Historic Sites in Wilkinson County

The history of Wilkinson County

Wilkinson County was created in 1803 from territory between the Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers that the Muscogee (Creek) ceded in the 1802 Treaty of Fort Wilkinson, and its lands were expanded by a further cession in the 1805 Treaty of Washington. It was named for General James Wilkinson, a Revolutionary War veteran and one of the federal commissioners who negotiated those cessions. The Muscogee had long placed their towns and fields along the area's waterways and paths; after the cessions, the land was distributed to white Georgians in a lottery held at Louisville in 1807. Twiggs County was split from Wilkinson in 1809. Irwinton, the county seat, was established in 1816 and named for Jared Irwin, a three-term governor of Georgia. Farmers raised cotton and food crops, and the Central of Georgia line, completed through the county in 1843, encouraged new communities to grow. The county raised at least four regiments for the Confederacy, and Sherman's army crossed it in 1864; local accounts tell of eighteen-year-old Rufus Kelly, a wounded Confederate soldier home recovering from an amputation, who fired on Union troops near Gordon before being captured. Around 1916 kaolin deposits were discovered near Gordon, and mining and processing of the white clay became the county's principal industry, alongside agriculture and pulpwood plantations.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgwilkinsoncounty.net