Griswoldville was named for Samuel Griswold, who moved his iron foundries and cotton gin factories there from Clinton to be on the railroad. In 1864, a disastrous unrecorded battle was fought there when a force of old men and youths under Gen. Phillips, Capt. Robert H. Barron, and Lt. Henry Greaves, sent from Macon by Gen. Howell Cobb in an attempt to force the Federals from the city, fought a bloody diversionary action against Kilpatrick’s Union Cavalry, which then proceeded to Irwinton. Griswold’s factories and property were destroyed because he had made arms and ammunition for the Confederacy.