Perry County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Linden
Year Organized: 1819
Square Miles: 415

Court House:

P.O. Box 16
County Courthouse
Linden, TN 37096-0016

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Oliver Hazard Perry (1785- 1819), American War of 1812 naval officer who, after his flagship "Lawrence" was damaged continued the fight from the "Niagara," forcing the surrender of the British fleet.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Perry County

Created 1819 from Humphreys and Hickman counties; named in honor of Oliver Hazard Perry (1785- 1819), American War of 1812 naval officer who, after his flagship "Lawrence" was damaged continued the fight from the "Niagara," forcing the surrender of the British fleet.

Perry County was formed in 1819 from Hickman and Humphreys counties. (Acts of Tennessee 1819, Chapter 107).

There were fires at the Perry County courthouse in 1863 and 1928.

Created by an act of the Tennessee General Assembly on November 14, 1819, Perry County was named for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, a naval officer and hero of the War of 1812. The first quarterly sessions and circuit courts were held at the home of James Yates on Toms Creek. In 1821, the year following the county organization, the county seat was established at Perryville on the west bank of the Tennessee River, where it remained until 1846. At that time the county was divided, and the portion west of the Tennessee River became Decatur County. The new Perry County seat was located briefly at Harrisburg before moving to a permanent location in Linden in 1848. The Perry County Courthouse, a Colonial Revival design by Nashville architect C. K. Colley completed in 1928, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Some of the early communities developed as commercial centers. Farmers Valley, on the Buffalo River, included a post office, two stores, and a warehouse. Theodore, a hamlet on Hurricane Creek, presented a more industrial outlook with a wool-carding mill, a gristmill, and a sawmill. Beardstown, established in 1830 by George Beard, had a post office, two stores, a church, and a school. Britts Landing, established in 1839 on the east bank of the Tennessee River, developed as a thriving commercial center. The town's importance in the shipping of cotton, and later peanuts, continued until the 1880s. The scenic community of Flatwoods, established ca. 1844 by families from Halifax, North Carolina, was originally known as Whitaker's Bluff in honor of one of the founders. In 1871 the community was renamed Flatwoods. A center of commercial activity, the town contained several stores, a bank, a photography shop, a blacksmith shop, two doctors, and a school. Little remains of this once active community. Henry DeLobel, a French immigrant, established Lobelville in 1854. Today Lobelville (population of 915 in 2000) is comparable in size and population to Linden (population of 1,015 in 2000).

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 423 square miles (1,095 km²), of which, 415 square miles (1,075 km²) of it is land and 8 square miles (21 km²) of it (1.89%) is water. Perry County is bordered on the west by the Tennessee River (Kentucky Lake), and is bisected (north-south) by the Buffalo River.

Neighboring Counties:

Humphreys County (north)
Hickman County (northeast)
Lewis County (southeast)
Wayne County (south)
Decatur County (west)
Benton County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Linden (County Seat)	town	Incorporated Area
- Lobelville	city	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."