Prehistoric and nineteenth-century history has been preserved in some of Early County's attractions. It is the site of the Kolomoki Mounds, a park preserving major earthworks built by indigenous peoples of the Woodland culture more than 1700 years ago, from 350 CE to 600 CE. This is one of the largest mound complexes in the United States and the largest in Georgia; it includes burial and ceremonial mounds. The siting of the mounds expresses the ancient people's cosmology, as mounds are aligned with the sun at the spring equinox and summer solstice.
The county area was long territory of the historic Creek Indian peoples of the Southeast, particularly along the Chattahoochee River. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, European-American settlers began to encroach on this territory, pushing the Muscogee out during Indian Removal in the 1830s. The Muscogee were forced to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
This area was developed by European-American settlers and their African-American enslaved workers for cotton plantations. Agriculture was critical to the economy into the 20th century. The Cohelee Creek Bridge in the county is the southernmost covered bridge still standing. One of the last wooden flagpoles from the American Civil War era is located at the historic courthouse in downtown Blakely.
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, in the period from 1877 to 1950, Early County had 24 documented lynchings of African Americans, the second-highest total in the state after the more densely populated Fulton County.[4][5] Most were committed around the turn of the 20th century, in the period of Jim Crow conditions and suppression of black voting. This was still a largely agricultural area, and some disputes arose from confrontations between black sharecroppers or tenant farmers and white landowners, particularly at times to settle accounts. Another, Sidney Grist, was lynched on December 31, 1896, for "political activity".[5]
Among these cases were five African-American men lynched by whites in less than a month in the summer of 1899: three on July 23, one on July 25 (all reportedly for rape and robbery), and one on August 3 for attempted rape.[6] Black men were frequently identified as suspects in such cases and lynched before any trial took place; further investigations have sometimes revealed consensual sex or other persons having committed the crime. A mass lynching took place in the county on December 30, 1915, when seven black men were lynched, allegedly as suspects in a murder.[6]
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 516 square miles (1,340 km2), of which 513 square miles (1,330 km2) is land and 3.8 square miles (9.8 km2) (0.7%) is water.[7]
The northeastern and eastern portions of Early County, east of Blakely, and extending south to a line east of Jakin, are located in the Spring Creek sub-basin of the ACF River Basin (Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin). The western portion of the county is located in the Lower Chattahoochee River sub-basin of the same ACF River Basin.[8]
Early County, Georgia – Racial and ethnic composition Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos may be of any race.
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 10,854 people, 4,074 households, and 2,659 families residing in the county.
Education
The Early County School District holds grades pre-school to grade twelve, and consists of one elementary school, a middle school, and a high school.[21] The district has 156 full-time teachers and over 2,764 students.[22]
Despite being a majority-black county, Early County leans Republican. As recently as 2012, the county voted Democratic for president, backing Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. However, Early County voted for GOP nominee Donald Trump thrice consecutively since then, including even as Joe Biden defeated Trump statewide in 2020. In the 2022 midterms, Governor Brian Kemp carried it by 19.5 points, while Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger carried it by over 21%, and in 2024, Trump won the county by double-digits over Kamala Harris.
United States presidential election results for Early County, Georgia[23]
Early County 2055 - a non-profit corporation established by native son Charles Barton Rice and Catherine B. Rice to support the revitalization, economic development and preservation of Blakely and Early County, Georgia.
Jerald T. Milanich, The Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994).
Jerald T. Milanich, et al., McKeithen Weeden Island: The Culture of Northern Florida, A.D. 200-900 (New York: Academic Press, 1984).
Thomas J. Pluckhahn, Kolomoki: Settlement, Ceremony, and Status in the Deep South, A.D. 350 to 750 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003).
William H. Sears, Excavations at Kolomoki: Final Report (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1956).
Christopher Trowell, "A Kolomoki Chronicle: The History of a Plantation, a State Park, and the Archaeological Search for Kolomoki's Prehistory," Early Georgia 26, no. 1 (1998).
Mark Williams and Daniel T. Elliott, eds., A World Engraved: Archaeology of the Swift Creek Culture (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998).
