Georgia Natural Wonder #128 - Washington - Wilkes County (Part 2). 1,238

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Georgia Natural Wonder #128 - Washington - Wilkes County (Part 2)

Tangent Wilkes County and Washington

Wilkes County is considered Georgia's first county established by European Americans; it was the first of eight original counties created in the first state constitution on February 5, 1777.



The other seven counties were organized from existing colonial parishes.

History

Located in east central Georgia, it was originally far larger than its current 471 square miles. The area that became the original Wilkes County was called the New Purchase or Ceded Lands, referring to the land lying between the Broad River and the Savannah River. It is located in the Piedmont above the fall line on the Savannah River. Between 1790 and 1854, Wilkes County's area was reduced as it was divided to organize new counties as population increased in the area. The Georgia legislature formed the counties of Elbert, Oglethorpe, and Lincoln entirely from portions of Wilkes County. Wilkes also contributed part of the lands used in the creation of Madison, Warren, Taliaferro, Hart, McDuffie, and Greene Counties.


Wilkes County is named for John Wilkes, a colorful member of British Parliament who opposed some of the British policies that eventually led to the American Revolution (1775-83). Quite a tangent link.

Creek and Cherokee people originally held the land but lost it to whites in a treaty signed in 1773. The first non-Indians in the area were fur trappers and traders; the first white settlers came from North Carolina, followed soon by a large number of Virginians. The latter were wealthier, more educated, and often held a higher social status than the former. Socio-cultural differences between the two settler groups led to political dissension that eventually spread across Georgia, with citizens choosing sides led by men from one group or the other. The eventual county seat, Washington, was settled in 1773 by Stephen Heard, a one-term governor of Georgia. He established a fort known initially as Heard's Fort and later as Fort Washington, honoring his former neighbor, George Washington.



The John Nelson Stone is located at Washington Park, six miles north of the Fortson Place where the granite marker originally was located. Inscribed on the marker are: the year 1775, when John Nelson received a land grant from King George III of England; the year 1792, and the land grant survey.



The area now forming Wilkes County saw action during the American Revolution, most notably on February 14, 1779, during the Battle of Kettle Creek, one of the most decisive conflicts of the war. British forces, solidly defeated by the Americans, were prevented from moving farther into west Georgia.



The first court sessions north of Augusta were held at Heard's Fort in 1779. During Heard's term as governor (1780-81), the colonial legislature met in Augusta, but he used Fort Heard as his capital during a time when Augusta was endangered.


This marker is outside town, not at Washington Park.

The town itself was laid out in the midst of the Revolution, retaining the name to honor General Washington and, thus, reputedly becoming the first town in the United States named for him. The first official courthouse was built in 1785 on the spot where the fort had stood and served until 1904, when the current building was completed.


Old Courthouse.

Settlers increased pressure on the federal government to remove Native Americans, including the Five Civilized Tribes from the Southeast. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Wilkes was unique in being land ceded.


New Courthouse.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, colonists used enslaved African Americans to clear land, cultivate plantations, and process cotton in this area. Long-staple cotton would not grow in this area and short-staple cotton required much labor to process. The first cotton mill in the South was built in Wilkes County. In 1793, Mount Pleasant, a cotton plantation east of Washington, was the site where Eli Whitney, as a children's tutor, perfected and received his patent for his revolutionary invention, the cotton gin. It allowed mechanization of processing of short-staple cotton, making its cultivation profitable in the upland areas. As a result, there was a dramatic increase in the development of new cotton plantations throughout the Deep South to cultivate short-staple cotton.


Mount Pleasant.

Mount Pleasant was the plantation and home of Colonial Statesman and American Patriot, Sir John Talbot (1735 - 1798). Talbot is buried in the nearby Smyrna Churchyard Cemetery, which was established on land he donated. Mount Pleasant served as the Talbot family home for several generations and the old two story, wood framed house with multiple porches and chimneys, and a massive rear kitchen, still stands today.


