Bibb County, Georgia  Bibb County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 155,547. Bibb County is geographically located in the Central Georgia (Middle Georgia) region, and is the largest county in the Macon metropolitan area (Metropolitan Statistical Area). Bibb County has a consolidated city-county government following a merger with its county seat and largest city, Macon, in 2014. They were later joined by the county's only other municipality, Payne City, in 2015. Native Americans (mostly Creek) had inhabited the area which would become Bibb County for many centuries. They were forcibly relocated to today's Oklahoma in the Indian Removal in the 1830s, during the administration of President Andrew Jackson. The Indian tribes affected refer to this as the "Trail of Tears", since many died during the march west. Bibb is one of the counties of the "Black Belt", which originally referred to the fertile dark soil in the uplands. The area was developed by white settlers and African American slaves into cotton plantations during the antebellum years. Cotton generated high profits, since was in demand in the textile mills of the northern states as well as in England. By the 1860 census, shortly before the American Civil War, more than a million enslaved African Americans lived in Georgia, and they constituted a majority of the population in much of the Black Belt. Bibb County was created by act of the State Legislature of Georgia on December 9, 1822, with Macon to be incorporated as a town/city in December 1823; designated the County Seat. It was carved from the earlier territories of the counties of Jones, Monroe, Houston, and Twiggs counties. The County Seat has never been changed since, and no other subsequent county in the state has ever been created ("erected") out of land from Bibb County. The county was named for Dr. William Wyatt Bibb, a physician from Elbert County, who was elected to and served in the U.S. House of Representatives and United States Senate from Georgia, moved to the new Alabama Territory, before being elected as the first Governor of the new State of Alabama. During the Civil War, an estimated ten percent of the white males in the county lost their lives while serving the Confederate States Army. The war ended slavery in Georgia, but it also left much of the state in ruins. After the Civil War and during the 20th century, the county seat of Macon continued to serve as the county's principal population center and hub of most significant landmarks and historical events.