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* The
Jim Cherry Museum is temporarily closed.
Before Fulton County, there was DeKalb County; before
Atlanta, there was Decatur.
Celebrating OUR history!
DeKalb was established as Georgia's 56th county and is situated
on a natural ridge that runs between Atlanta and Athens,
the Continental Divide. The southern boundary is the South
River and the northern boundary is the Hightower Trail,
a trading path used by Indians. The county has 269 square
miles. DeKalb was established from parts of Henry, Fayette
and Gwinnett Counties with the General Assembly of the State
of Georgia appointing five commissioners who picked land
lot 246 in the 15th militia district as the county site.
The county was named after Baron Johann de Kolb, a native
of Germany and self proclaimed baron who aided the colonists
in their fight for independence. The county seat land lot
246 was named for Stephen Decatur, a naval hero in the War
of 1812. DeKalb was already organized into militia districts
with justices of the Inferior Courts and justices of the
peace retained their offices. Captains of the militia districts
often served as judges and tax collectors for the districts
as well. Some of these early militia districts included
the Diamond District, the Browning District and the Shallowford
District. The City of Atlanta, in its infancy and until
1853 when Fulton County was created, was entirely in DeKalb
County.
The early settlers of DeKalb were of English, Scotch and
Irish descent coming from Virginia and the Carolinas, poor,
not highly educated but hardworking, small farmers living
in log cabins and owning few slaves, most of them owning
no slaves at all. The few DeKalb residents who did own slaves
had them to work cotton and food crops; very few households
had house servants. DeKalb was never a plantation system,
and in fact, the two DeKalb Delegates to the convention
on secession voted no on secession.
In July of 1864, DeKalb had its first taste of the war;
much of the battle of Atlanta actually took place in DeKalb
County along DeKalb Avenue.
Chief of the industries during the early years in DeKalb
were granite quarrying, farming, dairy farming and cotton
mills and grain mills. Land near the South River produced
1000 or more pounds of cotton per acre, and the county was
one of the largest milk producers in the southeast. Large
truck farms supplied vegetables throughout the region. Development
in DeKalb in the early years was along the rivers and along
the railroads from the county site, Decatur, east to Stone
Mountain and south east to Lithonia. The first three cities
were Decatur, Stone Mountain and Lithonia.
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