Hancock County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Sneedville
Year Organized: 1844
Square Miles: 222

Court House:

PO Box 347
County Courthouse
Sneedville, TN 37869-0347

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of John Hancock (1737-1793), president of the Continental Congress, first signer of the Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary War militia officer, governor of Massachusetts.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Hancock County

Created 1844 from Hawkins and Claiborne counties; named in honor of John Hancock (1737-1793), president of the Continental Congress, first signer of the Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary War militia officer, governor of Massachusetts.

Hancock County was formed in 1844 from Claiborne and Hawkins counties. (Acts of Tennessee 1843-44, Chapter 71).

There were fires at the Hancock County courthouse in 1885 and 1930.

One of the earliest settlement areas in Tennessee is Hancock County. In a 1673 letter to John Richard of London, Abraham Wood reported James Needham and Gabriel Arthur's journey into the area: "Eight dayes jorny down this river lives a white people which have long beards and whiskers and weares clothing, and on some ye other rivers lives a hairey people." In 1784 John Sevier recorded in his journal that his party encountered white men in the same region and that they had been living there for some time. The word used to describe these people was "Melungeon," initially thought to be derived from the French word "melange," meaning mixture (as in mixed breed). The Melungeons spoke broken English and possessed English surnames but claimed to be Portuguese. Despite their insistence on their origins, the Scots-Irish settlers declared them "persons of color" and quickly confiscated their land. Denied access to legal recourse, education, or other advantages of citizenship, the Melungeons withdrew to the most isolated, least desirable mountain locales. Today, thousands of Appalachian people trace their ancestry to the Melungeons. The names most frequently associated with the Melungeons are Collins, Mullins, Goins, Gibson, Denham, Bowlin, and Sexton.

As Anglo-Europeans arrived in the area, the first settlers included Joseph Lamb, Jonas Lockmiller, John Ray, Enos Matthais, William McCully, and Daniel Slavins. The first settlers were joined by families with the following surnames: Greene, Purkey, Bray, Cantwell, Trent, Mitchell, Amis, Boulden, Anderson, Bryant, Campbell, McGhee, Mills, Ramsey, Winkler, Wilder, Jarvis, and Wallen. The earliest ministers were John Givens, Moses Williams, and Zachariah Seal. Initial settlement occurred in the area surrounding Greasy Rock, a large stone that protruded into a creek that ran into the Clinch River. The rock acquired its name because it was used by hunters to clean game.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 224 square miles (579 km²), of which 222 square miles (576 km²) is land and 1 square miles (3 km²) (0.54%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Lee County, Virginia (north)
Scott County, Virginia (northeast)
Hawkins County (east)
Grainger County (southwest)
Claiborne County (west)

Cities and Towns:

- Sneedville (County Seat)

town

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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