An Introduction to Henry County
(Taken from: Henry County Board of Commissioners)
Henry County, Georgia was created by the Georgia State Legislature in 1821 from land acquired from the Creek Indian Nation by the First Treaty of Indian Springs. Henry’s original land area was much larger than it is today, stretching from near Indian Springs in the south to the Chattahoochee River near Sandy Springs in the north; encompassing most of present day Metropolitan Atlanta. Before one year passed the size of the County was diminished through the separation of land areas which, in whole or in part, became present day DeKalb, Fulton, Fayette and Newton Counties. Later divisions resulted in Clayton, Spalding, Rockdale and Butts Counties.
The same legislation, which created Henry County also, provided for the Land Lottery of 1821. This act provided that the County be divided and surveyed into Land Districts and each Land District be subdivided into Land Lots of 202 and 1/2 acres each. The requirements for participating in the Lottery were 3 years residency in the State, not to have participated in a previous lottery and the payment of a $19.00 grant fee. A bachelor was entitled to one draw and a married man to two draws. Females were only allowed to draw if they met specific requirements designed to aid widows, orphans and the insane.
In the beginning Henry County was a virgin wilderness, having just been ceded from the Creek Nation. Prior to 1821 the Creeks and a few trappers and traders were the only residents of this area. The Creek Indians left there mark through place names, a few small Indian Mounds scattered around the County and through the arrowheads and broken pottery which can be found throughout Henry County.
The history of Henry County can be divided into six eras: 1) The Pioneer Era; 2) War and Reconstruction; 3) The Cotton Kingdom; 4) The Boll Weevil Depression; 5) The Way Things Used to Be and 6) 1-75 and Beyond.
During the early Pioneer Era there were no roads and it was very difficult to locate the Land Lots in the wooded wilderness. The corners of the Lots were identified by hatch marks on trees and this led to many disputes and some bloodshed. Upon arriving at their new land the pioneers first priorities were locating a water source and constructing a basic shelter. These shelters were most often cabins of hand-hewn logs, several of which survive to this day.
In the early days there were no roads; nor, churches, schools, law enforcement, doctors or stores. The Militia District was the basic subdivision of the County. The Militia Districts were similar in size to our present day voting precincts and also served that purpose. In fact, many of our precincts today carry the names of the old Militia Districts: names such as Tussahaw, McMullen’s, Lowes, Sixth, Shakerag and Love’s.
During the Pioneer Era our original settlers carved their farms out of the wilderness, laid out the system of roads we use today, established towns and settlements, churches, academies, business enterprises and Shingleroof Campmeeting. The County Seat of McDonough was prospering as one of the leading commercial centers in Upper Georgia and then a new factor appeared on the scene. In the middle 1840’s the Monroe Railroad bypassed McDonough to the west and the Georgia Railroad bypassed her to the north.
Along the Monroe Railroad developed the towns of Griffin, Bear Creek Station (Hampton), Jonesboro, and Marthasville (Atlanta). The railroads quickly replaced the old Indian Trail based roads as the transportation of choice for trade and commerce. Towns along the railroads boomed, towns isolated from the railroads fell into decline. Merchants and lawyers deserted McDonough for the new boomtowns. Several people even demolished their homes in McDonough and hauled them by wagon to Hampton and Griffin where they were reconstructed. During the 1850′5, Spalding and Clayton Counties were created in west Henry.
During this 40 years our pioneer ancestors cleared 104,000 acres of farmland, built churches with a seating capacity of 15,100 (at a time when our population was 14,700); the settlers also, constructed 4 merchant mills, a cotton factory, 8 saw mills, 14 grist mills and 6 distilleries. What a remarkable group of men and women these pioneers were.
The second era in Henry County history is what I call “War and Reconstruction”. This period includes the 1860’s and 1870′5. Two decades of tumult, upheaval, disruption and destruction. Henry County is located in what was known as the “Breadbasket of the Confederacy” because of the great productive capacity of our farms. Due to this critical status, when the Yankee invaders came through they blamed our people for prolonging the War. There are traditional stories of Yankees using local church pulpits as slaughtering pens for captured livestock, stories of churches and schools and homes being vandalized and burned by Sherman’s Army on their shameful “March to the Sea”.
With the War Between the States over two extraordinarily profound changes occurred in Henry County: First, the sad and peculiar institution of human slavery was ended here and throughout the Country; Second, the people of Henry County, Black and White, found themselves in a state of near total poverty and destitution.
The Radical Reconstruction government after the War was run by northern carpetbaggers and southern scalawags and allowed very little room for recovery; however, with the War over and the men home our population resumed its previous level of natural increase. Hampton remained the leading commercial center in Henry County and McDonough continued in decline. During Reconstruction, tenant farming and share-cropping came into existence, based on the crop lien system.
