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Other Information:
There have been four courthouses since Worth
County was created in 1853. The first courthouse was a two-story frame structure
on the public square in Isabella, which was then Worth's county seat. This
building burned down in 1879, and a schoolhouse was used as a temporary courthouse
until a new courthouse could be built in 1893 -- but that structure soon
burned also. A new courthouse was constructed the following year, but in
1904 the legislature changed the county seat from Isabella to Sylvester.
The next year, a new courthouse was built on Sylvester's public square (see
photo 1 and photo 2 for color postcard images of the courthouse soon after its completion). In January 1982, the Worth County courthouse suffered major fire damage, requiring substantial rebuilding.
County Courthouse Historical
Marker: Click
here
County History: Worth County was created from Dooly and Irwin counties on Dec. 20, 1853, by an act of the General Assembly (Ga. Laws 1853-54, p. 308). Georgia's 106th county was named for Maj. Gen. William J. Worth of New York. Worth, who had gained fame during his service in the Mexican War, died in 1849, the year after the war ended. One of those in Worth's command during the war was Maj. William Harris, who later was a leader in the formation of a new Georgia county, which he proposed be named in Worth's honor.
County Seat:
The legislation creating Worth County named
the small settlement of San Bernard [named for Saint Bernard of Clairvaux]
as temporary seat of government. The act empowered the justices of the new
county's inferior court to pick any site they saw proper for a permanent
county seat, and in 1854, tthey chose a site a mile to the east of San Bernard.
The new settlement was amed Isabella [named for the wife. of Gen. Worth].
In 1872, a railroad built to connect Albany with Brunswick, missed Isabella
by three miles to the south. Though a rail stop known as Isabella Station
was built on the railroad, the county seat suffered by not being directly
served by the railroad. Soon, other communities sprang up along the railroad
in Worth County. By 1893, the small community of Isabella Station was known
as Sylvester [the origin of the name refers to forests, though why it was
chosen is unknown (though it may have been associated with one of the first
settlers of the community)]. On Dec. 21, 1898, Sylvester was incorporated.
By the early 1900s, Sylvester residents had launched a move to have their
city designated as Worth's county seat. In 1904, a county-wide election was
held and the vote favored the move. On July 1, 1904, the General Assembly
formally designated Sylvester as the new seat of government for Worth County.
Maps
Size of County (Total
Area): 574.6 square miles
County Rank in Total
Area: 18th out of 159
Population:
Worth County
City of Sylvester
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