Newnan, GA news and local guide

Because it served as a hospital city for both Union and Confederate troops, Newnan was largely untouched by the Civil War and still has much antebellum architecture. During the Atlanta campaign, Confederate cavalry defeated Union forces at the nearby Battle of Brown's Mill. In the early 20th century the architect Kennon Perry designed many of the town's homes. On April 23, 1899, Sam Hose, a Black man accused of killing his employer, was taken from police custody, tortured and burned alive north of town by a lynch mob of about 2,000 people. In 1948 Newnan was the site of the trial of the landowner John Wallace, the first white man in the South to be sentenced to death on the testimony of African Americans, in the murder of a white sharecropper, a case retold in the book Murder in Coweta County. In 1968 Kmart opened a warehouse in Newnan, which grew into a major distribution hub. Sources Wikipedia: Newnan, Georgia