Cuthbert was founded by European Americans in 1831 as seat of the newly formed Randolph County, after Indian Removal of the historic tribes to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. John Alfred Cuthbert, who represented Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1819 to 1821, is its namesake.[5][6] The county was developed for cotton plantations, the major commodity crop, and the rural area had a high proportion of enslaved African-American workers. Cuthbert was incorporated as a town in 1834 and as a city in 1859, serving as the trading center for the area. The Central of Georgia Railway arrived in Cuthbert in the 1850s, stimulating trade and growth, and providing a means of getting cotton and other crops to market.[7]
A few years before 2022, the city's hospital closed.[8]
Geography
Cuthbert is located at 31º46'15" North, 84º47'37" West (31.770726, -84.793517).[9] The city is located along U.S. Route 27 and U.S. Route 82. U.S. Route 27 passes east of the city leading north 57 miles (92 km) to Columbus and south 112 miles (180 km) to Tallahassee, Florida. U.S. Route 82 passes through the heart of the city leading east 45 miles (72 km) to Albany and west 26 miles (42 km) to Eufaula, Alabama. Other highways that pass through the city include Georgia State Route 266 and Georgia State Route 216.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 3.0 square miles (7.8 km2), all land.
Climate
Climate data for Cuthbert, Georgia, 1991–2020 normals, extremes 1904–2019
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 3,143 people, 1,194 households, and 839 families residing in the city.
Culture and historic district
Cuthbert is home to Andrew College (formerly Andrew Female College), a two-year private liberal arts college. The Fletcher Henderson Museum is being established in Cuthbert in honor of the 20th-century jazz musician and orchestra arranger.
The city has notable sites such as a Confederate Army cemetery, historical houses built in the 1800s, and the Fletcher Henderson home. In 2007 an announcement was made of a museum to be dedicated to late resident Lena Baker and issues of racial justice. Baker was an African-American maid who was convicted of capital murder in 1945 in the death of a white man; she was the only woman in Georgia to be executed by electric chair. She had claimed self-defense, and in 2005 the state posthumously pardoned her.[26] She was the subject of a 2001 biography and a 2008 feature film of the same name, The Lena Baker Story. (It was later retitled Hope and Redemption: The Lena Baker Story.)
Education
The Randolph County School District holds grades pre-school to grade twelve, and consists of two elementary, middle, and high schools.[27] The district has 88 full-time teachers and more than 1,530 students.[28]
Cuthbert is the site of Andrew College, a private, Methodist, liberal artsjunior college located a few blocks off the town square. The college is the ninth-oldest college in Georgia and is recognized as the second in the nation to grant degrees to women. During the Civil War, the college also distinguished itself as a Confederate hospital.
The Old Carnegie library was completed in 1918 and was originally used by the Kinchafoonee Regional Library System. The building is now used by the Randolph Chamber of Commerce.
Close-up of the statue honoring Confederate dead in Cuthbert's Main Square.
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