Historic Sites in Washington County

The history of Washington County

Created on February 25, 1784, Washington County was Georgia's tenth county and was named for George Washington. Many of its first landholders were Revolutionary War veterans who received grants to former Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee lands. Warthen was the earliest settlement and briefly housed the superior court; its hand-hewn log jail, restored and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is considered the oldest log jail in Georgia. In 1796 the legislature fixed the county seat at Sandersville, a spot once known as Saunders Crossroads where two Native American trails met. Churches shaped community life from the start, with the first congregation in the area organized in 1790. On November 26, 1864, General William T. Sherman's army reached Sandersville on the March to the Sea. Sherman used the Brown House as his headquarters, his troops burned the courthouse and jail, and soldiers heated and bent railroad rails at Tennille into so-called bowties. In the twentieth century the county became a center of kaolin mining, extracting a white clay used in paper, paints, medicines and many other goods, and kaolin grew into one of Georgia's largest exports. Governors Jared Irwin and Thomas Hardwick are associated with the county, and Elijah Muhammad, longtime leader of the Nation of Islam, was born near Deepstep.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.org