in 1814 and 1815. The county seat, Blackshear, bears his name; it was laid out in 1858 and grew around a depot of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad built in 1857. From November 1864 to January 1865, the Confederacy held nearly 5,000 Union prisoners of war at a temporary camp at Blackshear. For much of its history the county depended on its pine forests, which supplied timber and turpentine, and on cotton, until the boll weevil struck in the 1920s and farmers shifted to tobacco, which remained the leading crop through the late twentieth century. Parts of Pierce were later used to create Bacon County in 1914 and Brantley County in 1920. Historic buildings include the neoclassical courthouse of 1902, the 1894 county jail known as the Hanging Jail, Blackshear Presbyterian Church of 1874, the historic railroad depot that now holds a heritage museum, and the 1926 Marian Anderson Library Rosenwald School, which educated African American children.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.org