Maury County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Columbia
Year Organized: 1807
Square Miles: 613

Court House:

41 Public Square
County Courthouse
Columbia, TN 38401-3319

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Abram Poindexter Maury, Sr. (1766-1825), pioneer, farmer, lawyer, civil engineer who laid out the town of Franklin in the late 1790s, commissioner of the town, state senator.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Maury County

Created 1807 from Williamson County and Indian lands; named in honor of Abram Poindexter Maury, Sr. (1766-1825), pioneer, farmer, lawyer, civil engineer who laid out the town of Franklin in the late 1790s, commissioner of the town, state senator.

Maury County was formed in 1807 from Williamson County and Indian lands. (Acts of Tennessee 1807, Chapter 94).

The Tennessee General Assembly established Maury County on November 16, 1807. Taken from parts of Williamson and Dickson Counties, the new county was named for Abram Maury, a state senator from Williamson County.

Columbia, the county seat, was laid out and lots sold in 1808. At that time, the town consisted of four square blocks. In 1996 Columbia's city limits stretched 15.5 miles from Spring Hill to Mt. Pleasant, towns that were settled at the same time as Columbia. Columbia was incorporated in 1817, Mt. Pleasant in 1824, and Spring Hill in 1901.

From the beginning the rich soil of Maury County attracted settlers, who planted cotton and tobacco and raised livestock. The Polk family plantations at Ashwood became regionally famous for their rich array of agricultural products. After the Civil War farmers shifted from cotton to grain and livestock raising; the Cleburne Jersey Farm near Spring Hill became nationally known for its dairy production and sold Jersey cattle to many other farms in the region. During these years, however, tobacco became the county's largest cash crop. In the twentieth century progressive agricultural practices were demonstrated and made popular through programs at the Middle Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station near Spring Hill. Today Maury County leads the state in the production of beef cattle and remains a major producer of corn, wheat, grain, sorghum, and cotton.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 616 square miles (1,594 km²), of which, 613 square miles (1,587 km²) of it is land and 3 square miles (7 km²) of it (0.43%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Williamson County (north)
Marshall County (east)
Giles County (south)
Lawrence County (southwest)
Lewis County (west)
Hickman County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Columbia (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Mount Pleasant	city	Incorporated Area
- Spring Hill	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."