Historic Sites in Tattnall County

The history of Tattnall County

Tattnall County was created in 1801 from Montgomery County and named for Josiah Tattnall, a Savannah native who had been a brigadier general in the state militia before becoming governor. The Muscogee (Creek) originally held the land. Many early white settlers came from North Carolina and Virginia, a number of them Revolutionary War veterans, and under Georgia's headright system a family could obtain as much as 1,000 acres. The county seat, Reidsville, was founded around 1828, named for Robert R. Reid, a territorial governor of Florida, and designated the seat by the General Assembly in 1832. Before the Civil War, flour mills, gristmills and sawmills operated alongside farms raising cotton and livestock, and enslaved labor was central to agricultural success. Although many residents had opposed secession, the county furnished four regiments to the Confederacy, Sherman's troops damaged the area during the March to the Sea, and the courthouse was later used to administer loyalty oaths. The arrival of the Savannah and Montgomery Railroad in the 1890s brought a boom, and the population nearly doubled between 1890 and 1900. In the mid-1930s the state built the Georgia State Prison southwest of Reidsville with Public Works Administration funding, and it was completed in 1937. Forestry, poultry and Vidalia onions have since become mainstays of the county's farm economy.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orglivingnewdeal.orgen.wikipedia.org