Burke County
Waynesboro, Burke County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
Burke County. Burke County, an original county, was created by the Const. of Feb. 5, 1777, from Creek Cession of May 30, 1733. In 1758, it had been organized as the Parish of St. George. Originally, it contained parts of Jefferson, Jenkins and Screven Counties. Burke County was named for Edmund Burke (1729-1797), writer, member of Parliament and eloquent defender of the cause of the colonies in America. Lemuel Lanier was commissioned Sheriff, Jan. 27, 1778. Thos. Burton, David Lewis, Nathan Hooker, Dan. McMurphy became Tax Collectors in 1778. Thos. Lewis, Jr., was made Surveyor Feb. 17, 1782. In 1787 John Davies was commissioned Clerk of Courts and John Duhart, Coroner. 017-6 GEORGIA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 1956
Erected by Georgia Historical Commission
The Story
One of Georgia's original counties, Burke was created in 1777 from lands ceded by the Creeks, having earlier been organized as the colonial Parish of St. George. It was named for Edmund Burke, the British statesman and orator whose speeches in Parliament famously defended the American colonies' grievances. The marker lists the county's earliest sheriffs, tax collectors, and clerks from the 1770s and 1780s.
Why it matters
The county honors a transatlantic voice for the colonial cause and reflects how Revolutionary Georgia reorganized its old parish system into counties.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This is one of Georgia's original counties, and its roots reach back before the Revolution into the colony's earliest organization. The land here traces to a Creek cession from the 1730s, the era when Georgia was just being founded as the last of the thirteen colonies, and it was first governed not as a county but as a parish—St. George's—under the Church-of-England framework the colony borrowed from English custom.
That parish system is a clue to how young colonial Georgia actually worked. Before there were counties, there were parishes, blending religious and civil administration in a way that made perfect sense to eighteenth-century Britons. The shift from parish to county was more than a name change; it was Georgia remaking its government in a new, revolutionary key.
The county proper dates to 1777, established under an early state constitution while the Revolution raged. To draw new county lines and appoint new officers in the middle of a war for independence was itself an act of nation-building—a young state insisting on the ordinary business of self-government even as its future hung in the balance.
People & events
The name on this marker points across the Atlantic, to Edmund Burke, the British writer and member of Parliament who lived from 1729 to 1797. Burke never governed here, but he earned the honor another way: as one of the most eloquent voices in Parliament arguing that Britain should heed the American colonies' grievances rather than crush them.
There is a real poignancy in a Georgia county naming itself for a British statesman during a war against Britain. It captures something Americans of the era understood clearly—that many in Britain sympathized with the colonial cause, and that the fight was not against an entire people but against particular policies. Honoring Burke was a way of saying so in stone.
Closer to home, the marker lists the county's own first public servants across the 1770s and 1780s: a sheriff commissioned in 1778, a cluster of tax collectors that same year, a surveyor a few years later, and, by the late 1780s, a clerk of courts and a coroner. These names sketch a frontier community organizing itself step by step—law enforcement, then the collection of taxes, then the surveying of land and the keeping of records—the steady assembly of a working county in the first years of independence.
Its place in the American story
Burke County's name is a small monument to a big idea: that the American Revolution had friends inside the British system. Edmund Burke's speeches urging conciliation with the colonies are landmarks of political oratory, and a Georgia county carrying his name is a lasting reminder that the patriots saw their quarrel as one with a government's policies, not with everyone who spoke English.
The county's origins also illustrate a national pattern in miniature. Up and down the seaboard, revolutionary states were converting colonial-era institutions—here, an Anglican parish—into the county governments that still structure American life. Burke County is a clean example of that transformation from parish to county, old world to new.
And the list of early officers roots the lofty ideals in dirt-road reality. Independence had to be administered as well as declared, and these sheriffs, tax collectors, and clerks are the local face of that work. Their steady service is how a revolutionary abstraction became a functioning place people could live in.
If you visit
This landmark marker rewards a close read, because it is unusually rich for its size—an English statesman's name, a colonial parish, a wartime founding, and a roll of the county's earliest officials, all in a few lines. Slow down and take them in one at a time.
Standing here, let the ocean-spanning irony sink in: a Georgia county born in a war against Britain, proudly bearing the name of a British member of Parliament. It is a small, human detail that says more about the Revolution's true nature than many a battlefield does.
Make it a stop on a broader ramble through this corner of Georgia, where county-line markers like this one carry the region's Revolutionary and early-republic memory. Read the names of the first officers and picture the frontier community they served—then let the marker send you looking further into how a colonial parish became the county you're standing in.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Edmund Burke
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Burke County's 8 Governors
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Historic Burke County, the former St. George's Parish, claims eight Georgia governors by birth, residence, or marriage. Among them were Revolutionary figures like John Houstoun, Declaration signer Lyman Hall, and Edward Telfair, along with later leaders including Herschel V. Johnson—Stephen Douglas's 1860 running mate—and Progressive-era senator and governor Hoke Smith. Together their careers span more than a century of the state's political life.
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