Robert Willingham maintains a very good local history group on Facebook, Vintage Wilkes County Georgia and the following history comes directly from that source:

…The community was first called Rehoboth, for the church. Not far away was a crossroads and that settlement was called…guess what?…Cross Roads, then Jackson’s Cross Roads, not to be confused with the west Wilkes Jackson’s Cross Roads near Clark’s Station Church, but it was. So when this east Wilkes spot became a post office in 1887, it was christened “Metasville” by first postmaster Thomas Henry Albea. The name derived from Almeda “Meta” Stephens Bigby (1846-1940), wife of B.O. Bigby, buggy maker. One of their daughters was also Meta. Another, Lula, was married to Robert T. Dunaway. The Bigbys are buried at Rehoboth.

Metasville was a busy place. Of course there was cotton. Tom Garrett and John A. Logan had gin houses and grist mills. The timber industry was beginning and would center at nearby Lovelace just across the Lincoln line. By the ‘teens the Washington & Lincolnton Railroad would chug through the area hauling freight.

But what made the place distinctive was a major mining operation just a stone’s throw away–pun groaningly intended! Gold prospectors had identified the place before the Civil war. It had been interesting though not profitable. In the 1870s, Georgia’s State Geologist declared that “specimens of native copper…are the finest I have seen from any section of the State.” The site was listed on Callaway’s 1877 map of Wilkes as the “McGruder” mine [correctly Magruder] and, throughout all its ownership changes, retained that name locally. A New York company came in Feb. 1879 to take charge and that August L. Barber put in the stamps. By October, under Capt. Carlyon, the mine was producing a fine yield. It sold in January 1880 to Chicago and New York investors. That October a huge rock crusher with thirty-ton-a-day capacity was set up. A bonanza of a 4 1/2 foot wide silver vein assaying at $150 to the ton was uncovered in April 1882. A year later proprietor George Jackson and superintendent Major Mills reported boom times though by the end of that August underground operations had ceased. Above ground work continued.

Work proceeded in fits and starts. By 1897 Fred Frank of Colorado had taken charge of the ore production and shipments rolled to St. Louis for smelting. By 1900 Carl Henrich, a native of Germany, and partner Christian Wahl of Milwaukee had assumed control, Henrich managing for the Seminole Mining Co. When the company struggled in March 1904, Henrich bought the property as sole owner. He was a European trained geologist, having worked extensively in the American West and Mexico. He served the Mineral development Company of New York as a supervisor in Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe as well.

Henrich and his wife Martha were childless and, after settling in Metasville adopted ten-year-old Ruby Arnett, daughter of Mrs. Dan Arnett of Lincoln Co. In 1908 Henrich left for Mexico but the mine continued to operate and, upon his return expanded its production. His ill health intervened and he died in Dec. 1917. The estate attempted to maintain the site, with the mine reopening in May 1918, but it could not hold on through diminished results and financial panic.

The economic vibrancy of Metasville may have passed, but the friendly, industrious people remain. And there’s still a lot of history in this hallowed ground.