Summary History of Barrow County Georgia

Summary History of Barrow County Links to the Counties of: Bartow Cherokee Cobb Dawson DeKalb Douglas Forsyth Fulton Gwinnett Hall Paulding Or link to Atlanta
Note: I am not a historian, but I have great interest in these areas where I sell homes. The following information is culled from a variety of sources. Although I can not guarantee accuracy within those sources, I took care to write the following with as much accuracy as I could achieve. Barrow County
This county was not created until well into the 20^th Century. A constitutional amendment had been approved by Georgia voters which originally limited the number of counties to 145, unless another constitutional amendment was passed to add a county. So on July 7, 1914 the Georgia General Assembly approved a constitutional amendment to create Barrow County, and on November 3, 1914 Georgia voters approved the amendment, making this the 149^th county in the state. Winder was named the county seat. This new county was created from portions of then Gwinnett, Walton, and Jackson Counties. For many years residents of this area had wanted their own county, and one of the reasons was that the center of the principal town in their area, Winder (originally called Jug Tavern), was part of three different counties! There is a story which says one day two men in Winder got into a fight and there was shooting. The man standing in Gwinnett County shot the man who was standing in Jackson County, and that man fell over into Walton County. …I don’t know if the story is true, but at the point where the three counties met this would have been physically possible! Barrow County is named for David Cranshaw Barrow. Barrow was Chancellor of the University of Georgia from 1906 to 1925, and also served in many other capacities including, at the request of Booker T. Washington, on the board of the Jeanes Fund for the improvement of rural education for African-Americans. Attempts in 1905 to form this area into a county failed. At that time the suggested name for a county was Stephens. But around the area of Toccoa, Georgia Stephens County was created before this area around Winder could be formed into a county. Prior to white settlers arriving, the land had been occupied by both Creek and Cherokee Indians. It is said that at the Indian village of Snodon, the chief invited whites to stay after they gave him fishing hooks which worked effectively. One of the first settlers was a person named Wilson. As other settlers began to arrive the state of Georgia built a frontier fort called Fort Yargo. Built in 1792, there was a two-story log building at one corner of the fort. Today Fort Yargo is a tourist attraction within a state park. One of the few outright defeats of any of General Sherman’s forces during the Civil War involved an action which began to go badly around Macon, Georgia and ended with a final defeat in what is today Barrow County. General Sherman sent General George Stoneman’s cavalry around Atlanta to cut the Macon railway lines. General Stoneman failed and surrendered 600 men, after first covering the escape of several hundred others. The escaping Union soldiers made their way toward Athens, Georgia, where they were stopped before reaching that town. They then turned west, with part of the group led by Colonel Capron, the other group led by Colonel Adams. The troops under Adams took a more northerly route, arcing around to Marietta and joining the Union forces there without further incident. But the troops under Capron took the Hog Mountain road west, and rested for a few hours late that night near Jug Tavern (today called Winder). Before dawn Capron’s troops were surprised by a Kentucky brigade, and over 400 men were captured and sent to Athens. Only a handful of men, including Colonel Capron, escaped, and they finally made it back on foot to Union forces in Marietta. The entire ill-fated action is called The Stoneman Raid, Battle of King’s Tanyard. But the skirmish near Winder is also known as The Battle of Jug Tavern. It is said that General Sherman’s telegram to Washington concerning this mission said, “On the whole the cavalry raid was not deemed a success.” … nicely understated! By the 1880’s there was once again great railway repair and expansion going on in the state, and the area now called Barrow County benefited from this. By the turn of the century this area hosted two railroads, the Seaboard Air-Line and the Gainesville and Midland. The Gainesville and Midland (originally called the Gainesville, Jefferson, and Southern) primarily ran through what is now Barrow County. One of the builders of the railroad was John Winder, and in appreciation of rail transportation being brought to this agrarian area, the name Jug Tavern was changed to Winder. Winder was the home town of Richard B. Russell, Senator from Georgia, and prior to that a state legislator and Governor of Georgia. He served in the U.S. Senator for nearly forty years (from 1933 to 1971), and was member of the Senate Appropriations Committee along with being a powerful Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. During his tenure in the Senate he helped to secure for Georgia fifteen military bases, as well as a number of research facilities including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plus the Russell Agricultural Research Center. For nearly thirty years, beginning in 1935, Senator Russell spearheaded actions by southern Democratic Party senators to block civil rights legislation. But when the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, he became the only Democrat from the south to urge compliance with that law, even though he had opposed it. Some of today’s residents commute to Athens, cities in Gwinnett County, or Atlanta for employment. But there are a variety of local employers as well, with Barrow now being one of the fastest growing counties in the state. Communities in the county include Winder, Auburn, and part of Braselton (a city once purchased by a partnership of the Ameritech Pension fund and Kim Basinger). From The U.S. Census Bureau
ESTIMATED 2006 Population: 2000 Population: Population change (April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2006): Median Household Income 2004: Housing Units 2005: Home Ownership Rate 2000: Households 2000: Persons per Household 2000: 2000 Land Area (sq miles): 2000 Persons per Sq Mile:	63,720 46,144 38.1% 46,979 23,141 75.5% 16,354 2.79 162.17 284.8
Resources for constructing this summary included: The New Georgia Encyclopedia website, Barrow County page: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?path=/CitiesCounties/Counties&id=h-2292 The New Georgia Encyclopedia website, Richard B. Russell Jr. page: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1391 Roadside Georgia website, Archives of Barrow County page: http://roadsidegeorgia.com/county/barrow.html Carl Vinson Institute of Government website, Barrow County page: http://www.cviog.uga.edu/Projects/gainfo/histcountymaps/barrowhistmaps.htm Carl Vinson Institute of Government website, Stoneman Raid page: http://www.cviog.uga.edu/Projects/gainfo/gahistmarkers/stonemanhistmarker4.htm City of Winder website, Winder History page: http://www.cityofwinder.com/history4.asp U.S. Census Bureau website, Barrow County, Georgia page: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/13/13013.html Web Site Design, Photos, Videos, and All Original Content in this website © 2007 Copyright by Ronald Dowell