Historic Sites in Webster County

The history of Webster County

Webster County was created on December 16, 1853, from parts of Lee and Stewart counties, on land the Muscogee (Creek) had surrendered by treaty in 1826. Lawmakers first named it Kinchafoonee, a Muskogee word that has been translated as white bones, but in 1856 they renamed it for Daniel Webster, the orator and statesman. Muscogee names still mark the landscape in Kinchafoonee, Choctahatchee and Lanahassee creeks. Preston became the county seat in 1856; the settlement began as Lanahassee, was moved about three miles west, and was renamed for South Carolina senator William C. Preston. Fertile soils made cotton the dominant crop in the county's early decades, until the boll weevil arrived in 1915 and pushed farmers toward peanuts, corn and wheat, while early sawmills grew into a lasting forest industry. Walter F. George, the longtime U.S. senator, was born in the county, and a reservoir on the Chattahoochee River bears his name. In the late 1920s bishop and educator William Decker Johnson founded an industrial school for African American students here. The county courthouse and jail are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2009 Preston and Weston gave up their separate charters to form the Unified Government of Webster County, a rare consolidated arrangement in Georgia.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org