Putnam County: Eatonton and the Birthplace of Alice Walker

Putnam County was created December tenth, eighteen oh seven, from Baldwin County, and named for General Israel Putnam, Massachusetts hero of the Revolution. Eatonton became the county seat in eighteen oh seven and grew on the back of the cotton economy, its antebellum center still largely intact. The county later became famous as the birthplace of two major American literary voices: Joel Chandler Harris, who began publishing the Uncle Remus stories in eighteen seventy-nine, was born in Eatonton in eighteen forty-eight.

Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, was born in the county in nineteen forty-four. Their birthplaces are separated by a century and the vast gulf of Jim Crow, but both drew from the same red Georgia clay.