[3] It was named for the John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville,[4] who as heir to one of the eight original Lords Proprietors of the Province of Carolina, claimed one eighth of the land granted in the charter of 1665.

The claim was established as consisting of approximately the northern half of North Carolina, and this territory came to be known as the Granville District, also known as Oxford.

Once the natives were defeated in the Tuscarora War, Virginia farmers and their families settled Granville County, where they concentrated on tobacco as a commodity crop.

By the start of the Civil War, Granville planters worked more than 10,000 slaves on their farms, at a time when total county population was 23,396.

Additionally, the bright leaf tobacco crop proved a successful agricultural product for Granville County.

According to historian William S. Powell, Granville has remained a top tobacco-producing county in North Carolina for several decades.

By the late 1800s and early 1900s, Oxford had become a thriving town with new industries, schools, literary institutions, and orphanages, due to jobs created by the bright tobacco crop.

An armed mob of masked men stormed into the county jail, forcing the jailer to give them the keys.

They took out John Brodie and Shadrack Hester, two African-American men charged with murdering a local white man.

[7] During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Granville County played a pivotal role as tobacco supplier for the southeast United States.

In August 1941, the U.S. federal government beginning planning for the development of a military facility in southern Granville County, motivated partly by its proximity to a rail line.

Following the United States' entry into World War II that December, planning hastened and in January 1942 the government began ordered locals to vacate their land.

The government ultimately evicted between 400 to 500 families and razed most of their homes and agricultural buildings to make way for a U.S. Army camp.

The Granville County Commissioners are Timothy Karan(chair), Jimmy Gooch(Vice-chair), Zelodis Jay, Rob Williford, Sue Hinman, Tony Cozart and Russ May.

The Granville County Courthouse, of Greek Revival architecture,[23] was built in 1840[24] and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.