Lawrence County’s First Civil Districts

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Clint

We take it for granted today that each county in Tennessee is subdivided into smaller civil districts. These districts each contain a relatively equal proportion of the county’s population. Our county commission is made up of representatives elected by the people from each of these districts. Lawrence County currently has eighteen civil districts.

Tennessee’s first civil districts were mandated by the 1834 Constitution. The 1834 Constitution is best remembered today for stripping free people of color of voting rights that had existed under Tennessee’s first constitution.

However, the 1834 Constitution also reformed the state’s judicial system and mandated civil districts in each county for the first time. Article 6, Section 15 of the 1834 Constitution says, “The different counties in this State shall be laid off, as the general Assembly may direct, into districts of convenient size, so that the whole number in each county shall not be more than twenty five, or four for every one hundred square miles. There shall be two Justices of the peace and one Constable elected in each district, by the qualified voters therein, except districts including county towns which shall elect three Justices and two constables…”

Justices of the Peace wielded considerable legal authority in Tennessee until the mid-twentieth century. Assembled as a body, they comprised the county courts, which met regularly and served as the county government as well as the state’s lowest court for settling minor disputes and crimes. They could issue warrants, perform marriages, and serve as notaries.

Prior to the 1834 Constitution, Tennessee counties were often subdivided for administrative purposes according to companies in the local militia regiment. This can be seen in many of our nation’s early Federal census records, where individuals were said to live in a particular company as opposed to in a particular district. The requirement for new civil districts meant that a commission appointed by the General Assembly had to plot the boundaries of each new district in each county and submit those boundary descriptions to the state. Lawrence County’s first civil district boundaries were set in 1836, and their descriptions still exist in the Tennessee Library and Archives. The legal descriptions of those boundaries and the very rough map that accompanied them can be seen at this link: https://tinyurl.com/3hv87sad

As can be seen in the accompanying image of that map, the county was initially subdivided into twelve civil districts. Beginning in the county’s extreme southwestern corner, the southernmost three districts were numbered sequentially from west to east, then the fourth, fifth, and sixth districts (which formed a tier above the southernmost districts) were numbered from east to west. The pattern was repeated in this zig-zag manner until it reached the tenth district, which–due largely to the unusual size of the ninth district–was sandwiched between the seventh and the ninth districts, with the eleventh and the twelfth left to complete the pattern above the tenth, in the county’s northwesternmost corner.

The Military Road serves as a boundary between many of the districts running north to south. Shoal Creek also serves as a boundary in several places. The map also names the location of each district’s precinct, or polling location, in 1836.

The metes and bounds of Lawrence County’s first civil districts are described in just eight pages, but they are a rich source of the names of people, places, and landmarks from a very early period of Lawrence County’s history. While some of our civil districts remain relatively close to where those first districts were, the boundaries have changed and shifted as the county has.

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When To Plant: Some Agricultural Folk Wisdom

Posted on April 19, 2026 by Clint

Have you ever heard of planting by the signs?

The right time to plant is the subject of a great deal of folk tradition. In preindustrial times, Lawrence County farmers and gardeners relied on received wisdom from their elders to know when to plant and when to reap–and many local folks still swear by these methods.

Some old-time gardeners do not plant warm-weather crops until after Mother’s Day, a tradition which probably doesn’t go back much further than 1908, when the first Mother’s Day was celebrated in the United States.

One popular old aphorism is that most seeds should be planted either by or on Good Friday. On April 10, 1880, Lawrenceburg court official W.T. Nixon noted in his journal: “During the night the wind shifted around and got in the S.W. but not until after frost had formed…the peach crop cut down to one half, some damage done to grape vines…I see my corn is coming up which was planted on good Friday.” In 1880, Good Friday was on March 26.

Nixon did a great deal of work planting the week of Good Friday, recording that he “spent almost the entire evening in garden” on March 25, “having planted Carrots, Okra, corn, and running beans together (Mexican corn – a new kind of sweet corn) then a bed of E. Val. beans.” However, due to a series of hard freezes over the ensuing weeks, he also wrote that he had to replant several of his vegetables.

