The Wiregrass Region Digital History Project (WRDHP) is a volunteer-based effort between professional and amateur historians, archivists, photographers, videographers, and others with the goal of helping to document and preserve the history of the Wiregrass Region, i.e. South Georgia, North Florida, and Southeast Alabama. Technology is making it easier to document “history from the bottom up” than ever before. Through online articles, photography and videography, we aim to preserve at-risk structures and at-risk oral history. We also seek to serve as a platform for “history from the bottom up” for the Wiregrass Region beyond the realm of oral history. Getting the people of the Wiregrass region involved in their history is also a priority of ours. 

One of our main resources is a historic structures map. We will be using the Google My Maps service to pin our content to coordinates. We will be photographing historic sites that are at risk, and conducting oral history interviews and research about that those sites. The community will then be able to view the content through this map. This will help preserve digitally sites that finances prevent from being saved physically. We also have added data for structures that have already been demolished. This also allows future users to understand the context of those sites in relation to current geography, something that can be lost by photographs alone once structures have been lost to living memory.

 Feel free to explore our website and to contact us with questions.

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Contact us at: WiregrassRDHP@gmail.com. For additional contact information please visit our contact page.

Saturday, 11th March 2023:
Be sure to go and listen to  Florida Historical Quarterly Podcast 46: Fall 2022 which features our very own Dr. Kathryn L. Beasley. She discusses her recent article  "Feeding the Bank Account: Florida Women, Home Demonstration Programming, and Using Florida for Disposable Income, 1914-1929." The podcast can be found here.

Thursday, 9th March 2023
We have added a style guide that describes the details of the methods used by WRDHP for abstracting deed records. It can be found here.

Friday, 24th February 2023:
We have finished abstracting  Lowndes County Deed Books up to the end of Deed Book E, which ends January 1881. Deeds from the 1870s and before have been sought from deed book F forward. The index book for Lowndes County deeds only includes the recorded dates of deeds and not the date of the instrument. This means there is not an easy way to find earlier deeds that were recorded later, other than searching every page of every deed book. We have made a diligent effort to find deeds for lands that we know were not recorded in the earlier deed books. If you know of a deed from the 1870s and before for Lowndes County that we have not recorded, please contact us so we can add the information to the spreadsheet. We have found a deed from 1854 recorded in 1940, so most likely there are a few deeds that we have missed. In addition, we have been able to reconstruct over 800 pages of the deed books that were destroyed in the 1858 fire at Troupville, GA. Many of those deeds were re-recorded in the various counties that split off from Lowndes County in the 1850s (Berrien County/Brooks County/Clinch County/Echols County). We have also abstracted the Lowndes County Superior Court minute books up to 1877 for property-related records. We have also abstracted Lowndes County Will Books for wills that mention property from before 1877. There are 250 deeds covering the area that became Lanier County in 1920. There are 96 related entries for people who were enslaved. Many of those entries mention the names of multiple people.

The spreadsheet can be found here.

Thursday, 14th December 2022:
We have abstracted the Lowndes County Grand Jury reports that are in the Lowndes County Superior Court minute books from 1858 to 1930. The information mentioned in the grand jury reports related to the county and district courthouses, the county jail, the county poor farm, schools, bridges, and roads has been abstracted. It is available here.

Saturday, 10th September 2022:
We have finished abstracting the deed books for Charlton County for deeds dated up to December 1873. Sadly, it looks like that either many deeds were not re-recorded after the 1877 courthouse fire or were just not recorded at all. Deed books were searched up to 1916. We were able to identify quite a few records in the Camden County deed books for land that would become Charlton County in 1854. We have tried to include as many of those deeds as possible, but there are most certainly a lot more out there. The link to the spreadsheet can be found here:

We have also abstracted the headright grants for Charlton County from when the county was created in 1854 to when grants stopped being issued in the 1910s. We have included as many headright grants that were issued in Camden County for areas that would become Camden as could be identified. That spreadsheet can be found here:

The information for the deeds records will be added to our circa 1870 map series in the coming weeks. Due to many of the boundary markers having been lost and several grants overlapping each other, the headright grant areas might not be able to be mapped out.

