Newnan, Georgia, United States

🇺🇸 Newnan is a city in Metro Atlanta and the county seat of Coweta County, Georgia, about 40 miles (64 km) south-west of Atlanta.

History Newnan was established as county seat of Coweta County (replacing the defunct town of Bullsboro) in 1828, and was named for North Carolinian General Daniel Newnan. It quickly became a prosperous magnet for lawyers, doctors, other professionals, and merchants. Much of Newnan's prosperity was due to its thriving cotton industry, which relied on slavery.

Newnan was largely untouched by the Civil War due to its status as a hospital city (for both Union and Confederate troops), and as a result still features much antebellum architecture. Celebrated architect Kennon Perry designed many of the town's 20th-century homes. During the Atlanta Campaign, Confederate cavalry defeated Union forces at the nearby Battle of Brown's Mill.

On April 23, 1899, a notorious lynching occurred after an African-American man by the name of Sam Hose (born Tom Wilkes) was accused of killing his boss, Alfred Cranford. Hose was abducted from police custody, paraded through Newnan, tortured, and burned alive just north of town by a lynch mob of roughly 2,000 citizens of Coweta County.

Newnan was also host to the trial in 1948 of wealthy landowner John Wallace, the first White man in the South to be condemned to death by the testimony of African Americans, two field hands who were made to help with burning the body of murdered white sharecropper Wilson Turner. These events were portrayed in the novel Murder in Coweta County. The film version starred Johnny Cash, Andy Griffith, and June Carter.

In 1968, Kmart opened a warehouse in Newnan, which slowly established it as a major hub for distribution in the area. Around this time, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters attempted to unionize the warehouse, but the attempt was defeated when the employees voted 329 to 201 in favor of remaining union-free. In 2015, the distribution centre closed with a loss of 164 jobs.

*2021 tornado * In the early morning hours of March 26, 2021, Newnan was directly impacted by a violent EF4 tornado, which caused substantial structural damage and indirectly killed one person. The tornado was one of the strongest on record in Georgia since 1950, and directly impacted the historic downtown area. Newnan High School will be re-built after sustaining serious damage.

Geography Newnan is located in the centre of Coweta County. U.S. Route 29 passes through the centre of the city, leading north-east 13 miles (21 km) to Palmetto and south 7 miles (11 km) to Moreland. Interstate 85 passes through the eastern side of the city, with access from exits 41, 44, and 47. I-85 leads north-east 40 miles (64 km) to downtown Atlanta and south-west 125 miles (201 km) to Montgomery, Alabama. U.S. Route 27A leads north-west from the centre of Newnan 22 miles (35 km) to Carrollton.

According to the United States Census Bureau, Newnan has a total area of 18.6 square miles (48.3 km²), of which 0.35 square miles (0.9 km²), or 1.88%, is covered by water.

Arts and culture The city is home to one of the few Georgia counties with a museum that focuses mainly on African-American history. The Coweta County African American Heritage Museum and Research Center, or Caswell House, was opened in July 2003 in a donated mill village house once owned by Ruby Caswell. The museum sits on Farmer Street on an old, unmarked slave cemetery. It has collected hundreds of family genealogical records by interviewing residents and going through the census records. The museum also houses the Coweta Census Indexes from 1870 to 1920.

The first Black library in the county was the Sara Fisher Brown Library. Built in the 1950s, the library has since been converted into the Community Action For Improvement Center.

The Farmer Street Cemetery is the largest slave cemetery in the South, and may be the largest undisturbed one in the nation. It is within the city limits of Newnan.

Education Coweta County School District The Coweta County School District holds preschool to grade 12, and consists of 19 elementary schools, seven middle schools, and three high schools. The district has 1,164 full-time teachers and over 18,389 students.

Elementary schools • Arbor Springs Elementary • Arnco-Sargent Elementary • Atkinson Elementary • Brooks Elementary • Canongate Elementary • Eastside Elementary • Elm Street Elementary • Grantville Elementary • Jefferson Parkway Elementary • Moreland Elementary • Newnan Crossing Elementary • Northside Elementary • Poplar Road Elementary • Ruth Hill Elementary • Thomas Crossroads Elementary • Western Elementary • Welch Elementary • White Oak Elementary • Willis Road Elementary • The Heritage School (private) • Trinity Christian School (private); Middle schools • Arnall Middle School • Blake Bass Middle School • East Coweta Middle School • Evans Middle School • Lee Middle School • Madras Middle School • Smokey Road Middle School • The Heritage School (private) • Trinity Christian School (private) • Odyssey Charter School; High schools • Newnan High School • East Coweta High School • Northgate High School • Central Educational Center (Chartered Coweta County School System School) • The Pentecostal Church of God Christian Academy (private) • The Heritage School (private) • Trinity Christian School (private)

Education: University Mercer University has a regional academic centre in Newnan. The centre opened in 2010, and offers programs through the university's College of Continuing and Professional Studies.

The University of West Georgia has a campus located in Newnan, near downtown. This campus currently has two undergraduate programs - bachelor of science in nursing and early childhood education.

Newnan is also home to a campus of West Georgia Technical College.

College Temple, a non-sectarian women's school, operated during the period of 1854-1888.

Transport: Road • Interstate 85 • Outer Perimeter • State Route 34 • State Route 34 Bypass • State Route 16 • State Route 70 • Lower Fayetteville Road • Newnan Crossing Boulevard East • Newnan Crossing Bypass • U.S. Route 29 • U.S. Route 27 Alternate

Pedestrians and cycling • LINC

Transport: Air • Newnan–Coweta County Airport provides chartered air service and flight training.

Railroads Until the mid-1950s the Central of Georgia operated two trains daily in each direction, through Newnan from Atlanta to Columbus, in its Man O' War service. The Central continued a single Man O' War train until 1971 when Amtrak took over most interstate passenger service. Until 1970, the city was a stop on the Southern Railway's Crescent from New Orleans to New York City, via Atlanta. Into the mid-1960s, the Southern's Crescent and Piedmont Limited made stops in both directions in Newnan.