In terms of historical accuracy, the most tenuous period for the entire region is from around the Revolutionary War until 1819 when the Cherokeesceded the Hiwassee District. At this time there was an influx of settlers, and what amounted to a population explosion and building boom. In addition, by the time the county seat was transferred from Calhoun to Athens in 1923, excellent court records and family historical data became available.

Perhaps a few representative examples of settlement, sketchy as they maybe, can help to capture the spirit of this period. In this regard, the Walker family history is not only important to the history of McMinn County specifically, but because of its link to some of the most important personalities in the entire region.

Besides Sequoiah himself, the name Nancy Ward is perhaps the most famous Cherokee name. She rivals Pocahontas and Sackajawea in importance. Her own tribe bestowed upon her the title "Beloved" which was the highest title that awoman could ever be given and implied a status equal to that of the chiefs themselves. The title conveyed almost mystical, divine powers; something of the equivalence of sainthood in modern vocabularies.

She first married an important chief named Kingfisher, and then an English trader named Bryan Ward. By Kingfisher she had a daughter who was named Catherine who later married another white trader named John Walker. The free use of Christian names and the marriages that were occuring with increased frequency demonstrates vividly the close alignent between English and Cherokee which was taking place in the mid-1700s.

John and Catherine Walker established a residence somewhere along the Hiwassee in the southwestern area of the county. They had a son who was also named Jolan, and it is he who becomes the key figure. This John Walker captured the attention of Governor William Blount at the battle of Buchanan Station in1792. Blount wrote about Walker: "He has been raised among and by white people.Everyone who knows him has the utmost confidence in him. He isquite a stripling and apparently the most innocent, good-natured youth I ever saw."

Walker married Elizabeth Sevier, the widow of Joseph Sevier, who was the son of Governor John Sevier, the first governor of the old State of Franklin.Elizabeth herself was a member of an important Cherokee family. Walker helped to organize the Cherokee Turnpike Company in 1806 that contracted to maintain the "Georgia Road" which ran through the area. He also operated a ferry near present-day Calhoun. At the outbreak of the war with England, he was commissioned a major and received numerous commendations for bravery in battle.Following the war, he returned to Calhoun and was instrumental in all of the treaty negotiations that led to the surrender of Cherokee lands in Tennessee. These negotiations often took Walker and other major "chiefs" to Washington, or "Washington City" as it was often called, and put him in contact with luminaries of the federal government of that time, especially Secretary of War John C. Calhoun.

Several prominent Indians, who were deemed "capable" of managing their own affairs, and perhaps to reward their leadership and cooperation in the 1819Hiwassee Purchase were given choices of 64-0 acre plots which would be "reserved" for them in the newly acquired territory. Walker took his "reservation" at Walker's Ferry and this immediately was established as the town of Calhoun. Elizabeth Lowery Sevier Walker, after an unsuccessful attempt at acquiring land in present-day Monroe County, took land north of Calhoun at Pumpkintown.

In spite of a somewhat questionable reputation at the time, an area near Pumpkintown would later be designated as the county seat and be named Athens. The first organizational meetings of the county were held in Walker's home in Calhoun, and he would come to serve as one of the county's first justices of the peace. The Walker heritage and name has remained in tact across the years in the county.

Indicative of the non-Indian related background of the county is the story of another Calhoun area family, the Sheltons. The Shelton family is able to trace its American lineage back to Ralph Shelton who was born in 1665 in Middlesex County, Virginia. Four generations later, Roderick Shelton served as a private in the Continential Army under George Washington. His son, James, moved to North Carolina in 1791, and then his son, James, at age 18 came to Greene County in Tennessee and married Betsy Lawson. Around 1810 they loaded all of their belongings on a flatboat and floated down the Tennessee to the Hiwassee, and then up the Hiwassee to a place on the present McMinn side of the river across from the large Cherokee village at present-day Charleston, Why they decided to stop at this part icular point, or if they planned originally where their journey would take them, is not clear.

The Sheltons erected a log cabin, had a child, and soon thereafter Betsydied, James enlisted in the army, fought beside Sam Houston at HorseshoeBend, and was back in the area by 1816 when he married Sarah Hooper. They built a two-story frame house near the old log structure which was a well known historical site until the TVA clearing activities in the late 193Os.

Again, it should be said that the Walker and Shelton stories are not unique. They are representative of precisely the kinds of people of particularly Cherokee and English, and later of Scotch-Irish descent, that would come to live together and populate McMinn County, The events that punctuate these family histories were undoubtedly repeated time and again among the first families that would settle the county.

