Settlement of Lawrence County
The information above was copied from the Web site named Lawrence County Genealogical Society. The site was maintained by Kathy Niedergeses, but she has retired. We are unsure of the site’s future. Original Lawrence County TNGenWeb Coordinator Reita Jones Burress posted shared content with the LCGS site over the course of 27 years. Therefore, we decided to incorporate the content here. No copyright infringement is intended by providing this information for the benefit of researchers.
Source URL: http://home.lorettotel.net/~lcarchives/earlyhistlawco.htm
Creation
The area that later became Lawrence County was once part of a land grant given by England’s King Charles II to the Earl of Clarendon and seven lesser lords. The grant consisted of all the land south of the Virginia Colony and westward to the Pacific Ocean and was called Carolina. This area came under the jurisdiction of North Carolina when North and South Carolina were divided with its west boundary stopping at the Mississippi River. When the State of Tennessee was created in 1796, the part that is now Middle and West Tennessee was considered untamed western territory. From that point on, settlers began their westward movement through Tennessee.
However, at this time, much of Tennessee was still under control of two major Indian tribes, the Cherokee and the Chickasaw. The Cherokees were the largest of the southeastern tribes and still claimed areas in North and South Carolina, north Georgia, eastern Alabama and East Tennessee. The Chickasaws were the smallest of the southeastern tribes with their claims being in the northern regions of the present state of Mississippi, western Alabama and southwestern Tennessee. The Tennessee River at the Muscle Shoals, in what later became Alabama, seemed to be the dividing line between the Cherokee and the Chickasaw. Both tribes claimed the area that is now Lawrence County as their hunting grounds. Even though neither tribe maintained permanent settlements here, there were several Indian “encampments” in present day Lawrence County.
Many factors contributed to the settlement of Lawrence County. Among those were fertile soil, abundant streams, free land, virgin forests and the ever present need to “go westward.” Even though the Native Americans still claimed the region, settlers were eager to explore the new land, stake a claim and provide a home for their families. From 1805 to 1816, there was a series of Indian land cessions involving land along the Tennessee River that eventually lead to the creation of Lawrence and several more of the southern counties.
As early as 1807, Cherokee Chief Doublehead leased or indentured land to several pioneer families. Others did not bother obtaining a lease; they simply intruded upon the land. By 1810, the Indians numerous complaints about the amount of trespassers prompted the government to build Fort Hampton at the mouth of the Elk River and evict the squatters. Agent Col. Return J. Meigs first had the task of determining who and where they were. Then, by 1811, the government ordered all whites evicted. Shortly after being run out and their homes and crops burned, many settlers returned, only to be run out again. Several of these families are later found in the Lawrence County census.
In 1812, the squatters living in the bounds of the Congressional Reservation petitioned the State Legislature for relief from “unrelenting Savages” and from North Carolina granting land to the same area that they already occupied.
Updated 24 November 2012