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Cocke County’s History

Although Cocke County’s formal establishment came in 1797, a year after Tennessee entered the Union, settlers had entered the area over twenty years earlier, clearing land, plowing fields, and building homes. Portions of Greene and Jefferson Counties were cut away to create the new county, named for Sen. William Cocke, a Revolutionary War veteran who eventually served in the governments of four states: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Native Americans, of course, were the first human residents of the county, and many proofs of their residency continue to be unearthed each year during spring plowing in the form of arrowheads and bits of pottery. Circumstantial evidence also points to Spanish explorer Hernando Desoto’s party have passed through the area. White trappers and hunters began making their way into the area by the mid-eighteenth century. By the 1770s and 1780s more folks came and settled permanently. Many of these were Revolutionary War veterans who received bounty land here in payment for the military service. The earliest settlements, quite naturally, were along the three county’s three rivers: French Broad, Pigeon, and Nolichucky. Several forts, including Bell’s Station, Whitson, Huff, Wood, McKay, and Swagerty, were erected as safe havens from Indian attacks. Today, Swagerty Blockhouse, standing alongside Old. Hwy. 321 north of Parrottsville, is the only remnant of these structures remaining. Legend accords John Gilliland the honor of planting the first corn crop in the county “at the mouth of the Big Pigeon River.” This spot is now known as the Fork Farm. Gilliland also gave fifty acres of land to establish a county seat alongside the French Broad River at what we call “Old Town.”

From page 4 Here stood the courthouse, jail, Peter Fine’s ferry, a hotel or two, and a few other businesses, such as Rankin and Pulliam’s store. The only remaining structure from this era is the Gilliland-Cameron-O’Dell house in Old Town. Across the river is the Roadman Cemetery, final resting place of many of the town’s earliest residents. Early leaders such as Peter Fine, Edom Kendrick, and William Roadman are interred there. The pioneers brought a deep religious faith with them. In 1787, a full ten years before the county’s creation, Big Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church was established in the home of John English. Church minutes mention a cessation of meetings due to “Indians being troublesome.” The church still holds services once a month. Within twenty-five years, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches were established, followed by Salem Lutheran Church’s establishment in 1845. The only Revolutionary War skirmish known to have occurred in Cocke County was at the War Ford. Because of the area’s topography, large plantations and the majority of slave labor were minimal. A few such holdings lined the rivers. Many families owned no slaves, with the average family holding a small mountain farm and ekeing out a living with the help of their large families. By 1830, the county’s population remained small. Efforts to bring the railroad here periodically flourished and them ebbed until after the Civil War when the first train arrived in 1867. When hostilities erupted, Cocke County citizens voted overwhelmingly to remain in the Union. However, young men allied themselves with both the Union and the Confederate armies, sometimes pitting brother against brother. No major battles occurred here, but there were some skirmishes: the Battle of Shultz Mill on Cosby and another fracas near Parrottsville. Women, children, and the elderly suffered greatly at the hands of both armies plus marauding bands of bushwhackers. After peace returned in 1865, Cocke County experienced unprecedented growth, and in the 1880s, after much controversy and a lenghty lawsuit, the county seat was moved from alongside the French Broad River to its present site adjacent to the Pigeon River and near the new railroad. Formal education arrived in Cocke County in the form of Anderson Academy, a brick structure built in the 1830s near today’s Northwest Elementary School. Dozens of one- and two-room schools sprang up across the county; at one time over 80 such educational homes operated. The end of the nineteenth century brought large logging companies here for the massive virgin timber which abounded. A tannery opened in the 1890s, and in the early 1900s Stokely Brothers, a canning factory, relocated here from nearby Jefferson County. Over the past 200-plus years, Cocke Countians have done their part as “the Volunteer State,” with hundreds of men and not a few women answering their country’s call during the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, two world wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Charles McGaha of Cosby was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Harry Truman for his World War II heroic service. Now in the twenty-first century, Cocke County continues to grow and evolve. Some industries have closed; others have opened. Great strides in the local school systems have taken place. A more concerted effort to promote Cocke County’s tourist options continue to grow, and many retirees opt to settle here. Who knows what the next century will bring?