Early County, Georgia

Early County is a county located on the southwest border of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,854. The county seat is Blakely, where the Early County Courthouse is located. Created on December 15, 1818, it was named for Peter Early, 28th Governor of Georgia. The county is bordered on the west by the Chattahoochee River, forming the border with Alabama.

History

Prehistoric and nineteenth-century history has been preserved in some of Early County's attractions. It is the site of the Kolomoki Mounds, a park preserving major earthworks built by indigenous peoples of the Woodland culture more than 1700 years ago, from 350 CE to 600 CE. This is one of the largest mound complexes in the United States and the largest in Georgia; it includes burial and ceremonial mounds. The siting of the mounds expresses the ancient people's cosmology, as mounds are aligned with the sun at the spring equinox and summer solstice.

The county area was long territory of the historic Creek Indian peoples of the Southeast, particularly along the Chattahoochee River. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, European-American settlers began to encroach on this territory, pushing the Muscogee out during Indian Removal in the 1830s. The Muscogee were forced to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.

This area was developed by European-American settlers and their African-American enslaved workers for cotton plantations. Agriculture was critical to the economy into the 20th century. The Cohelee Creek Bridge in the county is the southernmost covered bridge still standing. One of the last wooden flagpoles from the American Civil War era is located at the historic courthouse in downtown Blakely.

According to the Equal Justice Initiative, in the period from 1877 to 1950, Early County had 24 documented lynchings of African Americans, the second-highest total in the state after the more densely populated Fulton County.''Lynching in America'', 2nd edition
, Supplement by County: "Georgia, Early County", p. 3 Most were committed around the turn of the 20th century, in the period of Jim Crow conditions and suppression of black voting. This was still a largely agricultural area, and some disputes arose from confrontations between black sharecroppers or tenant farmers and white landowners, particularly at times to settle accounts. Another, Sidney Grist, was lynched on December 31, 1896, for "political activity".

Among these cases were five African-American men lynched by whites in less than a month in the summer of 1899: three on July 23, one on July 25 (all reportedly for rape and robbery), and one on August 3 for attempted rape. Black men were frequently identified as suspects in such cases and lynched before any trial took place; further investigations have sometimes revealed consensual sex or other persons having committed the crime. A mass lynching took place in the county on December 30, 1915, when seven black men were lynched, allegedly as suspects in a murder."Known Georgia Lynching Victims"
, Mary Turner Project, 2014; based on F.W. Brundage (1993) and R. Ginzburg (1988)

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (0.7%) is water.

The northeastern and eastern portions of Early County, east of Blakely, and extending south to a line east of Jakin, are located in the Spring Creek sub-basin of the ACF River Basin (Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin). The western portion of the county is located in the Lower Chattahoochee River sub-basin of the same ACF River Basin.

Major highways

* U.S. Route 27
*
U.S. Route 27 Business
* U.S. Route 84
* State Route 1
* State Route 1 Business
* State Route 39
* State Route 45
* State Route 62
* State Route 62 Bypass
* State Route 200
* State Route 216
* State Route 273
* State Route 273 Spur
* State Route 370

Adjacent counties

* Clay County (north)
* Calhoun County (northeast)
* Baker County (east)
* Miller County (southeast)
* Seminole County (south or east)
* Houston County, Alabama (southwest/CST Border)
* Henry County, Alabama (west/CST Border)

Communities

Cities

* Arlington (shared with Calhoun County)
* Blakely
* Damascus
* Jakin

Census designated places

* Cedar Springs

Unincorporated communities

* Colomokee
* Cuba
* Freeman
* Hentown
* Hilton
* Jones Crossroads
* Killarney
* Lucile
* New Hope
* Nicholasville
* Old Damascus
* Rock Hill
* Rowena
* Saffold
* Urquhart

Demographics

As of the 2020 United States census, there were 10,854 people, 4,074 households, and 2,659 families residing in the county.

Education

The Early County School District holds grades pre-school to grade twelve, and consists of one elementary school, a middle school, and a high school. The district has 156 full-time teachers and over 2,764 students.School Stats
Retrieved June 8, 2010.
* Early County Elementary School
* Early County Middle School
* Early County High School

Politics

Despite being a majority-black county, Early County leans Republican. As recently as 2012, the county voted Democratic for president, backing Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. However, Early County voted for GOP nominee Donald Trump thrice consecutively since then, including even as Joe Biden defeated Trump statewide in 2020. In the 2022 midterms, Governor Brian Kemp carried it by 19.5 points, while Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger carried it by over 21%, and in 2024, Trump won the county by double-digits over Kamala Harris.

See also

* National Register of Historic Places listings in Early County, Georgia
* List of counties in Georgia

References

External links

Early County Official Website
- The official website of Early County
* - a non-profit corporation established by native son Charles Barton Rice and Catherine B. Rice to support the revitalization, economic development and preservation of Blakely and Early County, Georgia.

Blakely - Early County Chamber of Commerce
- Chamber of Commerce for Blakely and surrounding communities of Jakin, Arlington and Damascus.

Southwest Georgia Academy
SGA)-a private school is located in Damascus and its adjoining Counties by Georgia Independent School Association (GISA)

''Early County News''
a local newspaper founded by the Fleming Family in 1859

Early County
historical marker

Further reading

* Jerald T. Milanich, ''The Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida'' (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994).
* Jerald T. Milanich, et al., ''McKeithen Weeden Island: The Culture of Northern Florida, A.D. 200-900'' (New York: Academic Press, 1984).
* Thomas J. Pluckhahn, ''Kolomoki: Settlement, Ceremony, and Status in the Deep South, A.D. 350 to 750'' (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003).
* William H. Sears, ''Excavations at Kolomoki: Final Report'' (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1956).
* Christopher Trowell, "A Kolomoki Chronicle: The History of a Plantation, a State Park, and the Archaeological Search for Kolomoki's Prehistory," ''Early Georgia'' 26, no. 1 (1998).
* Mark Williams and Daniel T. Elliott, eds., ''A World Engraved: Archaeology of the Swift Creek Culture'' (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998).

{{Coord, 31.33, -84.91, display=title, type:adm2nd_region:US-GA_source:UScensus1990

1818 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
Populated places established in 1818
Georgia (U.S. state) counties
Black Belt (U.S. region)
Majority-minority counties in Georgia