Putnam County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Cookeville
Year Organized: 1842
Square Miles: 401

Court House:

300 East Spring Street
County Courthouse
Cookeville, TN 38501-0220

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Israel Putnam (1718-1790), French and Indian War soldier and commander at the Revolutionary War battles of Bunker Hill and Long Island.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Putnam County

Created 1854 from Fentress, Jackson, Smith, White and Overton counties; named in honor of Israel Putnam (1718-1790), French and Indian War soldier and commander at the Revolutionary War battles of Bunker Hill and Long Island.

Putnam County was formed in 1854 from Fentress, Jackson, Overton, Smith and White counties (Acts of Tennessee 1842, Chapter 169; Acts of Tennessee 1854, Chapter 320 re-established Putnam County).

There were fires at the Putnam County courthouse in the 1860s and in 1898.

The Tennessee General Assembly first created Putnam County in 1842 from Jackson, Overton, Fentress, and White Counties, but an 1844 injunction charged that it violated state constitutional requirements. In 1854 the general assembly reestablished the county, although it was harried by boundary disputes for decades. The new county seat, Cookeville, was named after Richard F. Cooke, whose efforts were critical to the county's second attempt at creation. Putnam County's name honors Revolutionary War general Israel Putnam.

Putnam County is located in the Upper Cumberland region. It spreads across three major geographic divisions of Tennessee: the Cumberland Plateau, the Highland Rim, and the Central Basin. Most of the county falls in the Highland Rim. A principal early nineteenth-century east-west migration route, the Walton Road, passes through the length of Putnam County. Many families stopped at this point about midway between Knoxville and Nashville on their journey along the Walton Road. There they established small subsistence farms, growing corn and other crops in the generally poor soil. By 1860 the population had risen to 8,591, including 718 blacks and 33 Native Americans. Settlement halted during the Civil War, when Putnam County civilians were harassed by both Confederate and Unionist guerrilla attacks that destroyed farmland and homes

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 403 square miles (1,043 km²), of which, 401 square miles (1,039 km²) of it is land and 2 square miles (4 km²) of it (0.37%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Overton County (northeast)
Cumberland County (east)
White County (south)
DeKalb County (southwest)
Smith County (west)
Jackson County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Algood	town	Incorporated Area
- Baxter	town	Incorporated Area
- Cookeville (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Monterey	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."