De Kalb County, Tennessee

De Kalb County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Smithville
Year Organized: 1837
Square Miles: 305

Court House:

1 Public Square
County Courthouse
Smithville, TN 37166-1443

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Johann DeKalb (1721-1780), German baron who came with Lafayette to America in 1777, became a Revolutionary army officer and was killed in action at Camden.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of DeKalb County

Created 1837 from Franklin, Cannon, Jackson and White counties; named in honor of Johann DeKalb (1721-1780), German baron who came with Lafayette to America in 1777, became a Revolutionary army officer and was killed in action at Camden.

DeKalb County was formed in 1837 from Cannon, Jackson and White counties. (Acts of Tennessee 1839-40, Chapter 2).

The Tennessee General Assembly established DeKalb County in December 1837 and named it in honor of Johann DeKalb, a German general who died while serving in the American Revolution. The county seat was located on fifty acres donated by Bernard Richardson and named Smithville by the general assembly in honor of Samuel Granville Smith of Jackson County, a state senator and Tennessee's secretary of state. Smithville's population in 1998 was 4,229. A widely attended Fiddler's Jamboree has been held annually on the square on the July Fourth weekend since 1971.

Liberty is the oldest town in DeKalb County. By 1807 it had been laid off in half-acre lots by its founder, Adam Dale, DeKalb County's first settler, who arrived in 1797 from Maryland. Dale, along with John and Leonard Fite and probably Stephen Robinson, cut a road into the Liberty area from Nashville. In 1805 Dale's friends and relatives followed these groundbreakers to the area.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 329 square miles (852 km²), of which, 305 square miles (789 km²) of it is land and 24 square miles (63 km²) of it (7.42%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Putnam County (northeast)
White County (east)
Warren County (south)
Cannon County (southwest)
Wilson County (west)
Smith County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Alexandria	town	Incorporated Area
- Dowelltown	town	Incorporated Area
- Liberty	town	Incorporated Area
- Smithville (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resource Guide

Counties: US Map

The history of our nation can be seen as a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names we've given our counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of our 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."

Penn Foster High School

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