Maxeys, GA

Maxeys is an Oglethorpe County town with 198 people at the 2020 census. The place began as Shanty, later Salmonsville, before taking the name of Jesse Maxey, the landowner who helped bring the Georgia Railroad through his property. The Athens branch reached the site in the 1840s, and the town was incorporated in 1907. That railroad history is still visible in the way Maxeys is described locally: a small town that grew around a line serving the surrounding agricultural country.

Maxeys also has an unusual educational institution tied tightly to the town's boundaries. The A. T. Brightwell Scholarship was created through Guy Brightwell's will in memory of his father and is available only to eligible residents of the prescribed Maxeys area; the city says applicants must meet residency and other requirements, and the parents must remain in the area for the scholarship's duration. The Brightwell family connection reaches back to a commercial fertilizer plant William B. Brightwell built in 1874. The local scoop is a railroad-founded Oglethorpe County town where one family's local history still shapes a college scholarship.