Elisabethtal was founded in 1818 on the site where the village of Samachveti once stood (today called Asureti, Tetritskaro municipality). The name of the village comes from its founding day, the 19 November, the day of St. Elisabeth. The German settlers received support to establish the village. The government obliged the Georgian soldiers stationed in neighbouring Manglisi to help the Germans build their houses free of charge. The inhabitants of neighbouring villages also brought building materials with oxcarts and helped plough the farmland. The famous German scientist and traveller Moritz Wagner (1813–1887) visited Elisabethtal during his trip to the Caucasus between 1843 and 1846. He wrote of “small, but neat and solid houses, inside even furnished homely with tiled stove, pendulum clock and velvet armchairs, everything clean and cosy, like back home in the Black Forest and on the Neckar.”