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Tennessee Tennessee is currently bounded by Kentucky and Virginia on the north; North Carolina on the East; Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi on the south; and Arkansas and Missouri on the west. Before Tennessee's statehood in 1796 there were many county line changes in southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, and the Southwest Territory - latter Tennessee. Tennessee was the name that came with statehood. Earlier it was Tennessee County in what we now call Middle Tennessee, and of course there was the original - the Tennessee River. It originally was not called Middle, it was called West, until the 1820s. If you start with the white European claims, North Carolina owned her Western Lands beyond the Great Smoky Mountains. She ceded her rights to her Western Lands in 1790, and in the same year, the United States Congress created the Territory of the US South of the River Ohio, or as it was more commonly know, the Southwest Territory. In 1796, those lands became the State of Tennessee. The northern middle part of Tennessee, what we are calling Middle Tennessee, pre 1796 had an area of white habitation that was a much smaller area than that of today’s Grand Division of Middle Tennessee. At the time of entry of the first white men into what we now call Middle Tennessee, the area was primarily Cherokee country, with some Shawnee. By the end of the Revolutionary War, many settlers came in from southwest Virginia. North Carolina owned the land, but it was the Virginians who first settled in any numbers. At first, they created farmsteads and later little settlements. People also migrated from South Carolina. Tennessee County surrendered its name when the State of Tennessee was created in 1796. At that time, Tennessee County was divided into two new counties, Montgomery and Robertson. Washington County originally covered all of Tennessee. So... the point I am trying to get across is, if you ancestors claim to have been born in the "state" of Tennessee before 1796, this could hardly be true, as North Carolina owned the majority of what is now Tennessee. If you have ancestors born in "Tennessee" prior to 1796, and cannot seem to find any records of this (as is the problem I have run across in my research), look to the surrounding states for more clues to your heritage. For more information on Tennessee's History try these links:
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