What Nixon recorded about replanting many of his veggies is the great drawback of planting on Good Friday. The holiday could occur as early as March 20 or as late as April 23, a range of dates that can contain a wild variety of climatological conditions in our zone.

Some traditionalists consult the Farmer’s Almanac to know when to plant. The Almanac’s formula for determining when to plant is a combination of last-frost dates for a particular area combined with a much older tradition of planting by the phases of the moon.

The Almanac’s lunar tradition of planting is very old, and adheres to a formula which says that above-ground crops such as corn and beans should be planted during the waxing moon–when adherents believe the moon’s gravity is drawing moisture out of the earth–and below-ground crops such as carrots and potatoes should be planted during the waning moon, when the moon’s dissipating gravity allows moisture to return deep into the soil.

Similar to planting by phases of the moon, many old-timers and old souls believe in consulting the signs of the Zodiac, sometimes combined with phases of the moon, to know when to plant particular things. This is known as planting “by the signs.” When the sun is “in” a particular constellation, or sign, it is considered to be that sign’s time.

A detailed explanation of this is found in Foxfire 4, a collection of mountain lore edited and published by Eliot Wiggington and his students. Pauline Henson told the Foxfire editors “if you want a lot of cucumbers, plant [the seeds] when the signs are in the twins.” This indicates that, according to Ms. Henson’s estimation, cucumbers should be planted between May 21 and June 20, during the time when the sun is in Gemini.

Lizzie Lovin told Foxfire that “Mamma planted beans when the signs was in the arms. They’d never plant corn when the signs was on the new of the moon; it would grow so high you couldn’t reach the ears. They planted corn on the full moon, and it’d grow short and the ears would be full.”

Planting by body parts adds another wrinkle to the equation. According to the Farmer’s Almanac website, “ancient astrologers believed that each astrological sign of the zodiac influenced a specific part of the body.” The Almanac illustrates this belief with “The Man of the Signs” a diagram which shows which sign of the zodiac is represented by which body part. The arms referenced by Ms. Lovin would indicate that beans should be planted under the sign of Gemini.

Lon Dover told Foxfire “the best time in the world to make Irish potatoes is when the signs are in the feet.” This is under the sign of Pisces, from February 20 to March 20.

What folk wisdom have you heard about planting? Do you follow it? 

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Ancient Treasures

Posted on February 26, 2026 by Clint

How long have people lived in Lawrence County? Quite a long time.

Most anthropologists believe that Native Americans first came to Tennessee a little more than 12,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age.

For context, if Native presence in Tennessee were an hour on a clock, with the arrival of Native people at 11:00 P.M. and present day at midnight, then David Crockett settled here and Lawrence County’s government was formed a little after 11:58 P.M. and the bulk of our recorded local history has happened in the two minutes since.

That’s a lot of years unaccounted for, and untold thousands of stories which we will never know. The closest we can usually get to knowing anything about the people who lived here in those years is the material culture they left behind. Our county is rich in artifacts left behind by Native people. Generations of Lawrence Countians have turned them up by plow, found them near creeks, and seen them sticking out of hillsides after heavy rains.

In March, I will share the story of a local archaeological dig and what it discovered about local Native people from the things they left behind.

The images above all show arrowheads that I have found in Lawrence County, myself. Have you ever found a Native American artifact in Lawrence County? Share some photos in the comments!

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William Hicks and the Struggles of Lawrence County’s Free People of Color

Posted on February 1, 2026 by Clint

One Lawrence County man was taken to court in 1858 for the crime of…staying in Tennessee too long?

Enslaved people who were freed before the Civil War or African-Americans who were born free were known as free people of color. From the 1820s until the Civil War, Lawrence County had a very small population of these people. The Federal Census of 1860 shows that no fewer than 21 free people of color called Lawrence County home in that year. Seventeen of them lived near Lawrenceburg and four lived near Henryville.