No images of Sir John, but did find these markers for his Church Cemetery. Claude Rains played Sir John Talbot in the "Wolfman".

Production of short-staple in the Deep South soon superseded long-staple cotton, grown primarily on the Sea Islands and in the Low Country. Such expansion dramatically increased the demand for slave labor in the Deep South, resulting in a longstanding domestic slave trade that transported more than a million slaves in forced migrations to the Upper South. King Cotton brought great wealth to many planters in the decades before the Civil War.


Antebellum Homes and estates line the streets of Washington.

The town of Washington was incorporated in 1805, grew steadily, and its prosperity was enhanced by improved access to outside markets in 1853, when the Georgia Railroad built a line from Washington to Barnett, in Warren County.

American Civil War

As a child, Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens studied at the school in Washington presided over by Presbyterian minister Alexander Hamilton Webster.



Although no major battles of the Civil War were fought in or near Washington, the city has the distinction of being the location where Jefferson Davis held the last meeting with the Confederate cabinet. On April 3, 1865, with Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant poised to capture Richmond, Jefferson Davis escaped for Danville, Virginia, together with the Confederate cabinet. After leaving Danville, and continuing south, Davis met with his Confederate Cabinet for the last time on May 5, 1865 in Washington, along with a hand-picked escort led by Given Campbell, including his personal Body Guard Sgt. Joseph A Higgenbotham, Jr., of Amherst/Nelson County, Virginia. The meeting took place at the Heard house (the Georgia Branch Bank Building), with fourteen officials present.


Then and now.

Alternate sites say it was here, in the Cooper-Sanders-Wickersham House, that  President Jefferson Davis met for the final time with the Confederate Cabinet. They officially dissolved the government of the Confederate States of America. My research says this house is also known as the Tarver House, across the Street from Robert Toombs. Alexander Stephens once boarded here.



Wilkes County was the last-known location of the gold rumored to have been lost from the Confederate Treasury.



Modern Wilkes County

Wilkes County's economy originally relied heavily on cotton, and Washington was once a thriving commercial center.


A wagon loaded with cotton, pictured circa 1900, stands on West Main Street in Washington, the seat of Wilkes County.

However, the damage to cotton done by the boll weevil in the 1920s caused a precipitous decline in the fortunes of the area, exacerbated in the following decades by the closure of numerous manufacturing plants. The peak population of 24,210 in 1920 had dropped to 10,687 by 2000.



Among the current efforts to reverse decades of economic decline is the aggressive pursuit of new industries through the building of industrial parks. A successful workplace-to-school educational partnership has also been instituted and serves as a model for other counties.



There are also creative efforts under way to make use of the rich heritage of this historical county, in hopes of boosting tourism.

Historic sites

Wilkes County boasts twenty-nine entries in the National Register of Historic Places, including several districts within Washington. Structures range from Victorian to Greek revival in style. Among them are the courthouse and the Robert Toombs House.



Tangent Robert Toombs

Robert Augustus Toombs, one of the most ardent secessionists in the U.S. Senate, helped to lead Georgia out of the Union on the eve of the Civil War (1861-65).



This was surprising; although Toombs was a slaveholding planter, he had dedicated the majority of his political career to preserving the Union. Spanning almost four decades, his career in Georgia politics began in the state legislature, and he later ventured into national affairs as a U.S. congressman and senator. During the early months of the Civil War he became secretary of state for the Confederacy. He became heroic as a general at Antietam. He fought the last battle of the Civil War. He concluded his political leadership as one of the major architects of the state Constitution of 1877. Toombs's statesmanship, personality, and unyielding convictions made him one of Georgia's most influential politicians of the nineteenth century. Toombs County, in southeast Georgia, is named in his honor.

