Hawkins County Courthouse
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Hawkins County Courthouse
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The Courthouse is located within a registered Historic District
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| Location | 100 East Main Street, Rogersville, Tennessee |
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| Built | 1836 |
| Architect | John Dameron |
| Architectural style | Federal, with neoclassical influence |
| Part of | Rogersville Historic District (#73001787) |
The Hawkins County Courthouse is the seat of county government for Hawkins County, Tennessee, located in the city of Rogersville, Tennessee. It was built in 1836, it is one of six antebellum courthouses still in use in Tennessee, and it is the second oldest courthouse still in use in the state.
Hawkins County was organized in 1786 by the State of North Carolina; Rogersville, then called Hawkins Courthouse, was selected as the county seat due to the diligence of its founder and tireless promoter, Joseph Rogers (son-in-law to a prominent local settler, Colonel Thomas Amis, a French Huguenot who worked with the Irish-born Rogers after Rogers wedded Amis' daughter Mary).
The seat of county government was established in the back of Rogers' first tavern, a log structure that boasted an attached lean-to with jail-stocks. In 1796, when Tennessee attained statehood, it was in this log structure that the vote was tallied and proclaimed. In 1810, the State set up a Circuit Court for Hawkins County, prompting the county justices to build a newer, larger log-and-clapboard structure on what had become Rogersville's Main Street (which corresponded to the Great Stage Road connecting Washington, D.C. with Knoxville and the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky). Chancery Court was first held in this building in 1825.
By 1835, the county, now having three towns (Rogersville, Bulls Gap, and Surgoinsville), had outgrown its second, log-based courthouse, and the county set out to buy land and build a courthouse commensurate with growing Rogersville's new architectural prominence (as detailed below). The lot upon which the Courthouse now stands was purchased from Louisiana Rogers Mitchell, daughter of town founder Joseph Rogers, who had bequeathed it to her in his will after his death in 1833. In 1836, the Mitchells sold the lot to the Justices of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions of Hawkins County for $500. The justices planned to follow the patterns established in nearby Virginia and North Carolina in constructing their courthouse, and in 1836, they engaged John Dameron, the most prominent architect in the region, to draw up the plans for the new building.
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