Morgan County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Wartburg
Year Organized: 1817
Square Miles: 522

Court House:

County Courthouse
Wartburg, TN 37887-0381

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Daniel Morgan (1736-1802), American Revolutionary War officer who commanded the troops that defeated the British at Cowpens, and US congressman from Virginia.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Morgan County

Created 1817 from Anderson and Roane counties; named in honor of Daniel Morgan (1736-1802), American Revolutionary War officer who commanded the troops that defeated the British at Cowpens, and US congressman from Virginia.

Morgan County was formed in 1840 from Anderson and Roane counties
(Acts of Tennessee 1817, Chapter 38).

There were fires at the Morgan County courthouse in 1826, 1870 and 1904.

Organized as Tennessee's thirty-ninth county by legislative act in 1817, Morgan County came primarily from territory removed from Roane County. The new county ran diagonally across the Cumberland Plateau from the eastern escarpment to the Kentucky line to the north. The county and the county seat, Montgomery, were named in honor of Revolutionary War hero General Daniel Morgan and Major Lemuel P. Montgomery, a Knoxville resident who was killed in the battle of Horseshoe Bend during the Creek Indian Wars of 1814.

The first permanent settlers, Samuel and Martin Hall, arrived soon after the Third Tellico Treaty opened the area to settlement in 1805. Many of the early settlers, like Samuel Hall, were Revolutionary War veterans who claimed land grants from North Carolina for military service. Early settlers made their homes in isolated mountain valleys where the soil was relatively fertile and game abundant. The soil and the topography of the county reduced the land suitable for agriculture to less than half of the 345,000 acres within the county's boundaries. Although two rivers, the Obed and the Emory, flow through the county, neither was suitable for transportation of goods. As a result, settlers engaged in subsistence farming, and settlement and development were extremely slow. The lack of significant agricultural production limited slavery in Morgan County. The 1820 census registered 46 slaves; by 1860 the number of slaves had grown to 120, distributed among 25 owners.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 522 square miles (1,353 km²), of which, 522 square miles (1,352 km²) of it is land and 0.4 square miles (1 km²) of it (0.07%) is water. The county is known for its rugged mountain terrain, and cold mountain streams and rivers. The Crab Orchard Mountains comprise a large area of the county, including many wilderness areas, Frozen Head State Park, and Lone Mountain State Forest.

Neighboring Counties:

Scott County (northeast)
Anderson County (east)
Roane County (south)
Cumberland County (southwest)
Fentress County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Oakdale	town	Incorporated Area
- Oliver Springs	town	Incorporated Area
- Sunbright	city	Incorporated Area
- Wartburg (County Seat)	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."