Originally settled by Revolutionary War hero and statesman General Solomon Wood, this land later passed to James Speir before 1835, and after Speir granted the Central of Georgia Railroad a right of way for tracks laid in 1841, a post office and depot grew up around Station Number 11. The settlement became known as Speir's Turnout for its side track, then was renamed Bartow in 1861 to honor Colonel Francis S. Bartow of Savannah, who was killed at the First Battle of Manassas, though many Civil War maps still called it Spiers. During the war, townspeople buried an unidentified Federal soldier brought there by train and also buried James Speir's two sons, Confederate casualties killed a year apart in Virginia and brought home by a family servant. On November 28, 1864, Union forces under Brigadier General Nathaniel J. Jackson, part of Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams's 20th Corps in Major General William T. Sherman's Left Wing, destroyed the railroad from Davisborough to Bartow by burning, warping, and twisting the rails, including those near Sandy Grove, the plantation home of Herschel V. Johnson, a former Georgia governor, U.S. senator, 1860 Democratic vice presidential nominee, opponent of secession, and wartime Confederate senator. That night Williams and the 20th Corps headquarters, Jackson's division, and Colonel Patrick H. Jones's brigade camped at Bartow near the depot; the next morning Williams departed, and by 1:00 p.m. the rest of Brigadier General John W. Geary's division and the 1st Michigan Engineers and Mechanics Regiment arrived with orders to destroy the railroad east to the Ogeechee River, while Sherman moved east just south of town with the 17th Corps on the old Savannah Road.