The Cotton Kingdom in Henry County was roughly the 40 year period from 1880 to 1920. During the previous 60 years cotton was our County’s major cash crop; however, it had never totally dominated farming and commerce as it did during this period.
In 1882 McDonough got the boost it needed with the construction of the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad (now the Norfolk Southern) and received another shot in the arm in 1886 with the construction of the Georgia Midland and Gulf Railroad which connected McDonough to Columbus. This not only brought McDonough back to life, it gave life to New Stockbridge, Locust Grove, Flippen, Luella and Greenwood. It was in the 1880’s that the attorneys and newspapers moved their offices from Hampton back to McDonough.
The Cotton Kingdom and the prosperity brought on by better transportation systems increased Henry’s prominence as a major cotton market. Increased cotton production and higher cotton prices led to an unprecedented prosperity. Most of the prominent homes, churches, stores and public buildings which we recognize as landmarks today were constructed during the four decades of the Cotton Kingdom Era.
Groups of Henry County farmers constructed rural telephone companies, such as the Ola and Woodstown Telephone Company, to give themselves the advantages of modern civilization. In 1918, Dr. J. G. Smith of McDonough built an electric power generating plant on Cotton Indian Creek and provided electric power to Kelleytown, Julia and McDonough.
The year of 1919 was the high water mark of the Cotton Kingdom. Henry County could boast of six banks and four big mercantile companies. Local dealers had back orders of six months for cars and tractors. The banner headline of the Henry County Weekly on October 31, 1919 summed up the mood of the time. It joyously read, “COTTON 41 CENTS THURSDAY MORNING. WHOOPEE!!” Editorials in the same issue noted somewhat prophetically that, “Never since the days of Confederate money has money been known to flow as it is doing now.”
Cotton acreage in Henry County reached its historic peak in 1919 with a total acreage of 66,238 acres. If all the rows of cotton planted in Henry County in 1919 were placed end to end they would reach around the world not once, not twice, they would reach around the world over 7 times. Talk about a long row to hoe!
In the spring of 1920, with prosperity in the air, many Henry County farmers notified local lumberyards to of plans to build new houses as soon as the crop was laid by and instructed the yards to have the materials on hand. The progress and prosperity which our people had fought and worked five long generations to attain was not to last. Those who remember recall the cotton crop of 1920 as a near total loss to the cotton boll weevil. It is hard to imagine that the great Cotton Boom of 1919 could become the Boll Weevil Crash of 1920. This leads to our fourth era “The Boll Weevil Depression” which lasted from 1920 to 1940. If we read the national history books we read about the “Roaring 20’s” and usually find little or no mention of the Boll Weevil Depression.
The population of Henry County topped out at over 20,000 in 1920 and by 1940 had declined by 25% to about 15,000. Most of the banks closed, thousands lost their homes, farms and businesses because they couldn’t pay their creditors. Mr. Am Mitchell, a farmer on Chambers Mill Road in the Sixth District of Henry County, used to say “times were so hard in the 20’s that a dime seemed as big as a wagon wheel”. Not only was the crop devastated, the price was minimal. Then in 1925 the County experienced the worst drought in our history. For two decades everything in Henry County was in decline. Many present day residents recall this period with stories of getting by, of cars on blocks in the barn because they couldn’t afford a gallon of gas and of general hard times. The economy of Henry County did not turn up again until World War II.
The era I like to call “The Way Things Used to Be” lasted for three decades, from 1940 to 1970. This era is most notable for a major increase in population, a major decline in farming, paved roads, new schools, electricity, telephones, modern conveniences, new homes and businesses. The biggest trend, which developed during this period, was living in the country and working in Atlanta. These things together provided for a constantly improving physical quality of life in Henry County. During this period our County grew at a rate consistent with our two previous growth phases.
During the first part of this era Henry County was still very rural and relatively isolated from Atlanta. This was to be changed forever by the construction of l-75 through the heart of Henry County. Work began on the Interstate in 1966 and the Interstate was open to traffic all the way through the County in the fall of 1969. This brings us to our sixth and present era, “1-75 and Beyond”.
The construction of l-75 and the ready access the Interstate provided to Atlanta jobs has forever changed the nature of our community. During the twenty year period from 1970 to 1990 the population of Henry County exploded. In 1970 our population finally regained its 1920 level of 20,000; up from the 1940 low of 15,000. It took 50 years for our population to recover from the Boll Weevil Depression. Between 1970 and 1990 our population almost tripled. Our population has almost doubled again since 1990. Projections are our population will top 200,000 by 2010.
The preceding were excerpts from the book True Southerners, by Gene Morris, Jr., Henry County Historian.
