The Wrightsborough Quaker colony began with Joseph Maddock. Maddock and a group of Quakers in North Carolina became concerned with the government of Governor William Tryon. Many North Carolinians had begun to resist the repressive taxes of the Tryon colonial government and formed a group known as the 'Regulators'. Some Quakers took part in the movement and while Maddock did not, his mill on the Eno River near Hillsborough, NC was used as a Regulator meeting place because there was no liquor available there. Because of this association, Maddock and other Quakers were repressed by Tryon and his Sheriff Fanning. Many of their lands were quietly confiscated and added to the personal property of persons in the colonial government after the Quakers left the area. Maddock and Jonathan Sell, another prominent Quaker, decided to leave. In 1767 they applied for grants of land in Georgia on behalf of 40 Quaker families. 12,000 acres of land was reserved for them until Feb. 1, 1768 south of present day Thomson on Briar Creek. Joseph Maddock built a mill on this land on Sweetwater Creek. When more Quakers than anticipated arrived Maddock, Sell and Thomas Watson (ancestor of Senator Watson) applied for an additional grant. In 1770 the additional land was granted on the site of Wrightsborough to the northwest of Thomson.
The Quaker colonists passed through a difficult time during the Revolutionary War; since they (for the most part) refused to fight for either side, they suffered from both sides and from outlaws and Indian attacks. In the early 1800's most of the Quakers found it increasingly difficult to compete against the slave labor employed by others. With the exception of a few families (e.g. some of the Clouds and Watsons) they left for new lands in the newly opened Ohio territory. Those staying behind apparently dropped their Quaker affiliation.