Warren County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: McMinnville
Year Organized: 1807
Square Miles: 433

Court House:

201 Locust Street, Suite 1
County Courthouse
McMinnville, TN 37110-0000

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Joseph Warren (1741-1775), Revolutionary War officer who sent Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride to Lexington in 1775, and who was killed at Bunker Hill.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Warren County

Created 1807 from White, Jackson, Smith counties and Indian lands; named in honor of Joseph Warren (1741-1775), Revolutionary War officer who sent Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride to Lexington in 1775, and who was killed at Bunker Hill.

Warren County was formed in 1807 from Jackson, Smith & White counties and Indian lands. (Acts of Tennessee 1807, Chapter 28).

The Tennessee General Assembly established Warren County on November 26, 1807; it was the thirtieth county created in Tennessee. Settlers came to the area as early as 1800, and the new county was originally that portion of White County (created in 1806) lying south of the Caney Fork River along the Highland Rim with portions on the Cumberland Plateau on the east and in the Central Basin on the west. Warren County was organized in February 1808, and in March 1810 the county court appointed commissioners to purchase a site for a county seat to be called McMinnville.

Warren County was named for General Joseph Warren, the first general killed in the War of Independence. McMinnville was named for Joseph McMinn, who was speaker of the Tennessee State Senate at the time the county was formed; later he served as one of the state's outstanding governors. Settlement continued at a rapid pace, and in 1810 Warren County contained 5,725 people; by 1830 it had grown to 15,351.

At the time of its creation, the county contained some 900 square miles, but this area was reduced to approximately 433 square miles from 1836 to 1844 by the creation of Cannon, Coffee, DeKalb, Van Buren, and Grundy Counties. The Tennessee State Constitution of 1834 provided that, in the formation of new counties, no county boundary could be closer than twelve miles from the county seat of the former county from which the new county was to be formed. Each of the new counties established their boundaries exactly twelve miles from McMinnville, with the result that by 1844 Warren County had acquired its distinctive round shape and its nickname, "the round county."

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 434 square miles (1,124 km²), of which, 433 square miles (1,121 km²) of it is land and 1 square miles (4 km²) of it (0.32%) is water.

Hubbard's Cave, the largest gray bat hibernaculum in Tennessee with over 100,000 bats, is located in the county.

Neighboring Counties:

DeKalb County (north)
White County (northeast)
Van Buren County (east)
Sequatchie County (southeast)
Grundy County (south)
Coffee County (southwest)
Cannon County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Centertown	town	Incorporated Area
- McMinnville (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area
- Morrison	town	Incorporated Area
- Viola	town	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."