Hawkins County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Rogersville
Year Organized: 1786
Square Miles: 487

Court House:

150 Washington Street
County Courthouse
Rogersville, TN 37857-3365

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Benjamin Hawkins (1754-1818), member of the North Carolina legislature and the Continental Congress, US senator, agent for the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Hawkins County

Created 1786 from Sullivan County; named in honor of Benjamin Hawkins (1754-1818), member of the North Carolina legislature and the Continental Congress, US senator, agent for the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw.

Hawkins County was formed in 1786 from Sullivan County (Acts of Tennessee 1786, Chapter 34).

There was a fire at the Hawkins County courthouse in 1863.

One of the oldest Tennessee counties, Hawkins County was first established as a separate North Carolina county on January 6, 1787, when the state legislature divided Sullivan County, North Carolina. The original county was quite large, extending from the North Fork of the Holston River southwestwardly to the "Big Suck" near present-day Chattanooga. Other counties, or parts of counties, later created from Hawkins include Hancock, Grainger, Jefferson, Knox, Roane, Meigs, and Hamilton. Prior to its creation by North Carolina, the county was Spencer County, State of Franklin.

The act creating Hawkins County empowered seven commissioners to select a central place for the county seat, where a courthouse, prison, and stocks would be built and to levy a tax for the support of local government. The first meeting of the commissioners took place at the home of Thomas Gibbons on Big Creek on June 4, 1787, at which time Joseph Rogers's land on Crockett's Creek was selected as the location for the county seat. During the summer of 1787 the courthouse, jail, and stocks were erected, and the little community took the name Hawkins Court House. The first elected county officials were John Hunt, sheriff; William Marshall, register; and Thomas Hutchins, clerk. Marshall and Nathaniel Henderson were elected the first representatives to the North Carolina House of Commons, and Thomas Amis was elected the first senator to represent the new county in the legislative assembly.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 500 square miles (1,294 km²), of which, 487 square miles (1,260 km²) of it is land and 13 square miles (34 km²) of it (2.60%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Lee County, Virginia (north)
Sullivan County (east)
Greene County (south)
Hamblen County and Grainger County (southwest)
Hancock County (west)
Scott County, Virginia (northeast)

Cities and Towns:

- Bulls Gap	town	Incorporated Area
- Church Hill	city	Incorporated Area
- Mount Carmel	town	Incorporated Area
- Rogersville (County Seat)	town	Incorporated Area
- Surgoinsville	town	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

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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."