The land that is now Greene County was at one time inhabited by Indians who lived, hunted and fished, all along the Oconee and Ogeechee Rivers.  In 1773, the Cherokee, Creek and Chickasaw Indian Chiefs, signed a treaty in which they granted 2 million acres of land to Georgia.

Settlers from Virginia and a group of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from North Carolina, settled in the forks of the upper Ogeechee River and called their settlement Bethany.  This was the first settlement of what would later become Greene County.