Early Life

Born July 2, 1810, in Wilkes County, Robert Augustus Toombs was the fifth child of Catherine Huling and Robert Toombs. His father died when he was five, and he entered the University of Georgia when he was just fourteen. During his Georgia youth, Toombs was devoted to physical pursuits: riding, hunting, and brawling. He grew to be over six feet tall with dark roving eyes, a shock of unkempt hair, and a penchant for disheveled dress. During his time at Franklin College, Toombs was a member of the Demosthenian Literary Society. He attended Franklin College (forerunner to the University of Georgia in Athens), where he got into a running feud with two brothers.



In the course of several days of sustained violence, Toombs threw a heavy wash bowl at one brother, pointed a pistol at the other, and charged both brothers wielding a knife in one hand, an axe in the other. This got him expelled. But the silver-tongued Toombs managed to talk his way back into the school, only to be expelled a second time for unbecoming conduct in a card-playing incident. Toombs spoke under the Toombs Oak as referenced in GNW # 100 (part 1)



Marker Text: A majestic oak tree once stood on this spot and one of the University’s most endearing legends also flourished here. Robert Toombs (1810-1885) was young, and boisterous when he was dismissed from Franklin College in 1828. Five decades later it was said that Toombs returned on the next commencement day after he was expelled and spoke so eloquently under the tree that the entire audience left the chapel to hear him. Later, it was said, that the tree was struck by lightning on the day Toombs died and never recovered. The tree finally collapsed in 1908 and the remains were cut into mementos that have since been handed down by alumni.



He continued his education at Union College in Schenectady, New York, and then studied law at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Somehow he managed to graduate from University of Virginia law school — dead last in his class. Shortly after his admission to the Georgia bar, he married his childhood sweetheart, Julia A. Dubose, with whom he had three children.

Public Service

His genial character, proclivity for entertainment, and unqualified success on the legal circuit earned Toombs the growing attention and admiration of his fellow Georgians. Toombs had emotive oratory and a strong physical presence. In 1837 his district elected him to the Georgia General Assembly, where, except for one year, he diligently served until 1843. On the wave of his growing popularity, Toombs won a seat to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1844 and joined his close friend and fellow representative Alexander Stephens from Crawfordville, in Taliaferro County. Their friendship forged a powerful personal and political bond that effectively defined and articulated Georgia's position on national issues in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Toombs, like Stephens, emerged as a states' rights partisan, became a national Whig, and once the Whig Party dissolved, aided in the creation of the short-lived Constitutional Union Party in the early 1850s. From 1853 to 1861 Toombs served in the U.S. Senate, only reluctantly joining the Democratic Party when lack of interest among other states doomed the Constitutional Union Party.

As an orator, Toombs had extraordinary skill and power. “Defend yourselves! The enemy is at your door;” he boomed on the floor of the Senate in early 1860, “wait not to meet him at your hearthstone; meet him at the doorsill, and drive him from the Temple of Liberty, or pull down its pillars and involve him in a common ruin.”

His “Doorsill” speech was widely reprinted, emboldening Southerners and unsettling the North.

From Unionist to Confederate

Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Toombs fought to reconcile national policies with sectional interests. His support for the Georgia Platform in 1850 demonstrated his commitment to preserving the Union. Along with Alexander Stephens and Howell Cobb, he defended Henry Clay's Compromise of 1850 against "fire-eating" southern radicals who advocated secession from the Union as the only solution to sectional tensions over slavery. His faith in the resiliency and effectiveness of the national government to resolve sectional conflicts waned as the 1850s drew to a close.


Toombs House Washington.

Toombs and his brother Gabriel owned large plantations and operated them using slaves. In 1860, he owned 16 slaves at his Wilkes County plantation, and an additional 32 slaves at his plantation in Stewart County, Georgia on the Chattahoochee River. One of his slaves, Garland H. White, escaped just before the civil war. He became a soldier and chaplain in the Union Army in 1862. Toombs supported expansion of slavery into the territories of California and New Mexico. He objected to abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. He took the view that the territories were the common property of all the people of the United States and that Congress must ensure equal treatment of both slaveholder and non-slaveholder. If the rights of the South were violated, Toombs declared, "Let discord reign forever."


Backside Toombs House.