One of the free people of color living near Henryville was William Hicks, who was born around 1822 in North Carolina. In 1860, he was living as a laborer in the home of 60-year-old Jane Wright, who had also been born in North Carolina. In 1858, Hicks was taken to court for “remaining in the state longer than the statute allows for free persons of color not born in the state of Tennessee.”

According to court documents, William Hicks was a mixed-race person who had been born a free man. His court case records say that he was born in North Carolina, and census records indicate that he was born around 1822.

In most Southern states before the Civil War, a person’s freedom was determined by the condition of his mother. If the mother was free, then her children would be born free, regardless of the condition of the father. But if the mother was a slave, her children would be born slaves, regardless of the condition of the father.

Although the court documents in Hicks’s case do not go into further detail about the circumstances surrounding his birth, it is clear that he–and others like him–presented a conundrum to the judicial system of Tennessee.

A law passed by the state in 1831 said that all free persons of color residing in Tennessee were to vacate the state within 20 days of their arrival, and no enslaved person was to be allowed his or her freedom unless the master could first arrange for their transport to another state or territory. Violation of the law was considered a felony by the free person of color, and initially carried steep fines for the former master.

Hicks moved to Lawrence County on July 10, 1850. By staying in the county for almost a decade, Hicks had clearly broken the law. However, the judge in Hicks’s case was of the opinion that Hicks did not qualify as a free person of color under the Act of 1831, simply because the law was too vague.

The judge said that the law specifically addressed the condition of mixed-race people who had been liberated by their masters, but that the law was not clear enough about the position of mixed-race people who had been born free.

Upon motion from the defense, the indictment was therefore quashed by the judge. Hicks did not stay in Lawrence County; he never appears in another Lawrence County census after 1860, although Jane Wright’s descendants stayed near Henryville for many years following the Civil War.

Cases like Hicks’s illustrate the tension and confusion created by harsh antebellum laws which regulated the behavior and limited the rights of free people of color.

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That Time David Crockett Killed 105 Bears in One Winter

Posted on January 25, 2026 by Clint

Did you know that Lawrence County founding father David Crockett claimed to have killed 105 bears in one winter–including 47 of them in one month?

In his autobiography, David Crockett wrote that the winter of 1825-1826 was very busy. This just a few years after he left Lawrence County for West Tennessee, Crockett claimed to have killed 105 bears in one winter, including one bear that he supposedly killed with a hunting knife after chasing the beast into a crevice made by the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812.

Although many of the hunting stories told in Crockett’s autobiography are believed to be exaggerated, it is true that he was an avid hunter. Crockett’s autobiography devotes more space to descriptions of bear hunting than it does to stories about his family.

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When Shoal Creek Was Called Indian Creek

Posted on January 22, 2026 by Clint

Shoal Creek was once known as Indian Creek?

In the spring of 1818, David Crockett and a group of other important men met at a place about four miles north of Pine Bluff, and listened to a man named Henry tell the story of one of the most frightening nights of his life.

Like a faded map to buried treasure, Henry knew something that was very valuable.

The story begins at the Revolutionary War battle of Ramsour’s Mill, North Carolina. There, on June 20, 1780, Captain Gilbreath Falls was killed in action at the head of his patriot cavalry company.

The state of North Carolina rewarded his sacrifice by granting his widow and children joint ownership of a 4,000-acre tract of land in the state’s western frontier.

In 1784, when the grant was made, the border of that tract of land began “on Indian Creek beginning at the first fork of said creek above General Rutherford’s encampment, near an Indian encampment.”

However, that vast tract of land–an estate of 6.25 square miles–was in a wild section of the country in 1784, squarely in the center of Chickasaw territory. Indeed, white settlers largely stayed away from it until the autumn of 1816, when the Federal government purchased it from the Chickasaw and the settlers decided to call the place Lawrence County.

But who was General Rutherford? And where was Indian Creek?

When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, North Carolina—like the other newly-independent states—was short on cash. To pay its veterans, it devised a system of land grants in the wild territory west of the Appalachians.

At that time, North Carolina laid claim to all of the land that would become Tennessee in 1796. To explore and survey land for these land grants, North Carolina sent General Griffith Rutherford on a surveying expedition in 1784. His men spent weeks hacking through the wilderness, noting the location of important landmarks.

