Laurens County: Dublin on the Oconee

Laurens County was established December tenth, eighteen oh seven, formed from Wilkinson County between the Oconee and Ocmulgee Rivers. It was named for Colonel John Laurens of South Carolina, an aide to General Washington who was killed by a British patrol near the very end of the American Revolution. The county seat, Dublin, was laid out in eighteen twelve on a bluff above the Oconee River.

Its name came from the postmaster Jonathan Sawyer, who named it for Dublin, the capital of his Irish homeland. Dublin grew slowly through the nineteenth century as a regional trading center, its position between two major rivers giving it a modest commercial advantage in the days before railroads remade Georgia's economic geography.