Hahira, Georgia

History

According to legend, the town of Hahira was named after a local cotton plantation. The planter was said to have named his estate after a West African village, Hairaairee, which was described to him by an English traveler. The name may be derived from Pi-HaHiroth, a place mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. According to a local legend, the name originated with a locomotive engineer called Hira, who was hailed by friends with, "Hey, Hira."

The Georgia General Assembly incorporated Hahira in 1891, with Henry Briggs Lawson serving as the first mayor until 1907. By the time of its incorporation, several stores had already been established due to an influx of residents in the mid-1880s. In 1904, a bank was opened, followed by a newspaper in 1906. Prior to 1904, there was one practicing doctor in the town during the 1890s.

As a predominantly agricultural area, Hahira residents largely relied on their own vegetable gardens, raised hogs for meat, and owned milk cows. The primary cash crop was cotton, which remained so until the early 1920s when a Boll weevil infestation devastated the crop. Subsequently, tobacco became the main source of income for farmers despite traditionally only been grown in Virginia and North Carolina.

From the History section of Hahira, Georgia on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.