By 1860 Toombs had drifted into the radical camp with the fire-eaters in opposition to northern abolitionists. In the presidential campaign of 1860, Toombs supported John C. Breckinridge. Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860 and the resulting secession of Georgia from the Union finally prompted Toombs to resign his U.S. Senate seat on February 4, 1861. He delivered a farewell address in the US Senate (January 7, 1861) in which he said: "We want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no negro race to degrade our own; and as one man [we] would meet you upon the border with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other."



Unlike the crisis of 1850, these events galvanized Toombs's radicalism and energized ambitions for becoming the president of the new Confederate nation. In February of 1861, delegates from the recently seceded states convened in Montgomery, Alabama, to select a provisional leader. Toombs’s name was at the top of the list. But he got stinking drunk at a convention banquet—and at a couple other public events, too—making a fool of himself. The presidential nod went instead to temperate Jefferson Davis, a man that Toombs despised. The two had once come within a hairsbreadth of fighting a duel after Toombs questioned Davis’s political acumen, saying that his appeal lay with “swaggering braggarts and cunning poltroons.”



The selection of Jefferson Davis as the new nation's chief executive not only dashed Toombs's highest hopes but also turned him into one of the most outspoken critics of the Confederate government and its policies. Nevertheless, Davis chose Toombs as his first secretary of state. It was a job for which he was woefully unsuited. He was no diplomat, had in fact been overseas only once in his life for a quick tour of Europe, during which he’d judged each country by an unusual criterion: the quality of its cigars.



He was the only member of the cabinet who criticized the attack on Fort Sumter, which put him at odds with Davis.

He wrote "Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."

Within months of his appointment, a frustrated Toombs stepped down to command a Georgia military brigade in Virginia. He was commissioned as a brigadier general on July 19, 1861, and served first as a brigade commander in the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac, and then in David R. Jones' division of the Army of Northern Virginia. He commanded troops through the Peninsula Campaign, Seven Days Battles, Northern Virginia Campaign, and Maryland Campaign. He was wounded in the hand at the Battle of Antietam, where he commanded the heroic defense of Burnside's Bridge. Now this is the main reason I love this Georgian.........

Impossible Odds

The ability of 450 resolute Georgians to stave off 12,500 Federals, preventing them from crossing Antietam Creek for several crucial hours, has to go down as one of the great stands of the Civil War. It was a Confederate Thermopylae. And the unlikely force behind this tactical masterstroke was Brigadier General Robert Toombs, age 52, a hard-drinking, irascible man—and failed candidate for president of the C.S.A.



Sometime after 9:00 AM, Ambrose Burnside, commanding the Federal IX Corps, issued the attack order. Toombs’ tiny band of Georgians awaited them.

Digging In

Most of these soldiers were subsistence farmers, who worked the red clay hard, growing corn and oats. If there was anything these Georgia farm boys understood it was land. Relying on keen instincts, they had converted the steep bluffs on their side of the Antietam into a formidable natural stronghold. Using bayonets and the halves of pilfered Yankee canteens, they had dug rifle pits into the bluff-sides. (A regulation Union canteen consisted of two convex pieces of tin, soldered together. Split one in half and you had a pair of very serviceable spades.)


Yankee view of Rebels on hill other side of bridge.

To bolster their positions, they had stacked stones and piled branches and foliage. In contrast to conspicuous Federal blue, they were wearing dusky homespun uniforms that blended nicely into their surroundings. These Georgians were among the most shoe-deprived in Lee’s raggedy army. They didn’t mind so much; they valued the honesty of their bare feet on the rough earth. They were ready.



Burnside’s Federals began their attack with no inkling of how many Confederates opposed them. Toombs’ men were so well concealed, the Rebel artillerists kept up such a steady cannonade, that it could just as well be 14,000 as 450.



The Federals only knew that they faced a series of formidable obstacles. First they had to climb down the steep bluffs on their side of the Antietam. Then they had to dash across the 100-yard plain leading to the creek, all the while exposed to withering fire.