Tuesday, 26th June 2022:
We have finished abstracting deeds for Brooks County from before December 1873. Every deed book has been searched up to 1947. There are 64 deeds related to enslaved people, most of those 64 deeds mention multiple enslaved people. There are many deeds from when Brooks County, GA was still part of Lowndes County, GA. Over 650 of the deeds from Brooks County was created in December 1858 give the book letter and page number from the Lowndes County deed books that were destroyed in the courthouse fire at Troupville, GA in June 1858. The spreadsheet with the deeds can be found here. We will be adding the data from the deeds to our circa 1870 map in the coming weeks.

Saturday, 4th June 2022:
We have added an annotated version of M. M. Folsom's Down the River. Folsom was from Lowndes County and went on to become a nationally known journalist during the late 1800s. It was originally published in several installments in The Valdosta Times in 1885. It covers the history of the people who lived on the Little River from the Colquitt/Brooks/Cook County line down to old Troupville in Lowndes County. The natural history of the area is also discussed by Folsom. We have produced a new map of Troupville that uses the latest research to depict the town as it was on a modern map. The article is available here.

Friday, 1st April 2022:
We have finished abstracting deeds for Ware County dated from before December 1878. Every deed book was searched up the 1910s. The spreadsheet is located here.  There are some Fulwood-related deeds that mention people formerly being enslaved by James Fulwood receiving property from him.

We have also finished mapping out Ware County circa 1870. The map uses the 1862, 1869, and 1870 tax lists as a base. The deeds up to December 1870 have been added to the map. Please consult our Circa 1870 map series page for the links to the maps that cover Ware County.

Thursday, 18th March 2021:
We have finished abstracting every deed for Berrien County dated from before December 1873. Every deed book was searched up to the 1920s. If you notice that we have missed a deed, please contact us.  The spreadsheet is located here.

The area includes the SE part of Tift County (created 1905), all of Cook County (created 1918), and the NW part of Lanier County (Created 1920). The county where the land is currently located is given in a column on the right side of the spreadsheet.

There are 17 deeds that mention the names of enslaved people, several of them can be identified in later census records after emancipation.  To easily find those deeds, once the page has loaded all the way, click on the spreadsheet, type ctrl+f, and type "slaves" in the search menu.

Friday, 25th December 2020:
We have made major updates to our circa 1870 map series. We have added the historic county lines to the maps, along with the path of major roads from the time period.

All surviving information from deeds from before 1874 has been added for:

1. Irwin County (including much of modern Ben Hill County, Turner County, and Tift County)
2.  Worth County (including much of Turner County and the part of Tift County west of the Little River)
3. Colquitt County.

Those three counties have reached the point where the maps are going to be as good as they are ever going to get without new sources such as newspaper articles or deeds that were re-recorded decades have they were enacted.

Information from tax lists has also been added for:
1. Coffee County: 1869, 1871, 1872 tax list. (This includes much of Atkinson County and Jeff Davis County)
2. Clinch County: 1872 tax list. (This includes much of Atkinson County and Lanier County)
3. Wayne County: 1871 tax list with the exception of headright areas. (This includes much of Brantley County)
4. Charlton County: 1870 tax list with the exception of headright areas. (This includes much of Brantley County)

The complete information from A copy of the original list of the drawing of "Old Irwin" County : together with a list of the reverted lots, giving the names and dates of the grants, and the counties in which the grantees lived at the time of the issueing of the grants, to which is added the owners and residence, with the number of each lot given in upon the tax books of 1857, of each county in the state, in what was originally "Old Irwin," but now comprising the counties of "Irwin," "Berrien," "Lowndes" and Colquitt, and portions of "Clinch," "Worth," "Coffee" and "Thomas"  by B.B. deGraffenried has also been added.

The links to the maps and additional information about them can be found here.

Saturday, 28 November 2020:
We have written an article about the 1918-1920 Influenza Pandemic and how the people of the Wiregrass experienced it. I can be located here. Several spreadsheets of data were created to help document the names of victims of the pandemic. The spreadsheet for the names of victims in Berrien County, Brooks County, Colquitt County, Cook County, Echols County, Lowndes County, and Thomas County can be located here. The spreadsheet for the names of victims in Gadsden County, Jackson County, and Leon County can be found here. The Florida spreadsheet also contains a sheet that gives the monthly county influenza deaths in 1918 for all of Florida.

