From Rogersville Review, Sesqui-Centennial Edition, November 26, 1936.  Transcribed by Billie McNamara from a typescript at the Stamps Library in 1996.

[Original] Editor’s Note:  The following article was written by the late Judge Hugh G. Kyle.

Hawkins County is of North Carolina lineage.  By an act of that state passed at its November session of 1786, when what is now Tennessee was a part of North Carolina, Hawkins County was created out of a portion of Sullivan County, and its boundaries were located and fixed by Chapter 34, of the Laws of North Carolina, as follows:

Acts of 1786 — Chapter No. 34 An Act Dividing the County of Sullivan

Whereas the extent of Sullivan County being 150 miles in length, the settlements thereof and different water courses in the same, render it inconvenient and troublesome to many of the inhabitants thereof to attend the courts and general elections, and other public meetings appointed therein:

1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That from and after the passing of this Act, the said County of Sullivan be divided in the following manner, beginning where the boundary line between the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of North Carolina crosses the North Fork of Holston River, thence down said fork to its junction with the main Holston River, thence across said river due south to the top of Bayes Mountain, thence along the top of the said mountain and the top of the dividing ridge between the waters of Holston River and French Broad River to its junction with Holston River, thence down said river Holston to its junction with the Tennessee River, thence down the same to the Suck where said river runs through Cumberland Mountain, thence along the top of said mountain to the aforesaid boundary line, and thence along said line to the beginning; and that all that part of Sullivan County on the east side of the North Fork of Holston River shall continue and remain a distinct county by the name of Sullivan, and all that other part which lies west of said North Fork of Holston shall thenceforth be erected into a new and distinct county by the name of Hawkins.

2.  And for due administration of justice:  Be it Enacted by the Authority aforesaid, that a court for said county of Hawkins shall be held constantly by the justices thereof on the first Mondays of March, June, September and December; and the justices for the said county of Hawkins are hereby authorized and empowered to hold the first court in the same at the house of Thomas Gibbons; all subsequent courts for said county on the days above appointed for holding courts therein, at any place to which the said justices shall from court to court adjourn themselves until a court house, prison and stocks shall be built for said county of Hawkins and then all causes, matters and things depending in said court, and all manner of processes returnable to the same, shall be adjourned to such court-house; and all courts held in and for said county of Hawkins shall be held by commission to the justices in the same manner, and under the same rules and restrictions, and shall have an exercise the same power and jurisdiction, as are or shall be prescribed for other courts held for the several counties in this state.

(Source: Scott’s Edition of the Laws of North Carolina and Tennessee, pp. 378-379)

Hawkins County, as thus constituted, embraced and contained all the territory lying west of the North Fork of Holston River from the Virginia line to its confluence with the South Fork of Holston River, west of Kingsport, and thence due South to the top of Bayes Mountain, and thence North of the line along the top of the mountain and the top of the mountain [sic] and the dividing ridge between the Holston River, 4 or 5 miles east of Knoxville, and thence down the Holston to its junctions junction with the Tennessee River, and thence down the same to Suck, where the Tennessee runs thro [sic] the Cumberland Mountains, and thence east of the line along the top of the Cumberland Mountain to the Virginia (now the Kentucky) line and thence South of said state line to the beginning.

An imperial domain, containing about one-half of the 35 counties now composing East Tennessee.

Out of this large and magnificent county have since been carved and created, in whole or in part, and by successive acts of our General Assembly, the following 18 counties:  Anderson, Bledsoe, Campbell, Claiborne, Cumberland, Grainger, Hamblen, Hamilton, Jefferson, Knox, Loudon, Marion, Morgan, Rhea, Sequatchie, Roane, Scott, and Union.

Virginia has been called the “Mother of States.”  Hawkins County can be justly called the “Mother of Counties in Tennessee.”

Name, County Seat, Early Settlers and Industries, Education, Religion, First Newspapers

The county was named for Benjamin Hawkins, who, as United States Senator of North Carolina, conjointly with Senator Samuel Johnson, executed on February 25, 1790, the deed which transferred what is now Tennessee to the United States.  A monument to this memory has been erected on the Lee Highway, one and one-half miles east of Rogersville, at the intersection of the Lonesome Pine Trail with the Lee Highway.  [In 2014, these highways are US 11W and TN 70.]

County Seat

Rogersville, the county seat of Hawkins County, was established by the legislature of North Carolina November 18, 1786, and its first court house, built of logs, erected on the public square on the north of Main St., and immediately west of the Citizens Bank.