The United States has always been characterized by the great mobility of its people, However, in spite of superior advances in transportation, it is unlikely that any modern mobility matched that of the mass migration to the"Southwest Territory" that populated McMinn County and all of the lands to the Mississippi the first stage of "Manifest Destiny." A traveling missionary, David McClure, describes a typical family group as it moved into the new lands: The man carried an ax and gun, the wife the rim of a spinning wheel and a loaf of bread. Several little boys and girls, each with a bundle according to their size. Two poor horses, each heavily loaded. On the top of the baggage of one was an infant, rocked to sleep in a kind of wicker cage. A cow was one of the company, a bed-cord wound around her horns, and a bag of meal on her back.

The first settlement, up through about 1820 or until the time that townships began to assert themselves, was erratic and temporary. This has added to the problem of preserving accurate historical information.The typical American was a chronic mover. As deer and Indianthinned out, the peltry trader went farther west. Into the country he relinquished came the cattlemen building rough sheds and railed pens and maybe girdling a few trees to improve pasture, With them soon blended the first wave of westering subsistence pioneers attacking the forest more widely to plant extensive crops. Presently, however, would come talk of a richer valley across the ridge. So often, the cabin was too new to leak much, but its builder packed up the old woman, the brats and the plunder and was off once more.The interval might be so short that it was the same yoke of oxen hauling the old wagon, the same hound dog padding along, the same cat resignedly asleep ~n a basket among the load, and the same cow-towing behind.

However, during this same period settler families arrived whose names are still key names in the county, It is impossible to do justice to this group in any limited space, Those mentioned are merely representative. Many came on the basis of land grants which were either purchased or secured through military service; most of these would be farmers, and others would follow as traders, merchants, and mill operators.

Asbury M. Coffey was the son of Eli Coffey who went into Kentucky with Daniel Boone. He lived in Athens until 1842 and was instrumental in some of the first railroad movements in the county. He married Mary Bradford, the daughter of Colonel Henry Bradford who was a large landowner at the now-little-known city of Columbus which once existed in the southern part of the county and now is in Polk County. Indicative of the county's mobility, Coffey would leave Athens to be appointed by President Millard Filmore to oversee Indian affairs in Kansas; later, one of his children would migrate to Oregon.

Jesse Mayfield, whose family name is now carried forward by the MayfieldDairy Farms, was born in New York in 1770, He secured several tracts of land at the time that it became available after the Hiwassee Purchase. One of the purchases, northeast of Athens, has never left family ownership. In fact, the original log home which Jesse Mayfield built was restored and stood as a county landmark on the property of his descendant Scott Mayfield until it was lost in a tragic fire early in 1983.

One of the most significant contracting and building firms of the Tennesseefronteir has close ties with McMinn County. In 1825 a Samuel Clegg (after the Civil War the name would be spelled "Cleage) settled in the Mouse Creek community. Clegg's father was from Pennsylvania, and had become very wealthy building mansions throughout that region in the late 1700s. The family can trace its heritage back to Belfast, Ireland.

With his son-in-law, Thomas Crutchfield, Clegg established the firm that would come to be known as "Cleage and Crutchfield." With extensive help from slaves and using methods of bricklaying that he had developed himself, Cleggcontributed substantially to the architecture of East Tennessee. Several buildings in Athens were constructed by the firm including the Mars HillPresbyterian Church, and the old East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad headquarters building which still stands on North Jackson Street. The grand courthouse which dominated the town square for the better part of the last century was built by Thomas and William Cleage in 1875, At one time the firm held contracts on nine courthouses in East Tennessee.

The Cantrell family has long been important in the eastern part of the county. Like many frontier families, the Cantrells had a tradition for having a large number of children. John Cantrell, who is probably the oldest member of the family in America, was from Pennsylvania and had both French Huguenot and Quaker antecedents. He had twenty-one sons and two daughters. The name thus proliferates from Pennsylvania to Georgia.

One family legend describes a time when John Cantrell went into a mercantile shop and asked to see hats for boys. The merchant displayed his selection of about a dozen hats, whereupon Cantrell stepped to the door and called his boys into the store. Twenty-one young men lined up at the counter, and the storekeeper was so flabergasted that he gave each boy a new hat. Further mention will be made of the ancestry of the Cantrell family in a later chapter.One old chronicle states that "the commonwealth of McMinn County has from pioneer days down revered the name of Cooke." In fact, the Cooke ancestry has crossed paths with families as well-known as that of the English novelist.Henry Fielding and the Tennessee Senator and near-Democratic Presidentalnominee in the early 1950s, Estes Kefauver.

William Henry Cooke moved his family from South Carolina to McMinn County in 1820. He made large land purchases in the present Etowah area, operated an iron forge, and was a surveyor. He was responsible for laying out the town of Athens, a state legislator, and started the State Bank of Athens. As this institution's first president, legend has it that he rode horseback every morning thirteen miles to town and was always on the job by eight in the morning. Cooke was also active in the Meridian Sun Lodge No, 50, which across the history of the county was always an important institution. Cooke and his wife Mary had twelve children.

