Register, Georgia, a small turpentine community with a largely agricultural heritage, was originally settled in 1855 and was earlier known as Bengal, then Herschal. It grew into fruition at the turn of the twentieth century after Franklin Pierce Register moved to the area in 1894, became the town’s postmaster, and, with the help of his nephew J.L. Johnson, started naval store and mercantile enterprises that encouraged further settlement. The population grew to 400 when the intersecting Register & Glennville Railroad and a Central Georgia Railroad branch were completed in 1901, bringing daily passenger and freight trains, more workers and consumers, and a jumpstart to the local economy. The railroad also allowed the town’s high school students to travel daily to Statesboro to attend school. In 1904, the newly established Register School consolidated the rural Atwood, Adabelle, Union, and Sylvester schools, and Register High School opened in 1917 with its first teachers, Miss Effie Grande and Miss B.E. Lee, so older students could attend school locally. Other entrepreneurs, including William Corey, C.C. and J.E. Daughtry, N.W. Groover, A.B. Riggs, Norman Rushing, J.W. Holland, A.T. Williams, W.M. Holloway, J.S. Riggs, and G.W. Bowen, established grist mills, a general store, a bank, a drugstore, a cotton warehouse, a ginnery, a potato curing plant, garages and repair shops, and a theater. A.C. Williams was the blacksmith, and John J. Lane and H.H. Oliff were among the earliest doctors. By 1906, F.P. Register had become very wealthy and donated land for the town’s first Baptist and Methodist churches. Deans Hotel housed visitors for about a decade until it burned in 1919. By the 1920s, Register’s population reached 500 as cotton, cotton oil, and cotton seed boosted the economy. Although the decline of the railroad in the 1950s ended most commercial growth, local citizens secured incorporation as a city in 1982, and in 1992 the town began restoration efforts to preserve important parts of its history, including the structures that now house City Hall in the Historic Mill Creek Schoolhouse and the Community Center in the City Drug Store.