McIntyre may be best known today as the hometown of Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, June “Mama June” Shannon, and family, but this historic community traces its origins to before the Civil War and has been a hub of the kaolin industry for generations. One of the earliest settlers of the area, in the 1840s, was Thomas McIntyre, who purchased a large tract of land near the community of Emmitt, 1½ miles east of Toomsboro. McIntyre was a native of Ireland who had come to America as an assistant of his uncle, one of the the contractors who built the Central of Georgia Railroad. In 1849 he was accidentally killed while doing repairs on the Oconee River bridge. His widow, Sarah Crowell Floyd McIntyre, a native of Washington County, traded her lands at Emmitt for a home in present-day McIntyre, and a new depot and post office were named McIntyre in 1859. The town was incorporated in 1910. -Abridged from Victor Davidson’s History of Wilkinson County.

The mercantile pictured above was built circa 1900, and the shopkeeper and his family lived upstairs. It’s in unusually good condition for a structure of this type and era.