e-ReferenceDesk's College and 50 State Learning Resource Guide

Find Online Colleges

Find Campus Colleges

Georgia State...

Georgia

Choose a County

Appling, Athens-Clarke, Atkinson, Augusta-Richmond, Bacon, Baker, Baldwin, Banks, Barrow, Bartow, Ben Hill, Berrien, Bibb, Bleckley, Brantley, Brooks, Bryan, Bulloch, Burke, Butts, Calhoun, Camden, Candler, Carroll, Catoosa, Charlton, Chatham, Chattooga, Cherokee, Clay, Clayton, Clinch, Cobb, Coffee, Colquitt, Columbia, Columbus-Muscogee, Cook, Coweta, Crawford, Crisp, Cusetta-Chattahoochee, Dade, Dawson, Decatur, DeKalb, Dodge, Dooly, Dougherty, Douglas, Early, Echols, Effingham, Elbert, Emanuel, Evans, Fannin, Fayette, Floyd, Forsyth, Franklin, Fulton, Gilmer, Glascock, Glynn, Gordon, Grady, Greene, Gwinnett, Habersham, Hall, Hancock, Haralson, Harris, Hart, Heard, Henry, Houston, Irwin, Jackson, Jasper, Jeff Davis, Jefferson, Jenkins, Johnson, Jones, Lamar, Lanier, Laurens, Lee, Liberty, Lincoln, Long, Lowndes, Lumpkin, Macon, Madison, Marion, McDuffie, McIntosh, Meriwether, Miller, Mitchell, Monroe, Montgomery, Morgan, Murray, Newton, Oconee, Oglethorpe, Paulding, Peach, Pickens, Pierce, Pike, Polk, Pulaski, Putnam, Quitman, Rabun, Randolph, Rockdale, Schley, Screven, Seminole, Spalding, Stephens, Stewart, Sumter, Talbot, Taliaferro, Tattnall, Taylor, Telfair, Terrell, Thomas, Tift, Toombs, Towns, Treutlen, Troup, Turner, Twiggs, Union, Upson, Walker, Walton, Ware, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Webster, Wheeler, White, Whitfield, Wilcox, Wilkes, Wilkinson, Worth

Georgia Counties

Click Image to Enlarge

Georgia Counties

Georgia is divided into 159 counties. Under the Georgia Constitution, Counties are granted home rule to deal with issues that are local in nature. Four consolidated city-Counties — Athens (Clarke County), Augusta (Richmond County), Columbus (Muscogee County), and Cusseta (Chattahoochee County) — exist.

Georgia has the second-highest number of Counties of any state in the United States, behind Texas (254). A few Georgia Counties have changed names over time. Jasper County was originally known as Randolph County. Later, the current Randolph County came into being. Webster County was once known as Kinchafoonee County, and Bartow County was formerly known as Cass County.

Pierce County, Georgia

Pierce County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Blackshear
Year Organized: 1857
Square Miles: 343

Court House:

312 Nichols Street
County Courthouse
Blackshear, GA 31516-

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named for Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

County History

Pierce County was created from parts of Appling and Ware counties. Georgia's 119th county was named for Franklin Pierce, 14th President of the United States.

Blackshear was named for General David Blackshear, who supervised construction of the Blackshear Road. Patterson was named for William Patterson who resettled in the county from New York. He ran a sawmill in the area.

The Pierce County courthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There have been preliminary efforts to have the old Blackshear Jail and its hanging tower listed on the National Register.

A Confederate prison camp in Pierce County held about 5,000 Union prisoners of war during the last months of the Civil War. Prisoners were transferred to Pierce County from Millen, and possibly Andersonville, so that Sherman's troops would not be able to free them on their march south.

Points of Interest

The Marion Anderson Library Black Heritage Collection in Blackshear contains about 300 volumes and oil paintings addressing African-American heritage. This is the largest publicly accessible collection of this type in the region.

Pierce County shares the Little Satilla Wildlife Management Area with Wayne County to the east.

Neighboring Counties:

North: Appling County
Northeast: Wayne County
Southeast: Brantley County
Southwest: Ware County
Northwest: Bacon County

Cities and Towns:

- Blackshear (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Offerman	city	Incorporated Area
- Patterson	city	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Additional County Info http://www.georgiaplanning.com/CountyPortal/countyportal.asp?FIPS=13229

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."