Burke County, Georgia

Burke County is one of Georgia's eight original counties, created by the state constitution of seventeen seventy-seven from the colonial parish of Saint George. It was named for Edmund Burke, the British member of Parliament who famously argued for conciliation with the American colonies , an unusual choice for a newly independent American county to honor a British politician, but the founders knew their history. The county had a complicated Revolutionary War.

Many residents remained loyal to the Crown, and a skirmish at the Burke County Jail in January of seventeen seventy-nine saw colonists defeat British troops. A larger British victory followed at the Battle of Briar Creek. Waynesboro, the county seat laid out in seventeen eighty-three, became a quiet agricultural center whose character the passing of two centuries has not entirely erased.