At the creek bank, the Federals had two options, neither one attractive. They could attempt to cross the Rohrbach Bridge. But it was only 12-feet wide; the bridge could become a bottleneck, siphoning soldiers into a narrow chute, easy marks for the Georgians who would be firing almost straight down at them. Or they could attempt to locate fording spots.



Antietam means “swift flowing water” in the language of the Delaware Indians. Pity the poor soldier forced to plunge down a creek bank, encumbered by a musket and gear, then wade through swift water of unknown depth, before climbing the opposite bank, taking enemy fire all the way.

Strength in Deceiving Numbers

As a consequence, Burnside’s attack was cautious and piecemeal. Soldiers entered the battle in dribs and drabs, one or two regiments at a time, charging down the bluffs only to be repulsed by the Rebs. A group of 3,200 men (a quarter of the Union IX Corps) got hopelessly lost in the woods searching for a fording spot. Every time they emerged from the trees, Toombs’s Georgians opened fire.



Yet again, the natural conclusion was that the bluffs on the west side of the creek were crawling with Rebels. Incredibly, the Georgians were defending a 1,650-yard front with a force the size of a Saturday night hoedown.



What a ruse! It was the finest hour for Toombs, a man with—shall we say—a colorful past. And here he was—the man who could have been the president of the Confederacy—commanding a tiny force of Georgians, trying to stave off a Union onslaught.

By All Means Necessary

By midday, Toombs’s Georgia boys were running low on ammo. Some had fired as many 60 shots, leaving their shoulders kicked black and blue. The artillery was tapped out, too. According to some accounts, the Rebels were reduced to firing “military curiosities” at this point, launching all manner of objects out of their cannons such as marbles and chunks of rail iron.



For the Federals, the slackening fire signaled opportunity. They began surging across the Antietam en masse, crowding onto the Rohrbach Bridge, fording the creek in other spots. The Georgians were flushed from their bluff-side hiding spots, and began retreating up a steep three-quarter-mile hillside toward the town of Sharpsburg.



But they’d achieved their objective and more: delaying the Federal crossing by roughly three critical hours. As a parting shot, some of the Georgia boys turned to throw stones and hurl insults at the oncoming Federals— these were Toombs’ men to the last.



Once the Federals had finally crossed Antietam Creek on this part of the field, the battle entered its most consequential phase. If Union forces managed to climb that hillside, they might cut off the ability of Lee’s army to re-cross the Potomac to the safety of Virginia. The Confederacy could lose the war this very afternoon.

Retaking His Bridge

Famously, A.P. Hill arrived just in time, having marched 2,500 soldiers at breakneck pace from Harpers Ferry, 17 miles distant. The Rebel newcomers fell upon the advancing Union troops, driving them away from Sharpsburg and back down the steep slope toward Antietam Creek. Hill would be celebrated as the savior of the Confederacy. But Toombs also deserves credit, though his contributions have been mostly forgotten.


Hill.

As Hill’s counterattack built, Toombs joined in the effort. His Georgia boys, the ones that had held the Rohrbach Bridge for so many hours, were too exhausted to fight. Instead, the general assembled a kind of spit-and-glue force with fresh soldiers from several other Georgia regiments. As Toombs surged downhill, sweeping the Federals ahead of him, he joined forces with various wayward and shattered commands, soon assembling a formidable line. To the men, Toombs seemed nearly possessed. He leapt from his mare, Gray Alice, and ran to the head of the line. There, the mad-maned, fire-eating old secessionist strode to and fro, spitting words and gesticulating wildly. He said he wanted to drive the Federals into the Antietam. He urged the men to retake his bridge—his bridge, he called it.



As the sun sank on the horizon, a lurid red disk, both sides were overcome by attrition and exhaustion. The soldiers under the command of Hill and Toombs halted. They started trudging back up the slope towards Sharpsburg.



