Wrightsboro Historic District

Wrightsboro is a rural historic district of about 800 acres in McDuffie County, Georgia, about seven miles north-northwest of Thomson. Founded in 1767 to serve a Quaker community, it was one of the last colonial towns in Georgia planned under royal authority and one of very few in the upland interior. The plan called for a T-shaped town with three squares and roughly 130 one-acre lots, enclosed by a commons, but it was never fully realized. Today the district holds scattered 19th- and early 20th-century buildings, including dwellings, a church and a general store, along with sunken dirt lanes and a church cemetery dating from the late 18th century. Most of its importance lies underground. Archaeological surveys beginning in 1981 recorded house sites, a meeting house site, mills, a blacksmith shop, a cotton gin and schools. The work showed that settlement spread out more than the plan intended, and it gives rare evidence of interior colonial life in Georgia.