CALHOUN, Tenn. – One hundred and ninety years after they were recorded, the first handwritten minutes of McMinn County’s first county government were back in Calhoun on Sunday.
Historian Joe Guy brought the bound minute book to the March meeting of the Charleston/Calhoun/Hiwassee Historical Society held at Calhoun First United Methodist Church.
The McMinn County Quarterly Court meeting here in March 1820, creating the county from land out of the Hiwassee Purchase from the Cherokees.
“I don’t know if these minutes have been back to Calhoun since about 1824. We believe they were probably taken to Athens when they established Athens as the county seat,” Mr. Guy said. “I can’t imagine a reason for them to be back before today, unless there have been some events I don’t know about over the 190 years.”
McMinn County is fortunate among Tennessee counties, he said, because most of the county government’s records are intact. Many documents of local history across the state have been lost to archive mismanagement, the Civil War or courthouse fires, Mr. Guy said.
Also speaking Sunday was Debbie Moore, a local history writer, discussing her new book about the Trail of Tears detachment that left here but stayed apart from the John Ross party.
“These were people with families either related to the people who signed the removal treaty or they were people who didn’t like John Ross,” Mrs. Moore said. “So they moved themselves out West.”
Also introduced to the society was another book, “Struggle on the Hiwassee” published by Natalie Winningham, owner of the landmark Henegar House in Charleston, Tenn.
Local history is part of America’s story, she said, and a “divine inheritance.” It is also an economically valuable resource, she said.
“We can bring people to our doors,” she said.