The Georgia State Penitentiary opened in February 1817. On 15 October 1937 the "State Pen" was moved to Reidsville. During the Civil War an armory operated at the penitentiary and on 20 November 1864 it burned.

The Penitentiary is located at Milledgeville. The outer walls of the Penitentiary are made of brick, averaging twenty feet in height, by two and a half feet thick, containing within the walls two and a half acres. The cells, or prison proper, are contained in a three-story granite building, two hundred feet long by thirty feet broad. They are on each side, and divided into four wards, designated by the letters A, B, C, and D. These cells are numbered on the doors, beginning in each ward at No. 1, and rising until all are numbered in each respective ward. The occupants are also numbered, corresponding with the letter of the ward to which they belong. The present workshops were constructed in 1844. They are built of brick, one story high, of nine feet pitch, with jointed sheathing, and covered with shingles. The form at its common centre is that of an octagon, with three of its angles cut to a straight line, leaving five angles of thirty feet each, which angles being all open, they present so many openings into as many shops, each one hundred and fifty feet long, bu thirty broad. There is in the inclosure a two-story building of brick, forty feet square, in which are apartments for the sick, female convicts, etc.¹

1850 Federal Census, Baldwin County, Penitentiary of Georgia

1860 Federal Census, Baldwin County, Penitentiary of Georgia (partial)

Inmates at Prison Farm in Milledgeville, 1903

1. Historical Collections of Georgia, Rev. George White, New York 1855

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