The court records of the first quarter-century of the county's existence demonstrate a high reliance on the counsel and judgment of Charles FlemingKeith. In many respects, he charted the course and established the strong foundation upon which the county would move for it first century. Keith had been born in Virginia in 1781 and by age eighteen was a law student with a close relative, Charles Marshall, who was a brother of the famous Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Marshall. By 1819 Keith was a practicing attorney in Jefferson County and actively involved in the first two sessions of the new Tennessee State Legislature.

Following the Indian treaties of this period, which he took a large part in, Keith came to McMinn County where he was a political, civic, religious, and social leader in every respect. By 1850, he owned 15,000 acres of land, 44 slaves, and was the main taxpayer in the entire county. By the time of his death in 1857, Keith had performed the duties of a federal judgeship longer than any other American with the exception of Chief Justice Marshall himself.A large, local Methodist church still carries the Keith name, and Mrs. MarshallKeith resides today in the stately Keith mansion which is the best-known residence in the county.

Other families, of no lesser significance than the representative examples noted here, have their roots sunk deeply into the early history of America and eventually came to McMinn before or near the time of its inception. The rich historical, sesqui-centennial edition of The Daily Post-Athenian details several other family groupings from this same period: the Hoyal family from the Carolinas; the ancestry of Tidence Lane who built the first brick merchant mill in the State, was a large slave owner, and finally left the area to lands in Mississippi that could produce more cotton; the Ki~brough and Carlock families that gave substance to the religious growth of the region; Jesse Boone, a nephew of Daniel Boone; Clement Vann Rogers, born ten miles south of Athens on the old W. C. Townsend place, who was the father of American humorist WillRogers. Other names find prominence in the Post-Athenian chronicle: Hart, Fisher, Gettys, Love, Gilbreath, Cooper, Wilkins, Matlock, Barb, Hill, Lowry, Fore, Sullins, Smith, Shipley, Dorsey, and Cass.

In concluding this section, it would be appropriate to make mention of Joesph McMinn for whom the county is named. McMinn was born in Pennsylvania in 1758 and migrated into the area around 1775 - 1780. He was active in the first political movements of the State and involved in the 1796 convention in Knoxville which drafted the proposed, first constitution for the State. McMinninsisted that a "Bill of Rights" be incorporated into the constitution, and he personally carried the proposed constitution to the new President, George Washington.

After serving in eight general assemblies and being Speaker of the Senate three times, McMinn was elected Governor in 1815. He was re-elected in 1817and 1819, Although plagued by fiscal problems, McMinn's administration dealt rather successfully with Indian problems, advanced education, and actively supported improvement of river navigation. He is remembered as being quite popular with the general population.

In 1821 McMinn returned to farming in Rogersville, but by 1823 had accepted a position as a.gent to the Cherokees at Charleston's Fort Cass. He lived in Calhoun and served as agent until his sudden death which occured while he was writing at his desk on November 17, 1824. While in Calhoun, McMinn became a member of the Presbyterian Church and it was his desire to be buried in the graveyard.

In an interesting aside, the grave - like so many - went unmarked, and only one person, a Mr. R. J.M. Only, knew its location. When, in 1880, a plan was proposed to dig up the remains and take them to Athens for reburial and the erection of a " proper " monument, On1y he refused to show where the grave was. Only was something of an eccentric lay preacher who supposedly had read the Bibletwenty-seven times, argued his interpretations in all kinds of public settings, and was not beyond the convincing power of a good fist fight. But, Only won the day and the monument was erected at the Calhoun site where it stands in high visibility today.

Given the close relationship which existed between the English pioneers and the Cherokees, the integration of the races through the intermarriages which had occurred and by 1800 were essentially constituting a racial synthesis (the famous chief, John Ross, was only one-eighth Cherokee ) in many areas like what would become McMinn County, and the sophistication of the Cherokee race, the forced removal of the majority of the tribe which came to be known as the "Trail of Tears" in the late 1800s becomes one of the darkest spots on the history of American expansionism. McMinn County was in the center of the conflict, and the best evidence suggests that the citizenry of that time was strongly opposed to such inhumane and immoral activities. In fact, something of the "states ' rights" sentiment that would become of crucial importance within a generation may have been born to some extent at this moment.

Stereotypes about primitive Indians wandering around half-naked must beset aside totally when considering the early-nineteenth century Cherokees.These were people who were living a settled, civilized existence that paralleled in every way that of their White counterparts. Often, these people were herded like cattle toward what was then Arkansas and now Oklahoma. In spite of the series of "treaties," and "purchases," at least twenty-five in number, and their typically borderline fairness, the final, forced removal rivals the injustice of the worst moments of slavery itself.