Early Settlers, Industries

Its early peoples came principally from North Carolina and Virginia, with some from the north of Ireland, some from Pennsylvania, and a few from New England.  The first settlement was made in Carter‘s Valley, about the time of the first settlement on the Watauga.

Prominent among the early settlers were the Kincaids, Mulkeys, Loves, Longs, Carter and Parker, Thomas Gillenwaters, Robert Lucas, and Thomas Amis, who came about 1781 and built his stone house and store, blacksmith shop, saw and grist mill, and kept a tavern on Big Creek four miles east of Rogersville.

Carter and Parker were the first merchants in the county, and opened a store in a small log house in Carter‘s Valley, about 14 miles east of Rogersville near the present residence of Dr. D. W. Hoffman.  The store was robbed by Indians, who by treaty later paid Carter and Parker by ceding their claims to nearly one-half of the present area of Hawkins County as compensation for the robbery.  (Ramsey‘s Annals, page 111)

Among other early settlers were Thomas Gibbons, at whose house was held the first court in the county by the Justices of Peace Joseph Rogers, Richard Mitchell, George Hale, William Cocke, who settled in Mulberry Grove, now Mooresburg, about 1780; Anthony Brooks; Robert Kyle from County Tyrone, Ireland, who also settled in Choptack about 1780; Arthur Armstrong, who settled at what is now Stony Point; Joseph McMinn; Peter Parsons; a lawyer; Orville Bradley; John A. McKinney, an able lawyer; Pleasant M. Miller; Samuel Powel, from Pennsylvania, another able lawyer and one of the first judges in Tennessee.  William Simpson and Samuel Neil were early merchants in Rogersville.  Francis Dalzell, another early merchant; Dix Alexander, Clerk and Master of the Chancery Court, appointed by Chancellor Williams of Knoxville; and Hugh and William Walker, brothers and distinguished  physicians, settled in Rogersville at an early date.

Joseph Rogers first settled in Rogersville, for whom the town was named, in 1786, and kept a famous tavern, where Andrew Jackson and other notable public men often lodged.

Richard Mitchell, the ancestor of the Mitchell family of Rogersville, was one of its prominent citizens.  He was appointed by William Blount, Governor of the Territory South of the Ohio, now Tennessee, the first clerk of the County Court of Hawkins County at its December term, 1780.  (Ramsey’s Annals, page 543.)  He held other public offices.

Joseph McMinn, born 1758, of Quaker parentage, Winchester, Pennsylvania, settled in Hawkins County after the Revolutionary War, on what is now the Lee Highway, about 20 miles east of Rogersville.  He was Hawkins County’s most distinguished citizen and public official.  He represented Hawkins County in the Territorial General Assembly at Knoxville in 1794; in the first Constitutional Convention in 1796; in the State Senate 1805, 1807, 1809, being Speaker of the Senate three times; consecutively elected Governor of the state in 1815, 1817, and 1819 and our only Quaker governor.  During his administration the penitentiary was established, the state capitol changed from Knoxville to Murphreesboro [sic], the Bank of Tennessee incorporated, and West Tennessee purchased from the Choctaws and Chic[k]asaw Indians.  He died in 1824, while chief of the Cherokee Indian Agency on the Hiwassee River, and was buried at Calhoun, Tenn.  McMinn Academy at Rogersville — for building which in 1817 he contributed a large gift of money, McMinn County, and McMinnville, Tenn., were named for him.

Education and Religion

The early settlers took great interest in education.  Notable teachers in the early days were John Long, 1783; William Evans, 1784; James King, 1786; Samuel B. Hawkins, 1796.  Probably the first church established in the county was the Presbyterian Church at New Providence, or the old school Presbyterian Church at Rogersville.  Methodist and Baptist churches were built soon afterwards, but we are not posted as to the dates of their erection.  Ramsey in his Annals (page 144) mentions “Mr. Mulkey, a Baptist preacher” as one of the pioneer settlers in Carter’s Valley.

First Newspapers in State

Rogersville was the site of the nativity of the Tennessee Press.  The Knoxville Gazette, the first newspaper published in Tennessee, as issued here first, in a two-story log house, November 5, 1791, by George Raulstone, pioneer printer, publisher and editor in Tennessee.  Here also in the same building was printed, by Clinton Armstrong, for the publishers and editors, the Rev. F. A. Ross, Rev. David Nelson, and Rev. James Gallaher, all Presbyterian ministers, the Calvinistic Magazine, in 1827.  Here, too, in the same building, on January 10, 1932, Clinton Armstrong printed “for an Association of Gentlemen” the Railroad Advocate, the first publication in the world devoted exclusively to the advocacy of railroads.