Baldwin County: Georgia's Antebellum Capital

Baldwin County was formed in eighteen oh three from lands ceded by the Muscogee Creek under the Treaty of Fort Wilkinson. Named for Abraham Baldwin, an influential early United States senator from Georgia, the county contains Milledgeville, which served as Georgia's state capital for more than sixty years, from eighteen oh four to eighteen sixty-eight. Milledgeville was one of the few planned capitals in the United States, laid out on a grid before a single permanent building stood. It hosted Georgia's secession convention in January eighteen sixty-one and suffered the indignity of a Union occupation in November eighteen sixty-four, though Sherman caused relatively little physical destruction here compared to other Georgia towns.