One of the best studies of this period was none by Cartter Patten in 1953 in his A Tennessee Chronicle. Patten traced the general idea of treatied removal to Thomas Jefferson, who was following precedents that were as old as the Jamestown and Manhatten treaties; there was also the pragmatic need of increasing space. By 1805, Return J. Meigs, for whom Meigs County would be named and whose granddaughter would marry the son of Major John Walker, John Walker, Jr., was taking. care of Indian matters in the area. First, he operated from"Old Agency" in present-day Meigs County, and finally at the agency established across the Hiwassee from Calhoun at Charleston. Meigs attained a strong reputation for helping the Cherokees with farming, diversification of crops, raising of livestock, and trade.

Although large numbers of Cherokees had voluntarily left for new lands in the West, by 1828 the equally large number that remained continued to advance their own culture and reached a firmer synthesis and mutual coexistence with the White culture. In fact, one of the first successful American missionary activities was conducted in this area with the establishment of several mission schools that were educating the Cherokee children in large numbers. There were probably more Cherokees being educated in the region at this time than there were Whites.

But, early in 1829, the entire picture changed. Why? It was all too. simple - gold was discovered on Cherokee land in Georgia near Dahlonega!" Between four and seven thousand gamblers, swindlers, debauchers, and profane blackguards, with morals as had as it is to conceive, overran the Cherokee country.

Immediately, the Georgia legislature claimed all Cherokee land. In a single-mindedness that would have made the old Spanish conquistadors proud, Governor George Gilmer even decreed that if the Cherokees could be removed that the land would be given to Whites by lottery. The tenor of the conflict soon assumed national significance, Andrew Jackson, the old, fellow-warrior of the Cherokees, had also become President in 1828. The Cherokee chiefs, thinking they had a sure friend in Jackson, appealed for consideration. Somewhat surprisingly, Jackson supported the position of Georgia.

The Cherokees then went to Washington and appealed to the Supreme Court and John Marshall perhaps given quick entrance because of the Chief Justice's relationship with the McMinn County Keith family. The strongest supporter of the Cherokee claim was the Tennessee congressman, Davy Crockett. Crockett poked cutting sarcasm at the whole idea of removal of the Cherokees by introducing a bill "calling for the removal of the White residents of East Tennessee to the West, lest they impede the territorial designs and sovereignty of the State of Georgia. In fact, in 1832, the Supreme Court decreed in favor of the Cherokees.

In fact, because of the horror of the "Trail of Tears," Crockett left Tennessee in disgust for Texas. He had lost one fight for human rights, and would soon die in yet another.

Even the Cherokees were set at odds with each other. This internal division had a direct impact on McMinn County when in 1834 Major John Walker's son, John Walker, Jr., who was also known as "Chief Jack," was murdered by fellow - Cherokee James Foreman after Walker had undertook what Foreman considered unauthorized negotiations in Washington involving treaties that would lead to removal.

Foreman, along with an accomplice named Isaac Springston, came to trial in Athens, but soon the question of murder became secondary to the question of jurisdiction. Being quite sensitive to their environment, the McMinn jurors concluded that the matter was wholly Cherokee and that they had all rights to adjudicate the case. However, as part of their desire to have a higher claim on the Indians, the United States government got the McMinn decision reversed.While the Cherokees were meeting to raise money for yet another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Foreman and Springston "in some manner not a matter ofrecoro.1111 suddenly were no longer to be found in the Athens jail. It seems that "frontier justice" prevailed and that McMinn County found a subtle way of overruling the United States and affirming the stand that they took throughout the controversy. Records suggest that Foreman went West, was actively involved in seeking out and killing those who had agreed with the removal among his own people and was eventually killed himself.

Jackson sent a minister, the Reverend J. F. Schermerhorn, into the area, and he was able to get highly questionable treaties from impressionable splinter groups who were generally unauthorized by the tribe as a whole and their central leader, Chief John Ross of Chattanooga. Schermerhorn was not beyond using whiskey and individual bribes to get the treaties that would ultimately be accepted by the federal government and enforced by General Winfield Scott and7,000 troops beginning in May of 1838.The Cherokees were corralled like animals by the thousands at Charleston, Ross' Landing/Chattanooga, and Guntersville, Alabama. In spite of a signed petition drive by citizens in McMinn County, the roundup continued.Before the deportation was complete, nearly 5000 Cherokees had died, and many from the horrors of cold and hunger, Perhaps a thousand escaped finding refuge in the Tennessee-North Carolina mountains. The will of the federal government ultimately triumphed, and a major segment of McMinn County's unique culture was destroyed.