Emanuel County, first designated in 1812, has had it boundaries shifted, divided, realigned, and feuded over to a confusing degree.  Its present shape occupies land once belonging to Washington and Effingham counties. At the time of its creation, Emanuel County was designated from lands already designated as Bulloch and Montgomery counties.  Later, parts of Jenkins, Johnson, and Toombs counties were taken from original Emanuel County.  Emanuel County was the thirty-ninth county created.

As late as 1857 two neighbors in the town of Adrian were competing to see which could sell the government a landing site for a new bridge over the Ohoopee River.  When County Commissioner Burel Kea made the sale, his neighbor Joe Hutcheson refused to live in the same county with him.  Hutcheson persuaded the legislative delegation to change the county line, making it run a zig-zag course through Adrian so Hutcheson could live in Johnson County.  Another neighbor, Hardy Thigpen, could then boast (or complain, as it suited him) that he would feed his horses in Treutlen County, sleep in Emanuel County, and eat his own dinner in Johnson County without leaving home.

 

The county is named for David Emanuel, a Revolutionary War soldier who had settled a few miles to the northeast in Burke County and was later Georgia’s first and only Jewish governor.  Swainsboro, the county seat, was incorporated in 1814 and named for a local pioneer family, the Swains from South Carolina.  A generation later, residents had the name changed to Paris, but after only ten years they petitioned for a return to the original name. 

 

At the northern extreme of Emanuel County is the route of the Old Savannah Road which evolved from an Indian path to a settler's trading route and in 1777 was opened to wagon traffic by the new State of Georgia.  It was part of the Savannah-to-Milledgeville route along which settlers to middle and western Georgia first traveled.  Parts of its route have been incorporated in modern highways.

 

This county has had five consecutive courthouses destroyed by fire – in 1841, 1855, 1857, 1919 and 1938.