Grainger County, Tennessee: History
=== Early years ===
In 1775, pioneers Daniel Boone and William Bean had first observed the Holston River valley in Grainger County after crossing the gap at Clinch Mountain during a long hunting excursion. After fighting in the American Revolutionary War one year later, Bean was awarded 3,000 acres (12 km2) in the area he previously surveyed for settlement during his excursion with Boone. Bean would later construct a four-room cabin at this site, which served as his family's home, and as an inn for prospective settlers, fur traders, and longhunters.
Grainger County would be established into a county from Knox and Hawkins counties by the North Carolina state legislature on April 22, 1796, the year Tennessee became the sixteenth state of the United States. It is named for Mary Grainger Blount, the wife of William Blount, making it the only county in Tennessee named for a woman. In 1801, Rutledge was selected as the county seat. Anderson, Claiborne, Campbell, Hamblen, Hancock, Scott and Union counties were formed from portions of the original Grainger County following its reduction in land size between 1801 and 1870.
Like its surrounding East Tennessee counties, Grainger County was generally opposed to secession from the Union. In Tennessee's Ordinance of Secession referendum on June 8, 1861, sparsely populated Grainger County voters rejected secession by 1,756 to 495.
During the American Civil War, a state of near-guerrilla warfare brought economic, political, and social chaos to Grainger County, notably during the Knoxville campaign. Two arguments occurred within the county during the Civil War, with the first as a skirmish in Blaine around Christmas of 1862. In the year ahead, the Battle of Bean's Station pitted the forces of Confederate General James Longstreet against a Union forces under General James Shackelford in a planned surprise attack that failed for Confederate forces through the critically poor decision-making of Longstreet's staff. While the Battle of Bean's Station proved victorious for Longstreet in the end, he later failed to capture Knoxville westward through Blaine, and went into hiding in Russellville in nearby Hamblen County. …