White County, Tennessee

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

County Seat: Sparta
Year Organized: 1806
Square Miles: 377

Court House:

1 East Bockman Way
County Courthouse
Sparta, TN 38583-2049

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of John White (1751-1846), Revolutionary War soldier who saw action at Brandywine, Germantown and Stony Point, and was the first white settler of White County.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of White County

Created 1806 from Jackson and Smith counties; named in honor of John White (1751-1846), Revolutionary War soldier who saw action at Brandywine, Germantown and Stony Point, and was the first white settler of White County.

White County was formed in 1806 from Jackson and Smith counties
(Acts of Tennessee 1806, Chapter 36).

The Tennessee General Assembly established White County on September 11, 1806, from a part of Smith County and named the new county for John White, one of the first settlers in the area. The Knowels, Rascos, and Swindells were among other early settlers; John H. Howell brought his family from North Carolina to a cave near Burgess Falls.

White County's first court was held at the house of Joseph Terry at Rock Island, now in Warren County. In 1809 the state legislature authorized the establishment of a county seat at Sparta. Commissioners Thomas Bounds, Benjamin Weaver, Aaron England, Turner Lane, James Fulkerson, Alexander Lowry, and Nicholas Gillentine laid out the town. The first courthouse was constructed of logs in 1810; in that same year, Eli Sims, a native of Ireland, came to White County. He established the county's first cotton gin, and in 1824 he and his slaves built a two-story brick house that still stands outside of Sparta and is recognized as the county's first brick dwelling.

White County furnished soldiers for the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. In addition to the men who served on both sides of the Civil War, aggressive partisan units on both sides settled old scores and kept the Upper Cumberland in turmoil. The most notorious of these partisans was Samuel W. "Champ" Ferguson. General Braxton Bragg also moved his army through Sparta on his way to Kentucky in 1862.

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

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 379 square miles (983 km²), of which, 377 square miles (975 km²) of it is land and 3 square miles (7 km²) of it (0.74%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Putnam County (North)
Cumberland County (East)
Bledsoe County (Southeast)
Van Buren County (South)
Warren County (Southwest)
DeKalb County (West)

Cities and Towns:

- Doyle	town	Incorporated Area
- Sparta (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."