Irwin County, in central Georgia, is the state's forty-first
county, created in 1818 from land acquired from Creek Indians in
1814 by the Treaty of Fort Jackson. The county, one of seven
created by the state legislature in 1818, once encompassed much
more territory. Counties carved from it were Lowndes and Thomas
(1825), Worth (1853), Coffee (1854), Berrien (1856), Wilcox
(1857), Tift and Turner (1905), and Ben Hill (1906). It was
named for Jared Irwin, a governor of Georgia most famous for
rescinding the fraudulent Yazoo Act. The first county seat was
developed on a location designated by the state legislature and
named Irwinville. It was the seat of government from 1831 until
1907, when the county's voters elected to change the location to
the bustling town of Ocilla, ten miles southeast of Irwinville.
Ocilla, founded around 1880 and incorporated in 1897, nearly
tripled in population soon after it was connected by railroad to
Fitzgerald and incorporated in 1897. Today, Ocilla is the only
incorporated city i