Sullivan County History

Sullivan County offers you a chance to peek at life and key points in our nation's history, from its days as the Western Frontier through the atomic age. It is in the heart of a region that includes many "firsts," and it and its people played important roles in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and bringing and end to World War II.Today several historic sites, coupled with special annual events, offer the public opportunities to explore a rich heritage. Some of them include Rocky Mount, the Old Deery Inn, the Exchange Place, the Netherland Inn and the Birthplace of Country Music.Rocky Mount, in unincorporated Piney Flats, was the first territorial capital of what became Tennessee. Modern Kingsport was the first 20th Century planned American city and first governed by a board of mayor and aldermen-city manager form of government; Bristol is dubbed the Birthplace of Country Music because of recording sessions there in the early 20th Century; and Tennessee Eastman in Kingsport had a part in the first atomic bomb, used in 1945 to end World War II.A few milestones:Sullivan County was established in 1780, making it one of the earliest settled areas in Tennessee. The county is named for General John Sullivan, a New Hampshire Revolutionary War leader.The north fork of the Holston forms the county boundary with neighboring Hawkins County, which was created out of Sullivan in 1786. Col John Donelson assembled his family and other settlers for a voyage down the Holston to establish a settlement on the Cumberland River in December 1779, and he eventually founded what became Nashville. Rivers and early roads made Sullivan County a gateway for western settlement of immigrants.The Exchange Place in Kingsport provides historical context of 1700s life in Sullivan County, as does Rocky Mount in Piney Flats. Sullivan County in the early 19th Century developed an agricultural area with an economy augmented with industries such as iron works, powder mills, tanneries, gristmills and sawmills. Blountville, centered on a turnpike that went north to Richmond, Washington, DC and Philadelphia, PA, was the county seat and a prosperous trade and commercial town. The Deery Inn served travelers from 1785 to the 1930s.According to a brief history of Bluff City on the town's website, the town "was first known as Choate's Ford and then as Middletown when the town was platted in 1858. Later known as Union, Zollicoffer and Union again, it became Bluff City on July 1, 1887. In 1870, the well known brand of Saint Joseph drug products originated in Bluff City."Bristol's first century was as a rural village. Evan Shelby (1719-1794) came to Sapling Grove (now Bristol) in 1771 and established a fort that became a settlement center. During the Revolutionary War, Shelby commanded expeditions against the Chickamauga towns, and early planning for the Kings Mountain campaign took place in his quarters at the fort. Modern Bristol dates to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when an industrial town developed at the junction of the Southern Railway and Norfolk and Western Railroad. The presence of two major lines attracted rapid commercial and industrial development. The "other" Bristol, Bristol,VA., is just north of metal boundary markers in the middle of State Street. In the 1920s, Victor Talking Machine Company talent scout Ralph Peer set up a recording studio on the Tennessee side of State Street and made a series of recordings with regional artists. The 1927 "Bristol Sessions" featured the Stoneman Family, the Carter Family from Hiltons, Virginia, northeast of Kingsport, and Jimmie Rodgers. It marked the beginning of the modern country music industry, the "Big Bang" of country music.Modern Kingsport's impetus can be traced to 1909, when the construction of the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway (CC&O) passed through the Holston Valley. This link to Cincinnati and the Atlantic opened the door for Sullivan County's development as an industrial center. An improvement association planned an industrial city for the land near the village of Kingsport with the aid of John Nolan, an engineer and city planner. Historian, teacher and author Margaret Ripley Wolfe described Kingsport as the first economically diversified, professionally planned and privately financed city in 20th Century America "produced by the marriage of New South philosophy and Progressivism."During the Great Depression, Eastman became Kingsport's largest employer, helping make the new town an anomaly: an industrial city experiencing growth. During the early 1940s scientists from Eastman developed a process for continuous flow production of RDX, an explosive capable of penetrating the hulls of the World War II German submarines. Consequently, Eastman received the contract to build and operate Holston Army Ammunition Plant, long known as Holston Ordnance and today operated by BAE. By the end of the war it had become the largest explosive manufacturing facility in the world.Sources: Blythe Semmer, Margaret Ripley Wolfe, in "The Tennessee"