History Dodge County GAGenWeb A proud part of GAGenWeb

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Prior to 1802 this section of Georgia was settled by the Creek Indians.  Treaties made between 1802-1805 took lands from the Creek to Georgia The land was distributed by lottery to the citizens of Georgia.  Towns and counties were formed.  Soon the Macon and Brunswick Railroad came and even more towns sprung up.  In 1870, a new county was laid out largely from Laurens County with small portions from Pulaski, Montgomery and Telfair.

During the 1870s the Georgia Land and Lumber Company, which bought more than 300,000 acres of land rich in longleaf pine for less than ten cents an acre in 1868, began to harvest timber which displaced farmers who were evicted by the company.  This started a series of court cases, assassinations arranged by the company and imprisonments.  Farmers started to use chemical fertilizers which shifted from growing pine to cotton.  But the boll weevil soon came and soon the farmers started to grow a variety of crops such as watermelon, peanuts, pecans and livestock. 

William Stuckey, a pecan farmer in Eastman started to sell his wife's pecan candies in the 1930s and soon built a large national company company called Stuckey Candy Company.