Greatly relieved, the Federals simply held their ground. The bloodiest day in American history ended with a whimper not a bang. But Union forces had managed to fight to the far side of Antietam Creek.



The Rohrbach Bridge would come to be known as the Burnside Bridge in honor of the gingerly general who commanded the Union IX Corps. But for the slimmest of margins—a few more fresh soldiers, a push of a few hundred more yards—it really might have been his bridge, the Toombs Bridge.



He was subsequently denied higher promotion and in 1863, Toombs resigned his commission in the Confederate Army to join the Georgia militia.



He returned to Georgia, where he became Colonel of the 3rd Cavalry of the Georgia Militia. He subsequently served as a brigadier general and adjutant and inspector-general of General Gustavus W. Smith's division of Georgia militia. He strongly criticized Davis and the Confederate government, opposing conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus. Newspapers warned that he verged on treason. In the last battle of the Civil War at Columbus, Georgia, Toombs commanded the defense of the upper bridge.

Final Years

When the Confederacy finally collapsed in 1865, Toombs barely escaped arrest by Union troops and went into hiding, with the aid of writer Richard Malcolm Johnston, until fleeing to Cuba and then to Paris, France. His beloved wife returned to Georgia in late 1866 following the death of their last surviving child, Sallie Toombs DuBose, in Washington, Georgia. She went to help their widowed son-in-law care for several small children. Toombs missed his wife and returned to Georgia in 1867. Because he refused to request a pardon from Congress, he never regained his American citizenship. He did restore his lucrative law practice as an "unreconstructed" southerner.



He regained political power in Georgia as Congressional Reconstruction ended. In addition, he dominated the Georgia constitutional convention of 1877,  the year that federal troops were withdrawn from the South. where once again he demonstrated the political skill and temperament that earlier had earned him a reputation as one of Georgia's most effective leaders. He gained a populist reputation for attacks on railroads and state investment in them.



The year 1883 was traumatic for Toombs. As March began, his son-in-law Dudley M. Dubose suffered a stroke and died. His lifelong friend and political comrade Alexander Stephens died suddenly after serving briefly as Georgia's governor. Within a few months his wife, Julia, suffering from a prolonged illness, also died. Their deaths devastated the aging Toombs.



Once a bulwark of politics, he descended into depression, alcoholism, and ultimately suffered blindness. Toombs, the political lion of nineteenth-century Georgia politics, died on December 15, 1885.He was buried at Resthaven Cemetery in Wilkes County, Georgia with his wife, his daughter, and son-in-law.



The Georgia Department of Natural Resources owns and operates the Robert Toombs House in Washington. Georgia also erected a historical marker in Clarkesville, Habersham County, Georgia concerning the Toombs-Bleckly House, which Toombs acquired as a summer residence in 1879 and sold to Georgia Supreme Court justice Logan E. Bleckley five years later, although it burned down in 1897.



His great-great-grandson, Roderick George Toombs, became better known as professional wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Back To Historic Sites

The Washington Historical Museum houses a rare collection of Civil War (1861-65) relics, including Jefferson Davis's camp chest.



Located inside an 1835 home, the museum tells the story of families who have called the city home.



It serves as the city's material culture archive for over 200 years of history.



There is also the Mary Willis Public Library. Headquarters of the Bartram Trail Regional Library System.



Built in 1889 in red brick and featuring Tiffany glass.



Downtown includes the recently restored historic Fitzpatrick Hotel, built in 1898.



It is rumored to be haunted by a lady in green, whose appearance is often accompanied by the scent of floral perfume. Phantom music has also been heard emanating from the empty ballroom during the hours between dusk and dawn.



The Callaway Plantation, northwest of Washington, is a working farm museum.



Callaway Plantation humbly began with a log cabin built by Job Callaway in 1785 then grew to a 3,000 acre working plantation complete with a brick mansion by the 1860s.



TRD Addendum Historic Sites

I traveled to Washington twice recently. I really got lost on a driving tour. This city has more historic homes for a city of it's size, in America.


The Cedars is for sale.



