Historic Sites in Stewart County

The history of Stewart County

Stewart County was created on December 23, 1830, from Randolph County and named for Daniel Stewart, a Revolutionary War veteran and Indian fighter who was a great-grandfather of President Theodore Roosevelt. Its county seat is Lumpkin. Centuries earlier, Mississippian peoples built two major mound centers here, the Rood and Singer-Moye sites, occupied roughly between A.D. 1100 and 1350. Legal white settlement followed Georgia's 1827 land lottery on former Muscogee (Creek) territory. In 1836, as the Creeks faced dispossession, some struck back, burning the town of Roanoke on May 15; the Battle of Shepherd's Plantation on June 9 effectively ended the fighting in the region. Cotton then fueled explosive growth, and by 1850 Stewart was among Georgia's three leading cotton producers, with enslaved African Americans making up nearly half of its population. Clearing of the fragile soils also triggered severe erosion, and the gullies that began forming in the early 1800s grew into Providence Canyon, now a state park. Railroads bypassed the county until 1885, and worn-out land hastened a long decline. The 1965 restoration of the 1836 Bedingfield Inn on Lumpkin's courthouse square launched the county's heritage tourism. Architect John Wellborn Root was born in Lumpkin, and Lillian Gordy Carter, mother of President Jimmy Carter, is counted among the county's natives.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org