Hart County was created by the Legislature on Dec. 7, 1853 out of portions of Franklin and Elbert counties. It is the only county in Georgia named for a woman - Nancy Hart.
Nancy Hart and her husband, Benjamin Hart, obtained a 400 acre grant 25 miles S.E. from Hartwell in Colonial days and erected a log cabin home. During the Revolutionary War six Tories forced their way into the Hart home and demanded that Nancy cook a meal for them. She started cooking an old turkey, meanwhile sending her daughter to the spring to blow a conch shell for help. Detected slipping the third Tory rifle through a crack in the wall, Nancy killed one of the Tories and wounded another. Hart and several neighbors, coming to her rescue, wanted to shoot the five surviving Tories but Nancy insisted that they be hanged, and they were. Tradition has it that Nancy Hart served as a spy for Gen. Elijah Clarke, sometimes disguised as a man. The Indians respectfully called Nancy Hart "War Woman," giving that name to a creek adjacent to her cabin, which is memorialized in a State Part on State Highway Route 17.
Hart County's first officers elected in Feb, 1854 were Inferior Court Justices Henry F. Chandler, Micajah Carter, Clayton S. Webb, Daniel M. Johnson, James V. Richardson; Interior Court Clerk Frederic C. Stephenson, Ordinary James T. Jones, Superior Court Clerk Burrell Mitchell, Sheriff William Myers, Tax Receiver W.C. Davis, Tax Collector Richard Shirley, Surveyor John A. Cameron, Coroner Richmond Skelton and Treasurer Samuel White.
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