Anderson County history

Created by the Texas Legislature on March 24, 1846, Anderson County was named for former Republic of Texas Vice President Kenneth L. Anderson.

The first Anderson County Courthouse, a one-story frame structure, was built in 1847.

Located on the northeast corner of the square, it was replaced by a two-story brick courthouse in 1856.

Though slave holding was not unheard of here, it was a distinct minority position: when the slavery issue pulled the South and Tennessee into secession and war in 1860, Anderson Countians found their loyalties bitterly divided.

The railroad from Knoxville to the coal fields reached Clinton in 1869, providing the town uncommonly easy ingress and egress for what had been, still, an isolated area.

The the white marble cornerstone from the 1885 courthouse is located on the courthouse square.

To remedy this undemocratic system, the Local Government Act of 1888 established county councils, with members elected by local residents, to take over the legislative and executive duties of the magistrates.

In July 1891 the coal mines at Briceville became the site of a violent strike prompted by the increasing use of convict labor to replace more expensive free labor.

The courthouse burned in 1913.

Anderson County Courthouse 1914.

In 1933 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority into law and changed the Tennessee landscape, especially that of Anderson County.

The very face of Anderson County changed in 1934 when the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of the more ambitious New Deal agencies, chose a site near Coal Creek for construction of its first major dam.

Histories from 1936: Elkhart | Frankston | Montalba | Neches | Palestine | Slocum | Tennessee Colony

Drastic change again came to Anderson County in 1942 with the creation of the city of Oak Ridge, originally a secret wartime project and now the largest community in the county.

The “Atomic Capital of the World” brought national and international attention to the state in 1945, when the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima.

It was by their suggestion that the name Palestine was chosen. [Excerpted from "A centennial history of Anderson County, Texas" by Pauline Buck Hohes; pub. by The Naylor Company, San Antonio, TX; 1946]

When Clinton High School opened its doors to black students in 1956, a riot ensued, and Governor Frank Clement called out the National Guard to restore order in Clinton.

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland an administrative reorganization in 1973 replaced that country’s six administrative counties and two county boroughs with 26 single-tier, or “unitary,” administrative districts.

After 1974 in England and Wales, administrative counties provided police and fire services, education, social welfare services, public transport, traffic regulation, consumer protection, libraries, and some highways and parks.

In 1975 the 34 administrative counties of Scotland were replaced by nine administrative regions, each subdivided into a number of districts.

Still in use as the seat of justice for Anderson County, the courthouse underwent major restoration in 1986.

In 1996 the eight administrative counties of Wales were replaced by 22 new unitary counties and unitary county boroughs.

In 2000, however, the metropolitan county of Greater London regained some of its administrative powers.