Tennille was founded in 1837 as Franklinville for Sam O. Franklin, who gave land for the railroad right-of-way and the town's creation, and in 1842 its name was changed for Francis Tennille. In 1843 it became Station Number 13 on the Central Rail Road and Banking Company of Georgia line being built between Savannah and Macon. During the Civil War, fifteen companies of about 100 men each were formed in Washington County for Confederate or state service, and most left the county by rail from Tennille. Local women organized ladies' aid societies to raise money, make uniforms, bandages, and socks, collect blankets, and provide food and care to soldiers on passing trains, including the wounded and ill through train windows. During the March to the Sea, Confederate Lieutenant General William J. Hardee arrived in Tennille on Thursday, November 24, 1864, and conferred with Henry C. Wayne about efforts to slow the Federal advance. Wayne's outnumbered troops withdrew from defenses along the Oconee River and headed east by rail through Tennille shortly before Federals destroyed the tracks. About 9,000 Federal soldiers in two divisions of the 20th Corps, part of the Left Wing of Major General William T. Sherman's army and commanded by Brigadier Generals Nathaniel J. Jackson and John W. Geary, reached Tennille on November 26. They burned the depot, four large warehouses, and 342 bales of cotton. Geary's division tore up rails between Tennille and Davisboro, burned crossties, heated the rails, and twisted them around trees, producing deformed rails nicknamed bowties, neckties, and hairpins. The current depot was built in 1869. Most of Sherman's Left Wing marched east from Sandersville to Davisboro and other points by various routes before rejoining Louisville, while Sherman's Right Wing, about 28,000 men in the 15th and 17th Corps, passed just south of Tennille on November 27 and 28 after destroying track from the Oconee River east toward Tennille. On Sunday morning, November 27, Sherman rode from his headquarters at the Brown House in Sandersville to Tennille, where he transferred from the Left Wing to continue with the Right Wing and accompanied the 17th Corps of Union Major General Francis P. Blair, Jr. On Saturday, May 6, 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his party passed near Tennille on the way to Ball's Ferry, intending to cross the Oconee River before other events intervened.