Historic Sites in Wayne County

The history of Wayne County

Wayne County was created in 1803 as Georgia's twenty-seventh county, from land the Muscogee (Creek) had ceded in the 1802 Treaty of Fort Wilkinson, and it was named for Anthony Wayne, the Revolutionary War general nicknamed Mad Anthony. European activity along the Altamaha River here long predates the county: in 1737 Mary Musgrove and her husband Jacob Matthews established a trading post called Mount Venture, which Yamasee attackers burned in 1742, killing or capturing those inside. Settlement stayed thin for decades, and in 1810 the county had only 676 residents. Timber anchored the early economy, as settlers bound logs into rafts and floated them down the Altamaha to the coast. The seat of government moved from Tuckersville to Waynesville and then, in 1873, to Jesup. That town had sprung up in 1869 around a hotel near the junction of two railroads, took its name from General Thomas Jesup of the Second Seminole War, and has often been called the town that trains built. During the 1864 March to the Sea, Union forces tried and failed to destroy the railroad trestle at Doctortown on the Altamaha. The Wayne County Courthouse in Jesup was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org