Rutherford’s son, Henry, was present with this expedition. Three decades later, it was Henry who met Crockett and the other commissioners north of Pine Bluff and shared his story.

Henry said the creek was called “Indian Creek” because “a plain Indian reed passed up and down the creek.” This was probably a variety of native cane. By Crockett’s time, however, Indian Creek was known as Shoal Creek, the name we still call it today.

In March 1784, Rutherford’s men began following Indian Creek “in sight of a small quantity of pine timber on the opposite bluff,” the place in modern Lawrenceburg that has been known for more than two-hundred years as Pine Bluff. Today it sits opposite the Lawrenceburg Water Filtration Plant on one side and David Crockett State Park on the other. Somewhere about 3-5 miles north of the bluff, they came to the site of a “large Indian camp” on the bank of the creek, and decided to make camp for the night.

Henry was terrified.

The signs, he said, were all around that the Indians were still in the vicinity. Thomas Gillespie, another member of the expedition, remembered that they found “saplings chopped & bent down & as we judged for the purpose of conveying the wounded” near the camp. Henry “was very apprehensive that they would be disturbed that night by Indians.”

Although the night passed peacefully, all of these circumstances ensured that the Indian campground where General Rutherford’s men spent the night just north of Pine Bluff would be a memorable place for the men who camped there. Perhaps that’s why the surveyor used it as the beginning point of Captain Falls’s massive land grant.

By 1818, when Falls’s heirs were ready to cash in on their claim, Indian Creek had a new name and few people were left who remembered where Rutherford’s men had spent that night in 1784.

Crockett–by 1818 a magistrate and a man on the rise–and a group of other commissioners were appointed by the county court to collect testimony from Henry Rutherford and other survivors of the expedition to ascertain as closely as they could where the campground was, and whether or not Indian Creek was now known as Shoal Creek.

Those depositions were all copied at some point and sent to the Tennessee Historical Commission. Today, they are in the collection of the Tennessee State Library and Archives. I first came across their existence in the footnotes of James Shackford’s biography of David Crockett. I recently transcribed the depositions and began an in-depth research project regarding the land grant. Captain Falls’s widow, as it turns out, was very likely my 4x-great-aunt.

Henry Rutherford and his father General Rutherford moved to Middle Tennessee in the early nineteenth century. Rutherford County, Tennessee, is named for the general. Henry’s memories–and the memories of the other men summoned by the commission to corroborate his testimony–were worth a literal fortune to the heirs of Captain Falls. And they are worth their weight in gold to local historians today, for preserving the memory of Lawrence County when it was a truly wild place. 

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The New Jackson Highway Goes East

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Clint

That view has certainly changed!

This undated view of Locust Street in Lawrenceburg looking north from the Pulaski Street intersection is part of the Old Jail Museum’s collection of more than 150 historic local postcards.

Although today Locust Street is the hub of much of the city’s commercial activity, this image captures a time when it was still relatively deserted, save for a few residential buildings.

The “longest red light in the world’ at Cyclone Corner is visible in the distance.

From Lawrenceburg’s founding to the mid-1930s, the main commercial center of town was the Public Square and North Military Street. That changed in the spring of 1934, when a new route was chosen for the Jackson Highway, or what we now know as Highway 43.

This massive infrastructure project was a fascinating–and successful–endeavor to rebuild Andrew Jackson’s original Military Road as a modern, paved highway between Nashville and New Orleans. There was only one problem for the people of Lawrence County: the state had decided to completely pass over the county’s historic business districts along the original Military Road in favor of a less-obstructed, more easterly course of Locust Street.

Despite a spirited protest by the businessmen of Lawrenceburg and Loretto to keep the highway running through the cities’ main streets–including at least one petition drive that netted over 200 signatures–the route of the massive new Jackson Highway was set for Locust Street in Lawrenceburg, and bypassed the business district of Loretto and the town of Ethridge completely. The reason? Railroad tracks.

