Burke County, located along the Savnnah River, is one of the eight original counties in Georgia, and was created on February 5th, 1777. During the colonial period, the region was called the Halifax District, and later (in 1758), when the state was divided into parishes, it was called the St. George parish. The area was originally inhabited by members of the Creek, Cherokee, and Catawba tribes, and later by English settlers, who acquired land through a land grant system run by the British government. Many Burke County residents during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), were British Loyalists, resulting in property damage and the selling of Loyalist property to colonists loyal to the revolution. Two battles took place in the county during this period- the Battle of Burke Jail (1779), during which the colonists, led by Col. John Twiggs, and Col. William Few, defeated 400 British troops, and the Battle of Brier Creek, during which the British defeated the colonists. By the end of the 1700s, the area's cotton plantation system was reliant on slave labor. Following the American Civil War, the area transitioned to a system of small tenant farms. Farmers increasingly moved to urban jobs after the mechanization of the cotton industry.

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