Henry County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Paris
Year Organized: 1821
Square Miles: 562

Court House:

P.O. Box 7
County Courthouse
Paris, TN 38242-0007

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Patrick Henny (1736-1799), Virginia statesman, patriot and Revolutionary leader, member of the Virginia colonial and state legislatures and the Continental Congress, governor of Virginia.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Henry County

Created 1821 from Indian lands; named in honor of Patrick Henny (1736-1799), Virginia statesman, patriot and Revolutionary leader, member of the Virginia colonial and state legislatures and the Continental Congress, governor of Virginia.

Henry County was formed in 1821 from Indian lands. (Public Acts of Tennessee 1821, Chapter 32).

The Tennessee General Assembly created Henry County on November 7, 1821, and named it in honor of Revolutionary War patriot and statesman, Patrick Henry. Henry County became the gateway for the settlement of West Tennessee and beyond. The Henry County Court House was erected in 1823 in Paris, West Tennessee's oldest incorporated municipality. The county counted 31,115 residents in the 2000 census.

During the Civil War, military units, including the Fifth Tennessee Infantry Regiment, organized on the courthouse lawn. Henry County sent more than 2,500 volunteers to the Confederacy and earned the title "Volunteer County of the Volunteer State." In March 1862 General Ulysses S. Grant ordered four companies and a battery of artillery into Paris. The Union forces attacked an encampment of 400 Confederate soldiers but retreated toward Paris Landing after a short engagement. In October 1864 General Nathan Bedford Forrest began his Johnsonville campaign at Paris Landing, where he captured four Union gunboats, fourteen transports, twenty barges, twenty-six pieces of artillery, $6,700,000 worth of property, and 150 prisoners.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 593 square miles (1,537 km²), of which, 562 square miles (1,455 km²) of it is land and 32 square miles (82 km²) of it (5.35%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Calloway County, Kentucky (north)
Stewart County (northeast)
Benton County (southeast)
Carroll County (south)
Weakley County (west)
Graves County, Kentucky (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Cottage Grove	town	Incorporated Area
- Henry	town	Incorporated Area
- Paris (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Puryear	city	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."