Dugas House, a founder of the Medical College of Georgia.





Wisteria Hall was the home of Maria Randolph, a descendant of Pocahontas. Woodrow Wilson spent summers here with his minister father.





Hillhouse - Slaton House 1814 - One of the first women newspaper editors in the southeast.





Holly Court 1825, Varina Davis, wife and 1st lady of Jefferson Davis stayed here awaiting his arrival in Washington.



You step back into time cruising these streets trying to follow the 73 points of interest.



Antebellum house after house.



Drive slow like a horse drawn carriage.



Fairfield 1808 - Home of Confederate General Porter Alexander.



Had to trespass for this image.Alexander was the officer in charge of the massive artillery bombardment preceding Pickett's Charge. One of the earliest brick homes in up country Georgia.



Retreat - The Campbell - Griggs - Aiken House from 1800.



Pickett Fence all around Retreat.



Tupper Barnett House 1832 - Grandfather of wife of General George C. Marshall.



He added the the magnificent colonnade that surrounds the house.



So many house I lost track of what was what.






Planter Hotel went from Stage Coach Inn to private residence.



Large Victorian neighborhood too. Thrived until boll weevil in the 1920s.



The other incorporated towns in the county are Rayle and Tignall, which was known earlier as "Little Atlanta."

Rayle is a town in Wilkes County, Georgia, United States. The population was 139 at the 2000 census. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.9 square miles, all land.


Rayle.

Tignall is a town in Wilkes County, Georgia, United States. The population was 615 at the 2010 census. The Georgia General Assembly incorporated Tignall as a town in 1907. It is unknown why the name "Tignall" was applied to this place. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 2.9 square miles, all land.


Volunteer Fire Station Tignall.

According to the 2010 U.S. census, the population of Wilkes County was 10,593, a slight decrease from the 2000 population of 10,687.

Notable people

Wilkes County has been home to several notable Georgians, including

Edward Porter Alexander (See above link)



Eliza Frances Andrews popular Southern writer of the Gilded Age. Her works were published in popular magazines and papers, including the New York World and Godey's Lady's Book.



James E. Boyd, scientist and educator. Georgia Grad but Tech man. Founded Scientific Atlanta.



Benjamin F. Bryant, captain in the Battle of San Jacinto, founder of the Bryant Station frontier fort and Texas Ranger.



John Archibald Campbell, U.S. Supreme Court justice who helped decide the Dred Scott case. Georgia Bulldog!



John Clark, Georgia governor.



Elijah ClarkeAmong the few heroes of the Revolutionary War from Georgia.



Peter Early Governor of Georgia at the height of the Creek War from 1813 to 1815, also served as a U.S. congressman, state superior court judge, and state senator during his political career. A trustee of the University of Georgia, Early served as the school's interim president in 1817.


Georgia State Capital Bust.

Frank Edwards, blues musician.



Ben Fortson, Georgia's secretary of state.


Seated in Colonel Sanders white.

Stephen Heard, Governor



George Mathews, Continental Army officer, Governor of Georgia, and US Congressman.



Jesse Mercer, Baptist leader and publisher.



David Meriwether, Continental Army officer, member United States Congress, Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, Major General - Georgia Militia.



Paul Jones Semmes Banker, businessman, and a Confederate brigadier general, mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg.



John Springer, noted educator and clergyman and the first Presbyterian minister ordained in Georgia.



Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy. We take a deep dive on Little Alex next week.



Matthew Talbot 30th Governor of Georgia.



Benjamin Taliaferro Continental soldier, trustee for the University of Georgia, state representative, president of the Georgia senate, superior court judge, and member of Congress.



Robert Toombs, secretary of state of the Confederacy, see above.

George Washington Bonapart Towns U.S. congressman, and Georgia's governor.



Kettle Creek stretches the Wonder but Wilkes County is the bomb for history. This post is so long and I missed so much. There are 92 Historical Markers in Wilkes County.

Our trio of GNW Gals Southern Charming Belles.