The Forks Of Little Pigeon

Sevierville stands where the West Prong runs into the Little Pigeon River, and the settlement that grew at the junction was called the Forks of the Little Pigeon before it was called anything else. Isaac Thomas put a farm, a trading post and a tavern at the confluence in 1783, and Spencer Clack and James McMahan followed him. The Dumplin Treaty, signed at Major Hugh Henry's station in 1785, opened the land south of the French Broad River and brought in more settlers. The county that resulted has three separate birthdays, depending on which government is doing the counting, and all three of them are defensible, because all three of those governments really did create it, and two of them no longer exist. It was created in 1785 under the State of Franklin, John Sevier's breakaway government, and its first court sat at Samuel Newell's station on Boyds Creek. It was created again in 1794 under the Southwest Territory, its first court meeting that November at Isaac Thomas's house. It was created a third time in 1796 under the new state of Tennessee, whose first governor was Sevier himself. The town took his name at a meeting recorded on 8 July 1796, though Sevierville dates its founding to 1795 and the two have never been reconciled. James McMahan gave twenty-five acres for the town, cut into half-acre lots whose buyers were required to build in brick, frame or stone. For all that, Sevierville was not formally incorporated until 1901.