Historic Union County

The Cradle of Country Music

Historical Marker approved for Horace Maynard

On October 15, 2010, the Tennessee Historical Commission approved an historical marker for the Honorable Horace Maynard. The marker will be installed in about four months and a dedication ceremony will be planned at that time. The marker has been funded by the City of Maynardville, and we are grateful to the City for making this important historical marker possible. For those newcomers to Union County and those too young to know, this is Horace Maynard:

On a recent sunny Saturday in May, the smell of barbecue wafted through the air outside Maynardville's Union County Vendor Mall. The sounds of gospel music filled the inside, and owner Joanie Brock was filled with pride upon celebrating the one-year anniversary of her growing retail business.

By the late 1840s the political pressure to have a county seat where residents could vote and conduct business without having to make an overnight trip was sufficiently strong enough that an Act of the Tennessee legislature was drafted to form a new county from portions of the five surrounding counties–Anderson, Campbell, Claiborne, Grainger and Knox Counties. On January 13, 1850 the Act to establish Union County was passed. There was haggling over boundary lines and some lines were redrawn. Nonetheless, Knox County was not happy about losing so much of its tax base and filed a lawsuit ...

So now that warm weather is here, you might have already experienced it: the eerie feeling of one crawling on your leg, or having a swarm of them cluster near your skin. Yes! The season for ticks and mosquitoes is upon us - literally, and they’re hot on the trail for blood.

Both pests are annoying in their own right, but because blood is their meal of choice, ticks and mosquitoes can cause some considerable health complications as well! In fact, their blood lust makes them the perfect vehicles for spreading diseases like Zika Virus and Rocky Mountain spotted fever among others.

It appears that THE William Hamilton was already in the vicinity of Hamilton Crossroads by the time Tennessee became a state in 1796. All this area was Hawkins County until Knox County was carved out of Hawkins County, then Grainger out of Hawkins County in 1796.
In 1794 William Hamilton received a land grant from the Governor of North Carolina. This land grant included Hamilton Crossroads, which was in Knox County from 1792 to 1796.