Putnam was laid off from Baldwin in 1807. It was named in honor of the brave old general, and its county site for General Eaton, who had distinguished himself in the war with Tripoli. It had been on the eastern border of the Creek Nation for over twenty-five years.  Hancock,

which was originally Greene, had been settled since 1785, and was just across the river, and while the Whites had made no permanent

settlements in the Nation on the west side of the river, many of them had their cattle ranches, and perhaps not a few had opened farms in the unceeded country before the purchase was made in 1803.  When the land was distributed by lottery the population in the eastern counties

was already considerable, and especially on the good lands in Hancock there were thick settlements. As soon as the new purchase was

opened the restless people of the counties near by pressed into it. Other immigrants joined them, many of them from Virginia and a larger

 number from the eastern counties of the State.  None of these new counties, of which Putnam was one, could be said to have had any first

settlers. They came in droves, and those mentioned are a few of many. These first people were mainly Georgians, the land being given

away to Georgians by lottery. The lots were two hundred and two and one half acres in size, and when Putnam was first settled it was dotted

 all over with small farms.

 

 The county was one of the fairest in middle Georgia. Grand forests covered the hills, limpid streams made their way through great brakes of cane. The Oconee bordered the county on one side, and Little river made its way entirely through it. Bold brooks and large creeks were in all parts of it. Much of the land was the rich mulatto land, esteemed by the old planters as the best in the world; much of it was in rich valleys on the sides of creeks and rivers, and much of it a less fertile but more easily cultivated gray land. There was but little really sterile land in the county, and none of it was waste. It was not to be wondered at that so fair a land was at once peopled, and it was only a few months after the whites were permitted to settle before the country was teeming with inhabitants and the smoke rose from hundreds of camp-fires before the one-roomed cabin was built. The ferries were kept going night and day and immigrants came rushing in.

Provisions were the only products. Tobacco was not raised and cotton was not as yet planted. Corn, hogs and cattle there were in great abundance. The people were not many of them people of means, and the luxuries enjoyed by the planters of Columbia and Burke were not during this decade found in this new county.  The first people came not only from the older counties of Georgia, but from North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. There was little to distinguish them from those we have pictured as living in Hancock and Greene. They were much the same, and, as in Greene, the still-house was not far from the church, and in the inventory of estates the psalm-book and the Bible are put close beside the thirty-gallon still. 

 After the war of 1812, and the wonderful impetus given to cotton production, the people of Putnam increased their wealth very rapidly. Lands were fresh and rich, cotton was high, negroes were comparatively cheap and increased rapidly, and those who settled with a few slaves in the County in 1803 found themselves the owners of a hundred by 1830. There was little elegance but much solid comfort in the county until about 1845, when a number of handsome homes were erected on the plantations or in Eatonton. These mansions, with generally eight large rooms twenty feet square, with broad galleries and wide halls, were handsomely furnished, and the hospitality dispensed was generous. There were fine carriage horses, coachmen, footmen, maid servants and men servants, and there was nowhere a more elegant and luxurious life than was found in many of the families of Putnam.

Log courthouse was built on the town square of Eatonton in 1810.

 The population of the county in 1810 was 6,809 whites and 3,220 slaves; in 1830 there were 5,554 whites and 7,707 slaves; in 1850 the free population had been reduced to 3,326 whites, and there were 7,468 slaves.  These figures tell the story of the great changes which passed over this magnificent country. The necessity of providing for so many dependents left the slaveholder but little time to improve his plantation, and when he wore out his lands he opened new forests, until he had laid the whole wood low. He found himself at the end of the war between the States with a yard full of negroes, a sadly impoverished plantation and a heavy debt.