Cannon County, Tennessee

Cannon County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Woodbury
Year Organized: 1836
Square Miles: 266

Court House:

Courthouse Square
County Courthouse
Woodbury, TN 37190

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Newton Cannon (1781-1841), Creek War and War of 1812 soldier, Tennessee state senator, US congressman, first Whig governor of Tennessee.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Cannon County

Created 1836 from Rutherford, Smith and Warren counties; named in honor of Newton Cannon (1781-1841), Creek War and War of 1812 soldier, Tennessee state senator, US congressman, first Whig governor of Tennessee.

Cannon County was formed in 1836 from Rutherford, Smith and Warren counties. (Private Acts of Tennessee 1835-36, Chapter 33).

Cannon County was established on January 31, 1836, when the state legislature took portions of Rutherford, Smith, and Warren Counties to create the new county of Cannon, named in honor of Whig Governor Newton Cannon. (Two years later, the legislature added a portion of Wilson County, creating the present county boundaries.) The county's first settlers moved to present-day western Cannon County, around the Readyville and Bradyville areas, during the late 1790s. Hugh P. Brawley operated a grist mill at Brawley Fork as early as 1808.

The first village of any size, however, was Danville, which became the initial county seat. Its name was soon changed to Woodbury to honor Levi Woodbury, the Democratic secretary of the treasury. In 1836 Henry Trott and William Bates laid out new lots for Woodbury, and their plan adapted the earlier linear street plan of Danville into a central courthouse square plan. The present Cannon County Courthouse, built in 1935, features a striking Colonial Revival design by Nashville architect George Waller and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Other local properties in the National Register are the Houston House, a vernacular Greek Revival-style I-house associated with Democratic Congressman William C. Houston; the Adams House, the last remaining dormitory of the Baptist Female College and the later home of prominent physician Jesse F. Adams; the Wharton House, a vernacular Queen Anne dwelling from the late nineteenth century; and the Readyville Mill, a nineteenth- and twentieth-century grist mill complex.

Find more from the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: CANNON COUNTY

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 266 square miles (688 km²), of which, 266 square miles (688 km²) of it is land and 0 square miles (0 km²) of it (0.02%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

DeKalb County (northeast)
Warren County (east)
Coffee County (south)
Rutherford County (west)
Wilson County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Auburntown	town	Incorporated Area
- Woodbury (County Seat)	town	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."