Campbellton, Georgia

Campbellton was the county seat of Campbell County, Georgia. There’s a clue. I’ll look up Campbell County. And here’s what I found:

Campbell County was named in honor of Colonel Duncan G. Campbell. He and James Meriwether negotiated the Indian Springs Treaty in which the Creek Indian land was ceded on February 12, 1825. The County seat was Campbellton until 1870. It was then moved to Fairburn where it remained for the life of the county. Read George White, M.A.’s History of Campbell County from his Historical Collections of Georgia (which can be downloaded free from Google ebooks); find out the first jurors of Campbell and read about Campbell’s Indian Princess.

Today,a monument marks the site of the original Methodist Church and a newer church still stands, but there is very little else to be seen. I have ‘borrowed’ some photos taken by an ‘adventure biker’, who did a great job of exploring the area. Campbellton was a farming community and probably used the river as transportation for cotton crops.

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The grid of the vanished town can still be seen, and the site of a ferry that crossed the Chattahoochee River still exists.

Ferry Crossing

Visitors to the “Vanishing Georgia” collection of the University of Georgia Hargrett Library can see a photograph of the ferry. The actual photo is at the Atlanta History Center.

A road into the past

Until around 1850, Campbellton had a population of around 1000 people. When the town decided they didn’t want the railroad coming through, the first step in their decline was made. Fairburn accepted the railline and grew.

A Civil War battle was fought nearby (soldiers are buried at a Methodist Church). By the 1870s, the county seat moved to Fairburn &
led to the disintegration of the town. Campbell County went bankrupt during the Depression of 1929 and was consolidated into Fulton County, along with Milton County.

Monument to the vanished courthouse

The town then sold the old Court House to someone who used the bricks for a garage. The remnants of the town square feature the above memorial.