Historic Sites in Taliaferro County

The history of Taliaferro County

Taliaferro County was created in 1825 as Georgia's sixty-ninth county from parts of five older counties, Greene, Hancock, Oglethorpe, Warren and Wilkes, on land that Native Americans had ceded to colonial Georgia in 1763. It is named for Benjamin Taliaferro, a colonel in the Revolutionary War who later served as a Georgia legislator and judge. The county seat, Crawfordville, was founded the same year and named for William H. Crawford, the U.S. secretary of war and of the treasury; Hermon Mercer laid out the town in a design that became a model for other Georgia communities. The oldest settlement, Raytown, grew up around Colonsay Plantation, granted in 1784 to the Quaker siblings Marmaduke and Hannah Mendenhall. Crawfordville is closely linked to Alexander H. Stephens, congressman, Confederate vice president and governor, whose home, Liberty Hall, is the centerpiece of A. H. Stephens Historic Park, established in 1933. Men from the county served in the 15th and 49th Georgia Infantry regiments during the Civil War. In 1965, local resistance to school desegregation led civil rights leader Hosea Williams to organize a protest march from Crawfordville to Atlanta. Other notable figures include writer Richard Malcolm Johnston, almanac publisher Robert Grier and Tuskegee Airman John Loyd Atkinson Sr., who became the first Black superintendent of Georgia's state parks.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org