Editing Wayne County, Georgia (section)

===Early years===
Seventy years after [[General]] [[James Oglethorpe]] settled the colony of Georgia and 27 years after that colony became one of the 13 original states, Wayne County came into being. The county was named for [[Mad Anthony Wayne]] whose military career had made him a well-known hero. When he surprised the British garrison at Stony Point on July 15, 1779, he acquired the nickname "Mad" Anthony. From one siege to another, he was a vital member of General [[George Washington]]'s staff serving well under [[General]] [[Nathanael Greene]] and coming to Georgia in 1781 in his service during the American Revolution.

It was created by an Act of the Legislature in 1803 after the Wilkinson Treaty was signed with the Creek Indians on January 16, 1802, which ceded part of the Tallassee Country and part of the lands within the forks of the [[Oconee River|Oconee]] and [[Ocmulgee River|Ocmulgee]] Rivers to the United States. As originally laid out, the new county – the 28th Georgia county – was a long narrow strip of land approximately {{convert|100|mi|km}} in length but with varying measures of width along the way. It was {{convert|6|mi|km|spell=in}} as it stood just south of the [[Altamaha River]], {{convert|8|mi|km|spell=in}} wide near the Satilla and {{convert|5|mi|km|spell=in}} wide at a location about {{convert|27|mi|km}} south of the Altamaha. All counties organized prior to 1802 were [[headright]] counties – no surveys were ever made of those counties. It was found that under the [[headright]] system more land was given away than actually existed and this was the case for Wayne County. Although created in 1803, no valid lottery was done for the county until the Land Lottery Act of 1805. The 1805 Act divided the half million acres (2,000&nbsp;km<sup>2</sup>) of Wayne County, formed the [[Tallassee Strip]], and set the stage for the land lottery that would result in more formal settlement of the area. It is the second date, December 7, 1805, that the county chose to observe as the creation date. The area was not a popular one for lottery draws as the straws were drawn sight unseen and the winner was as likely to draw swampland as he was prime agricultural lots.