Friday, 14 February 2020:

Last week WRDHP took part in a visit to the John Nelson Deming house at 915 North Oak Street in Valdosta, Georgia. Deming was the carpenter for the Crescent and several other buildings in Valdosta. Deming's personal residence has been place on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation's 2020 Place in Peril list. During the visit we extensively documented the house so that in a way case scenario at least a digital version of the house will be preserved for posterity. An article we have prepared about the Deming house can be found here.

Sunday, 3 September 2019:

We have finished abstracting the deed books for both Irwin County and Worth County for the time period before 1874. The spreadsheet for the Irwin County deed books can be found here. The spreadsheet for the Worth County deed books can be found here. These deeds cover most of the area that now makes up modern Ben Hill County, Irwin County, Tift County, Turner County, Wilcox County, and Worth County, in addition to parts of Atkinson County, Berrien County, and Coffee County. Deeds involving enslaved people can be founds by search "slaves" in the search bar in the spreadsheet for Irwin County. No slave related deeds were re-recorded in Worth County after the multiple courthouse fires. 

Information from these deed books is in the process of being inputted into our 1870 property maps.

We have also updated our 1870 property maps with data from the 1870 Wilcox County tax list and from the 1874 Worth County tax list. The parts of these counties that were originally part of Dooly County can be found here. The parts of these counties that were originally part of Irwin County can be found here for the Worth County section, and here for the Wilcox County section.

Wednesday, 13 March 2019:

We have prepared a new version of Thannie Smith Wisenbaker's memories of Valdosta, Georgia from when she first came to the area in 1863. This version comes directly from her manuscript that was written in 1933. It can be found here. A map has also been made that depicts Valdosta circa the mid 1860s. That map can be found here.

Wednesday, 6 February 2019:

We have uploaded the maps we have created a property map of South Georgia depicting the area about 1870. These maps are a work in progress. The maps covering the area of modern Ben Hill County, Berrien County, Colquitt County, Echols County, Irwin County, Lanier County, Lowndes County, Tift County, and Turner County. The data is all searchable. It includes information from tax lists, sheriff sales, and deeds. A special thanks to our of volunteers who have helped out. The links to all of the maps can be found here.

Tuesday, 31 July 2018:

We have finished abstracting all of the deeds for Echols County, Georgia from before 1870. All of deed book B, which goes to 1876 has been abstracted. It is available here.

Tuesday, 24 July 2018:

We have finished creating a finding aid for the entire run to present of the The Huxford Genealogical Society Quarterly . The content of each issue has been abstracted. It is in a searchable spreadsheet and can be found here.

Friday, 18 May 2018:

We have a new article covering the events of the 1918 Lynching Rampage in Brooks County and Lowndes County, Georgia. The articles demonstrates some of the things the newspapers and later accounts got wrong. The lives of Mary Turner and the other lynching victims are fleshed out using genealogical techniques. The article also covers the trial of Leamon Wright alias "Shorty" Ford who was executed in 3 June 1921 for the murder of Hampton Smith and assaulting Bertha Simmons Smith.

Monday, 29 May 2017:

We have added a summary of all the deeds from Lowndes County, GA Deed Book A which covers from 1820 to 1860.

It can be found here.

Wednesday, 17 May 2017:

We have added uploaded the summary of Valdosta related deeds primarily from Deed Book B of Lowndes County, GA which covers the period of 1860 to 1868. Additional deeds from the time period for Valdosta, but found in other deed books.

It can be found here.

Friday, 3 March 2017

Our maps have had many locations added to them. We also have added two articles to our site.

"How to Identify Land Lots" it covers the various land survey systems used in the Wiregrass, with a focus upon the Georgia survey systems. The article aims to help people be able to identify the current locations of historic land lots from records.

"The Journal of Thomas Spalding" it covers the exploration of the Florida-Georgia line by a team of surveyors in early 1827. Many locations are mentioned.

Friday, 10 February 2017

Basic content has been added. The project is ready to start.

Saturday, 14 January 2017

Our website is online and content is slowly being added to it.

here.