Lowndes County

By Dr. Joseph A. Tomberlin and Lowndes County Historical Society

Lowndes County, located deep in the wiregrass region of southern Georgia, has been continuously occupied since ancient times. Through the centuries, various Native American tribes inhabited the region, but they lingered relatively briefly and left few tangible traces. The area s written history began with the establishment around 1623 of the Spanish mission of Santa Cruz de Cachipile in southern Lowndes. Georgia s general assembly created Lowndes County from the southern half of Irwin County in 1825 and named it for William Jones Lowndes of South Carolina. The present county seat, Valdosta, dates from the construction of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad across Lowndes from 1859 to 1860. Ultimately the county was to have five railroads, which, combined with U.S. Highways 41 and 84 and Interstate 75, were to be major factors in dramatic local growth."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Feb 14, 2007
• ISBN: 9781439633618

Dr. Joseph A. Tomberlin

This volume features pictures primarily from the collections of the Lowndes County Historical Society that illustrate significant aspects of the area�s daily life. They have been selected and assembled by Dr. Joseph A. Tomberlin, professor emeritus of history at Valdosta State University and longtime head of the university�s Department of History. Dr. Tomberlin has lived in Valdosta since the age of 12 and has had both personal and professional interest in the history of the area for many years.

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patience.

INTRODUCTION

Lowndes County is situated in the Wiregrass area of South Georgia, just north of Florida. The region had human inhabitants from ancient times, but until relatively recently in history, none of them stayed long. Few concrete traces of their existence remained to the modern era, and no Europeans were physically present before the founding of the neighboring Spanish missions of Santa Maria de los Angeles de Arapaja and Santa Cruz de Cachipile around 1623. Recent excavations have shown that Santa Cruz de Cachipile was within the bounds of what is now Lowndes County, but the mission did not endure.

The first American settlers in the vicinity arrived in 1821, four years before the creation of Lowndes County from the lower half of Irwin County. The Georgia General Assembly established Lowndes by carving it from Irwin in December 1825 and named it in honor of South Carolinian Williams Jones Lowndes, a planter, lawyer, Congressman, and candidate for vice president. Lowndes’s first town, settled in 1827 and designated as the county seat in 1828, was Franklinville. Five years later, in 1833, Lowndesville, at the confluence of the Little and Withlacoochee Rivers, replaced Franklinville as county seat. Lowndesville became Troupville in 1837 to honor the popular Georgia senator and former governor, George Troup.

In 1859–1860, Lowndes County changed its seat again, this time owing to the building of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad along a path four miles south of Troupville. The Atlantic and Gulf ultimately ran from Screven in the east to Thomasville in the west and provided a connection to Savannah via the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad at Screven. Wishing to enjoy the benefits of immediate access to the railroad and thereby to Savannah, many inhabitants of Troupville and of the county demanded the creation of a new town and county seat located directly on the Atlantic and Gulf. Consequently, the General Assembly in 1859 selected four commissioners to pinpoint a site for the new town. They bought 140 acres of land from William Wisenbaker, and the town placed there became Valdosta, for Val d’Aosta, a plantation belonging to George Troup, previously honored as the namesake of the old county seat. The Atlantic and Gulf’s first train to Lowndes County, powered by a locomotive known as Satilla No. 3, arrived in Valdosta on July 4, 1860. These seemingly favorable developments occurred almost on the eve of the Civil War.

Lowndes County was not a scene of any military action whatever, but the war that raged from 1861 to 1865 had a substantial impact on the region. While local men served in the Confederate armies elsewhere, Lowndes became a refuge for civilians who had fled the fighting. From early in the war, an increasingly effective Union naval blockade of the Confederacy made consumer goods, including most necessities, nearly impossible to obtain. When needed items were available, they were unbearably expensive. Moreover, beginning in November 1864, Lowndes County lost its most important link to the outside world, the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad’s tie with Savannah. Union major general William T. Sherman’s bummers tore up miles of the tracks while carrying out their march to the sea. Only in March 1866 did the Atlantic and Gulf have its tracks repaired and resumed sending trains through Lowndes County.

The impact of war upon the county was enduring, particularly in the sense that the local economy was sickly well into the 1880s, and some effects continued to linger far beyond that decade. When Sea Island, or long-staple, cotton began to be grown in the county in the 1880s, the economy showed signs of reviving, and Valdosta became a major inland market for Sea Island cotton. Also in 1889, the Georgia Southern and Florida Railroad extended its tracks through Lowndes and Valdosta, providing the county with a long-desired north-south rail line. The development that appeared to many residents to be a concrete indication of the county’s economic recovery was the holding of a state fair in Valdosta in 1900. Indeed substantial changes were occurring. In 1904–1905, the county’s two-story red brick courthouse, built in 1875, was razed, and a beautiful, new courthouse designed in the neoclassical Revival style by Frank P. Milburn was erected. In 1906, the general assembly chartered the South Georgia Normal College, for women, in Valdosta, and classes convened for the first time in 1913. In the same period, three additional railroads came to Lowndes County, giving the county significant rail connections in almost every direction.

On the negative side, the highly destructive boll weevil invaded Georgia in 1915 and had a devastating effect on the still shaky farm economy by ravaging cotton crops across the state. Southern agriculture, still feeling some of the consequences of the Civil War, fell into persistent depression that simply worsened when the Great Depression struck in the 1930s. In the meantime, after the First World War, which involved the United States most directly in 1917–1918, local leaders, in the hope