Dickson County, Tennessee: History
Charlotte, Dickson County's capital, was built on 50 acres of land purchased from Charles Stewart. Charlotte was nearly entirely destroyed after a tornado occurred within its city limits, decimating its jail, courthouse, & roughly 80% of the county's records.
On October 25, 1803, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a bill creating Dickson County, the 25th of Tennessee's 95 counties. It was formed from parts of Montgomery and Robertson counties, and was named for William Dickson, a Nashville physician then serving in the United States Congress. The first court justices included Montgomery Bell, William Doak, William Russell, Sterling Brewer, Gabriel Allen, Lemuel Harvey, Jesse Craft, Richard C. Napier, and William Teas. The county was organized on March 19, 1804, at the home of Robert Nesbitt, and later sessions of the court were held at various county officials' homes until a courthouse was constructed in 1810.
Dickson County was part of the Military Reserve and was widely settled among the Piney and Cumberland rivers. Initially, cotton was among the county's predominant industries before rye, oats, corn and tobacco had overtaken it. A cotton gin was constructed by Robert Jarman in 1807.
General James Robertson built the first ironworks in west Tennessee in Dickson County. Robertson sold his furnace in 1804 to Montgomery Bell, who later sold it to Anthony Wayne Van Leer (1769–1855), for whom the town Vanleer, Tennessee, is named. Van Leer's family was noted in the anti-slavery cause. Other important iron manufacturers included Anthony and Bernard Van Leer and George F. and Richard C. Napier. Iron production was chiefly accomplished through slave labor. Although iron production declined in importance in the post-Civil War period, the furnace was still in production in the early 1940s.
Though a county school board was established in 1807, public education received little government support during the nineteenth century. Among the county's early schools were Tracy Academy, Charlotte Female School, Alexander Campbell School, Edgewood Academy, and Normal College, Dickson Academy, Dickson Normal School, Glenwylde Academy, and Ruskin Cave College.
The county voted by a wide margin to join the Confederacy on June 8, 1861. Six infantry companies and a battery of artillery were sent to the south by Dickson County. For the guerrilla forces, Yellow Creek and what is now Cumberland Furnace were favorite rendezvous points. No major confrontations had occurred, but the railroad tracks laid by the Union were subject to frequent attacks.
The Nashville and Northwestern Railroads which were constructed through the county's southern portion became a magnet for migrants from the Great Lakes and the Great Plains, who settled in the new railroad towns of Dickson (originally called Sneedville), Tennessee City, White Bluff, and Burns. After two railroad lines were further constructed through Dickson, it became the county's hub for the vast majority of railroad travel, and, by the early 1900s was the commercial and cultural center of Dickson County. The growth of Dickson soon overtook that of Charlotte & produced infighting and debate amongst the county's government as to which town was a better county seat.
In July 1917, a mass meeting was held in the Alamo Theatre in Dickson to raise $760 (equivalent to $25,000 in 2016) to pay for the surveying of the Bristol to Memphis Highway through Dickson County. …