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- [S104] Cocke County, Tennessee, and its People, Cocke County Heritage Book Committee, (Walsworth Publishing, 1992), 90, 154.
- [S24] The Newport Plain Talk, (http://www.newportplaintalk.com), 2 Feb 2014.
‘As It Was Give To Me’
Duay O’Neil
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The location of Cocke County’s seat of justice pericitement and consternation among our citizens.
Lady Ruth O’Dell records the first Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions was held in the home of Daniel Adams, which stood in the vicinity of today’s Food City East. The year was 1797, the same year Cocke County was officially established.
A committee composed of Henry Ragan, William Jobe, John Calfee, Peter Fine, John Keeney, Reps Jones, and John McGlochlen was charged with the laying off and deciding on the location of the new county’s “prison and stocks.”
O’Dell says “there was a difference of opinion as to the location of the county seat” and that “After many heated meetings, John Gilleland donated the land upon which the houses of Old Newport used to stand, the capital of Cocke County was accordingly located there.”
Today we refer to the area as Old Town, along the south side of the French Broad River. To my knowledge, the only remaining structure from our earliest days still standing there is the Gilleland/Gilliland-Cameron-O’Dell house. Some people mistakenly claim this was Cocke County’s first courthouse, but that is incorrect.
The correct stood about a quarter-mile closer to Newport.
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- [S147] Find a Grave, (Memorial: 51911118).
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