In an effort to save money and create as unobstructed a pathway as possible for the new road, state highway officials set a course for the highway that completely avoided crossing the L&N railroad altogether.

The result was a harsh blow for downtown businesses in Lawrence County. While Military Street would continue to serve as the seat of local commerce for a few more years, that dominance rapidly and inevitably shifted to the new Jackson Highway.

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The Unclaimed Land Grant that Became Lawrenceburg

Posted on November 18, 2025 by Clint

On this day in 1786, the people of Nashville were afraid. And they were taking up arms.

But what connection does that long-ago militia mobilization have to downtown Lawrenceburg? It’s a long story, but an interesting one.

A confederacy of Native American tribes in the Northwest Territory (modern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan) renewed hostilities with the United States in 1785. At issue, among other things, was who controlled the land north of the Ohio River.

The British had ceded that land to the United States after the Revolutionary War, but they still maintained forts and trading posts there, and supplied the Indians with weapons. Many of the tribes in the region had sided with the British during the Revolution, and still held unbending hostility toward the United States for the brutality of Washington’s army against their villages during that war.

Adding to the tension was the westward flood of settlers seeking new land. As these settlers continued to encounter hostile Indians, the number of skirmishes and raids between the two groups increased. In 1785, members of several of the northwestern tribes met at Fort Detroit and formed the Western Confederacy, proclaiming the boundary between their land and American land to be the Ohio River. This subsequently led to an increase in the frequency and violence of the raids conducted by both sides.

Eventually, after a series of defeats in which thousands of poorly-trained American militiamen were killed, George Washington sent a well-trained regular force of American soldiers into the area under General “Mad” Anthony Wayne. This army dealt the Indian Confederacy a crushing blow at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, bringing an end to Native dominance in the region.

Although Davidson County was far from most of the heavy fighting during this war, it was still a frontier outpost surrounded–and vastly outnumbered by–potentially hostile Indians. Many of the Cherokee Indians in what would become East Tennessee supported the tribes of the Western Confederacy during this conflict, and some Cherokee leaders actually sent warriors to support their efforts.

In response to the fears of the people of Davidson County, on November 18, 1786, the North Carolina legislature authorized the county to raise “two hundred and one men” to be “enlisted and formed into a military body, for the protection of the inhabitants of Davidson County.” These 201 men were to rendezvous at the “lower end of Clinch mountain” and remain enlisted for two years.

The purpose of this small force was to defend settlers in Davidson County from the same types of Indian raids that were occurring north of the Ohio River, and to attempt to stop the Cherokee from rising up in support of their allies in the north.

One of the men who enlisted in that force was Private John Thompson.

We know extremely little about John Thompson, other than he served his time in the defensive force and was rewarded with a land grant of 400 acres for his service. It was a land grant that he would never claim.

The warrant pictured here was made to Thompson on April 14, 1792. It was an order to survey 400 acres which, for whatever reason, was never surveyed. Because Thompson never claimed his land, the claim reverted to the state.

On December 14, 1820, the state granted the warrant for Thompson’s 400 unclaimed acres to the commissioners of the new town of Lawrenceburg, who surveyed part of that land into the lots that we now know as the Public Square of Lawrenceburg. Although the survey was completed less than a year later, the General Assembly of Tennessee did not officially deed the land to the commissioners until January 16, 1823. The commissioners were responsible for striking the lots off to any who would purchase them, and to use the funds raised by the sale to build a courthouse, jail, and public stocks.

In addition to the land grant, the deed pictured is the deed showing that the state granted Private Thompson’s land grant to the first commissioners of Lawrenceburg. It is recorded in Deed Book A in the office of the Lawrence County Register of Deeds.

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How Lawrenceburg’s Location Was Chosen

Posted on November 14, 2025 by Clint

After the first commissioners of Lawrenceburg selected the site of the new city, surveyed it, and obtained the property from the State of Tennessee (although the deed would not be recorded until 1823), they held a public auction to sell lots of the new county seat. According to this ad from the Nashville ‘Clarion,’ that auction was scheduled for April 4, 1821.

