Brantley County, Georgia - History

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Brantley County, Georgia History

County History
The 444-square-mile county was originally inhabited by the Creek Indians.
During the colonial period, the area fell within the bounds of land disputed by the Spanish and the English, a debate settled in favor of the English following the Battle of Bloody Marsh in 1742.

On August 14, 1920, the General Assembly proposed a constitutional amendment to create Brantley County from portions of Charlton, Pierce and Wayne Counties . In that year's general election, Georgia voters ratified the proposed amendment on Nov. 2, 1920, which marks the date of Brantley County's creation as Georgia's 158th county. Two years after Brantley County's creation, local authorities discovered that the legal description of the county's boundaries contained several errors. As a result, the General Assembly passed an act on Aug. 5, 1922, which corrected the language of the 1920 constitutional amendment.

The county was named for either Benjamin Daniel Brantley (1832-91), a merchant who encouraged the development of cotton ginning and turpentine manufacturing in the area, or his son, William Gordon Brantley (1860-1934), who served in both houses of the Georgia legislature and in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The state historical marker on the grounds of the Brantley County courthouse and several other sources (including an article that appeared in a Savannah newspaper in 1920) say the county was named for Benjamin D. Brantley (1832-1891). Other sources, however, say the real person being honored was Brantley's son, William Gordon Brantley (1860-1934). The younger Brantley worked for a while with his father, but left home to attend the University of Georgia, where he graduated from law school. After practicing law in Pierce County, William Brantley represented Appling County in the Georgia House of Representatives (1884-85) and Georgia Senate (1886-87). He also served as prosecuting attorney (1888-96), but is most remembered for serving eight terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1897-1913). For sixteen years, William Brantley represented the area that would become Brantley County in Congress. In 1913, after thirty years in public office, Brantley decided to return to the practice of law. Seven years later, the legislature created Brantley County.

Confederate Monument towns in the county include Atkinson, Hickox, Hortense, Lulaton, Trudie, and Waynesville.

Nahunta, incorporated in 1925, is the second community with this name to be located in the area. Old Nahunta was once a railroad stop west of present-day Nahunta and an important depot for travelers catching trains on the north-south line from Jesup to Folkston. The depot, originally built on stilts because of the area's swampy ground, was also a social gathering place. Among those who caught trains there were U.S. presidents Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (after the Duke's 1936 abdication of the British throne).

Hortense, established in the nineteenth century as a timber and turpentine town and flourishing when railroads intersected it in 1902, became the site of the Georgia State Prison Camp in the 1930s. Until it closed in 1944, the prison put its inmates to work constructing roads.