Monroe County
Has a Rich Heritage
T
he Georgia legislature created Monroe
County in 1821 from
a Creek Indian concession at
Indian Springs. It is named
for James Monroe, the fifth
president of the United States,
whose famed Monroe Doctrine
county in this period was the
construction in 1838 of a railroad that first linked Forsyth to
Macon. It was the first railroad
in Georgia. Later the Macon
and Western joined Forsyth to
Atlanta. The rails provided an
economical means of trans-
Monroe County, Jan. 2, 1908. People mill about and look at the results of a train
wreck that took place near Forsyth.
claimed American right to fend
off European meddling in the
Western Hemisphere.
The Antebellum Years
In the antebellum period,
settlers chiefly from older
portions of Georgia moved into
the raw but rich lands of the
county, carving out for themselves farms and plantations.
A significant number of them
had or acquired slaves, so that
the population of the county
in 1860 was 5,753 free and
10,177 slave.
After the creation of the
county, the towns of Culloden
and Forsyth were founded.
Culloden achieved importance
as a commercial center and
an educational center. Forsyth
had, for a while, the original
Southern Botanico Medical
College and the Monroe Female College, which became
Tift College.
The Railroad
Perhaps the most significant development for the
porting cotton and of bringing
goods into the town, both from
Savannah to the south and
Atlanta from the north.
Civil War
With the outbreak of the
civil war in 1861, the inhab