Historic Sites in Schley County

The history of Schley County

Schley County was created by act of the legislature on December 22, 1857, from parts of Marion and Sumter counties, on land the Muscogee (Creek) had surrendered in the cessions of the 1820s. It honors William Schley, who represented Georgia in Congress from 1833 to 1835 and served as governor from 1835 to 1837; locals pronounce the name "Sly." Ellaville, the county seat and its only incorporated town, is named for Ella Burton, whose father, Robert Burton, sold the land for the town site. Small cotton farmers from the Georgia coast, Virginia and the Carolinas arrived in the 1830s and 1840s, working largely self-sufficient family farms where court days and Baptist and Methodist gatherings shaped community life. In 1861 both of the county's delegates to the Georgia Secession Convention voted to leave the Union, and Schley sent three companies into Confederate service. After the war a Northern missionary, Mollie Van Layer, opened a school for freed Black children. The 1890s brought a bank, electricity, telephones and waterworks, and in 1899 the county completed its Romanesque Revival courthouse, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Farming has remained the heart of the local economy, shifting over time from cotton toward peanuts, soybeans, poultry and beef cattle.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiahistory.comen.wikipedia.org