Noticeably absent among the names of the first commissioners of Lawrenceburg is David Crockett, who had stormed out of the commission meeting in a rage in November 1819 when they voted 3-to-2 to situate the new city in its present location on Shoal Creek and the Military Road instead of the geographic center of the county, as the state legislature had instructed.

Crockett and another commissioner went to work immediately, circulating a petition with hundreds of signatures of citizens to have the site changed to the center of the county (which would have placed the Public Square of Lawrenceburg near the modern Gandy Fire Hall).

But Crockett’s work was to no avail. When the commission’s decision was approved by the Legislature, Crockett resigned from the commission. Although personal pride no doubt played a large part in his decision to resign from the commission, Crockett’s decision to run for the state legislature probably helped.

Among the other attributes of Lawrenceburg listed in this ad, the commissioners touted that the 400-acre site included “about one dozen of never failing springs of as good water as any on earth.” In addition to the springs, the commissioners pointed out the fertile soil found in the tract and its access to the Military Road, as well as the abundance of iron ore in the country surrounding the town.

Said the commissioners, “all those who regard a pleasant [site] for life, in a line of trade or public house keeping, are desired to attend the sale and buy for themselves.”

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The Man Who Owned Three Square Miles of Lawrence County

Posted on November 10, 2025 by Clint

How many people can say that they have owned over 3 square miles of land in Lawrence County AND had an American hero as a squatter on that land?

John Christmas McLemore (1790-1864) was one of the most powerful men in early Lawrence County–and it’s possible that he never set foot here. In the months following Lawrence County’s organization, McLemore purchased thousands of acres in the new county. One massive tract contained 2,100 acres of land (that’s over 3 square miles of territory!), which he then struck off into dozens of smaller tracts for a tidy profit.

Most of the people who settled Lawrence County were not like the wealthy and powerful McLemore (who was good friends with Andrew Jackson, and went on to marry Jackson’s niece and become even wealthier by purchasing Jackson’s stake in the land that would become Memphis). Indeed, many of Lawrence County’s early pioneers were squatters–penniless folk who settled, cleared, and cultivated land they didn’t own in hopes of saving enough money to one day purchase their home-place from the owner.

One of these early squatters was none other than David Crockett. Although Crockett used some of his wife’s small fortune to purchase several hundred acres of Lawrence County land outright, he laid claim to hundreds of other acres that he hoped to one day pay for with the profits of his mill. And some of the acreage Crockett claimed belonged to McLemore.

On October 26, 1820, Crockett wrote a letter to McLemore from Lawrence County, explaining that his “powder factory have not been pushed as it ought and I will not be able to meet my contract with you.” Crockett had promised McLemore payment by November 1 for one 320-acre tract of McLemore’s massive holdings, on which Crockett was claiming occupancy.

Apparently Crockett had already paid for a separate 60-acre tract from McLemore, but had received no title, and was unable to pay for the 320-acre tract because of delays in constructing his Shoal Creek milling and distillery operation. Crockett’s letter goes on to say, “I dont expect I can pay you the hole amount until next Spring if you confide in me you can Sent the warrant by male as soon as posable and my letter can Stand as my note.”

Crockett’s struggle to obtain ownership of his occupancy claim on McLemore’s land was a familiar story to most of the poor folks who settled the Tennessee frontier with no money but a solid work ethic and a fighting spirit. This personal experience with occupancy rights in Lawrence County no doubt inspired his later actions in Congress.

Years later, Crockett built his congressional career on a complicated bill which sought to, among other things, reform the corrupt bounty-land system and give squatters in Tennessee a fair chance to lay claim to the land they had worked. His devotion to this cause cost him his political career, as it estranged him not only from the rest of the Tennessee congressional delegation–which was made up of wealthy men who did not see the plight of the common man as urgently as Crockett did–but also drove Crockett away from President Andrew Jackson, who was a legend among land speculators.

[The above excerpts from Crockett’s letter to McLemore were taken from the stellar book ‘David Crockett in Congress: The Rise and Fall of the Poor Man’s Friend’ by James R. Boylston and Allen J. Wiener]

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