Robertson County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Springfield
Year Organized: 1796
Square Miles: 476

Court House:

108 Courthouse
County Courthouse
Springfield, TN 37172

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of James Robertson (1742- 1814), pioneer, surveyor, soldier, founder of the Watauga Settlements and of Nashville, and state senator, known as "Father of Tennessee."

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Robertson County

Created 1796 from Tennessee and Sumner counties; named in honor of James Robertson (1742- 1814), pioneer, surveyor, soldier, founder of the Watauga Settlements and of Nashville, and state senator, known as "Father of Tennessee."

Robertson County was formed in 1796 from Tennessee and Sumner counties. (Acts of 1788 [North Carolina], Chapter 28).

The first white settlement in Robertson County was established by Thomas Kilgore, who came there in 1778 claiming land and building a station in 1779 near present-day Cross Plains. Prior to statehood this area was one of the counties in Mero District and called Tennessee County, located north of Nashville on the Kentucky border.

One of the first acts of the new state was to appropriate Tennessee County's name for its own use and to divide that county into Robertson and Montgomery Counties. Robertson County took its name from General James Robertson, often called the "Father of Middle Tennessee." Robertson County, established by the general assembly on April 9, 1796, covered 477 square miles and contained 304,640 acres.

The enabling act, which created the new county appointed commissioners and instructed them to establish the county government system and "to lay off, and appoint a place, the most centrical and convenient in the county of Robertson, for the purpose of erecting a courthouse prison and stocks." By 1798 Thomas Johnson had surveyed and laid out the county seat of Springfield, and the lots sold for eight dollars each.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 477 square miles (1,235 km²), of which, 476 square miles (1,234 km²) of it is land and 0 square miles (1 km²) of it (0.04%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Logan County, Kentucky (north)
Simpson County, Kentucky (northeast)
Sumner County (east)
Davidson County (south)
Cheatham County (southwest)
Montgomery County (west)
Todd County, Kentucky (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Adams	city	Incorporated Area
- Cedar Hill	city	Incorporated Area
- Coopertown	town	Incorporated Area
- Cross Plains	city	Incorporated Area
- Greenbrier	town	Incorporated Area
- Orlinda	city	Incorporated Area
- Ridgetop	city	Incorporated Area
- Springfield (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- White House	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."