Stewart County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Dover
Year Organized: 1803
Square Miles: 458

Court House:

P.O. Box 487
County Courthouse
Dover, TN 37058-0487

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Duncan Stewart (1752-1815), member of the North Carolina legislature, early settler, Tennessee state senator, surveyor-general and lieutenant governor of the Mississippi Territory.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Stewart County

Created 1803 from Montgomery County; named in honor of Duncan Stewart (1752-1815), member of the North Carolina legislature, early settler, Tennessee state senator, surveyor-general and lieutenant governor of the Mississippi Territory.

Stewart County was formed in 1803 from Montgomery County
(Acts of Tennessee 1803, Chapter 68).

There was a fire at the Stewart County courthouse in 1862.

Created in 1803 from Montgomery County, Stewart County is named for an early pioneer and speculator, Duncan Stewart. Originally inhabited by nomadic hunters and mound builders, the area received white settlers in the 1780s, as Revolutionary War veterans arrived to claim land grants. The fertile bottomland attracted immediate interest, but the area's substantial iron deposits also drew attention. Several factors, including the location of deposits between the easily navigable Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, the availability of slave labor to operate the furnaces, and timber for fuel, produced a thriving iron industry that lasted for over a century.

The county's boundary lines have changed repeatedly. Today, the county encompasses 458 square miles; its population in 2000 was 12,370, representing a 30 percent increase since 1990. State and federal agencies control over 44 percent of the land in the county. Modern highways have replaced the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers as the primary transportation arteries. A Cumberland City ferry is the last remnant of a service rendered obsolete by the construction of bridges throughout the county. However, many place names indicate the county's geography and cultural history: Tobaccoport, Bumpus Mills, Big Rock, Bear Springs, Model, Bellwood, Leatherwood, Indian Mound, and Cumberland City.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 493 square miles (1,277 km²), of which, 458 square miles (1,187 km²) of it is land and 35 square miles (90 km²) of it (7.04%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Trigg County, Kentucky (north)
Christian County, Kentucky (northeast)
Montgomery County (east)
Houston County (south)
Benton County (southwest)
Henry County (west)
Calloway County, Kentucky (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Cumberland City	town	Incorporated Area
- Dover (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."