Governors of
Tennessee
Ref: The Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Vol 26, Pg 625, Published
1910-1911
State of Franklin
John Sevier 1785-1788
Territory South of the Ohio
William Blount 1790-1796
State of Tennessee
John Sevier Democratic-Republican 1796-1801
Archibald Roane Democratic-Republican 1801-1803
John Sevier Democratic-Republican 1803-1809
Willie Blount Democratic-Republican 1809-1815
Joseph McMinn Democratic-Republican 1815-1821
William Carroll Democratic-Republican 1821-1827
Sam Houston Democratic-Republican 1827-1829
William Hall (acting) 1829
William Carroll Democrat 1829-1835
Newton Cannon Anti-Jackson Democrat 1835-1839
James K. Polk Democrat 1839-1841
James C. Jones Whig 1841-1845
Aaron V. Brown Democrat 1845-1847
Neil S. Brown Whig 1847-1849
William Trousdale Democrat 1849-1851
William B. Campbell Whig 1851-1853
Andrew Johnson Democrat 1853-1857
Isham G. Harris Democrat 1857-1862
Andrew Johnson Military 1862-1865
Interregnum, 4th March - 5th April 1865
William G. Brownlow Republican 1865-1869
De Witt C. Senter Conservative Republican 1869-1871
John C. Brown Democrat 1871-1875
James D. Porter Democrat 1875-1879
Albert S. Marks Democrat 1879-1881
Alvin Hawkins Republican 1881-1883
William B. Bate Democrat 1883-1887
Robert L. Taylor Democrat 1887-1891
John P. Buchanan Democrat 1891-1893
Peter Turney Democrat 1893-1897
Robert L. Taylor Democrat 1897-1899
Benton McMillin Democrat 1899-1903
James B. Frazier Democrat 1903-1905
John I. Cox Democrat 1905-1907
Malcolm R. Patterson Democrat 1907-1911
B. W. Hooper Republican 1911-
Bibliography
Studies in the Constitutional History of Tennessee (Cincinnati) 1895;
new ed 1907
There is no satisfactory complete history of the state. The best is
James Phelan's History of Tennessee (Boston, 1888)
For the early period see
John Haywood, Civil and Political History (Knoxville 1823, reprinted
Nashville, 1891
J.G.M. Ramsey, Annals (Charleston, 1853)
A.W. Putnam, History of Middle Tennessee or Life of Times of General James
Robertson (Nashville, 1859)
Theodore Roosevelt, Winning of the West (New York, 1889-1896)
John Carr, Early Times of Middle Tennessee (Nashville, 1857)
For the more recent period see
O.P. Temple, East Tennessee and the Civil War (Cincinnati, 1899)
James W. Fertig, Secession and Reconstruction of Tennessee (Chicago,
1898)
Report of Joint-Committee on Reconstruction (U.S. Pub Docs., Wash.,
1866)
John Sevier (1745-1815)
The Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Vol 24, Pg 727, Published
1910-1911
American frontiersman, first governor of Tennessee, was born in Rockingham
county, Virginia, on the 23rd of September 1745, of Huguenot ancestry, the
family name being XAVIER.
He settled on the Watauga on the western slope of the Alleghanies in 1772,
and served as a captain in Lord Dunmore's War in 1774.
Early in 1776 the Watauga settlements were annexed to North Carolina,
and Sevier, who from the beginning had been a member of the Watauga government,
now represented the district in the provincial congress, which met at Halifax
in November-December 1776 and adopted the first state constitution, and in
1777 he was a member of the state House of Commons.
He took part in the campaign of 1780 against the British, especially
distinguishing himself in the battle of King's Mountain, where he led the
right wing.
In December 1780 he defeated the Cherokees at Boyd's Creek (in the present
Sevier county, Tennessee), laying waste their country during the following
spring. Later in the same year (1781), under General Francis Marion, he fought
the British in the Carolinas and Georgia.
In 1784, when North Carolina first ceded its western lands to the Federal
government, he took part in the revolt of the western settlements; he was
president of the first convention which met in Jonesboro on the 23rd of August,
and opposed the erection of a new state, but when the state of Frankland
(afterwards Franklin, in honour of Benjamin Franklin) was organized in March
1785, he became its first and only governor (1785-1788), and as such led
his riflemen against the Indians; in May 1788, after the end of his term,
men in his command massacred several Indians from a friendly village, and
thus provoked a war in which Sevier again showed his ability as an Indian
fighter.
He was arrested by the North Carolina authorities, partly as a leader
of the independent government and partly for the Indian massacre, but escaped.
About this time he attempted to make an alliance with Spain on behalf of
the state of Franklin.
In 1789 he was a member of the North Carolina Senate, and in 1790-1791
of the National House of Representatives. After the final cession of its
western territory by North Carolina to the United States in 1790 he was appointed
brigadier-general of militia for the eastern district of the "Territory South
of the Ohio'; and conducted the Etowah campaign against the Creeks and Cherokees
in 1793.
When Tennessee was admitted into the Union as a state, Sevier became its
first governor (1796-1801) and was governor again in 1803-1809. He was again
a member of the National House of Representatives in 1811-1815, and then
was commissioner to determine the boundary of Creek lands in Georgia.
He died near Fort Decatur, Georgia, on the 24th of September 1815.
See: J.R. Gilmore, The Rear-Guard of the Revolution (New York, 1886)
John Sevier as a Commonwealth Builder (New York, 1887)
Errors in Gilmore's books are pointed out in Theodore Roosvelt's The Winning
of the West (New York, 1894-1896)
County Administrator Carolyn
Whitaker
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