Submit Wiki Content Report a Problem. County Facts. County seat:. April 9, Parent County s :. Tennessee, NC. Neighboring Counties. Location Map. Adopt-a-wiki page. General compliance by Lost censuses: , For suggestions about research in places that suffered historic record losses, see: Burned Counties. When the Records are Gone. Cemeteries of Robertson County, Tennessee online and in print. Tombstone Transcriptions Online. Tombstone Transcriptions in Print Often more complete. Family History Library WorldCat.
List of Cemeteries in the County. See Tennessee Cemeteries for more information. Source: "Wikipedia. Extinct Counties. Major Repositories.
The county sits in between Cheatham, Davidson and Sumner counties, bordering Kentucky along the northern section of the area. Ledbetter tn. With safe-travel information, culinary must-eats, attraction information and more, everything you need to plan your next trip to Tennessee is here. Robertson County.
Zion Methodist Church was organized. Both are active churches today. Tradition has it that Robert Black started the first school in the area on Sulphur Fork in , and Thomas Mosby also taught a school in the area before Over the first half of the nineteenth century, Robertson County grew from a sparsely settled frontier community of 4, to a society of over 16, people.
The African-American population of the county fared even worse. Most Blacks left the farms owned by their former masters to seek better working and living conditions, but for the vast majority, the change brought only marginal improvement.
Most ended up working as agricultural laborers or as share croppers, receiving one-third or one-half of the crop for their labors. The economic conditions forced Blacks into dismal living conditions, and in many instances they became objects of violence by White vigilantes. During Reconstruction Blacks, supported by White Republican allies, managed to briefly exercise political power.
On July 12, , the Republican-controlled Twelfth Legislature, in a political move to retain Republican political control of local government in Robertson County, voted to relocate the county seat from Owensville to Calvert. But Whites gradually regained the upper hand in the early s and over the course of the next decade, using intimidation and occasional force, managed to effectively disenfranchise most of the African-American population.
Nevertheless in several areas, such as Hearne and Calvert, where there were substantial black majorities, African Americans continued to resist White political domination well into the s. The elections signaled the return to White supremacy in Robertson County. Whites stood guard at the various polling places throughout the county with rifles, pistols, and sticks, turning away Blacks who ventured forth to vote.
Following this election Black voters failed to return to the polls. Besides intimidation and harassment, the poll tax and White Primary effectively disfranchised the county's Black population.
County voting totals plummeted; 5, citizens cast their votes in , but less than 1, returned to the polls in Despite the havoc wrought by the war and Reconstruction, the county began to recover by the late s, in large part due to a rapid increase in population.
Between the and the number of inhabitants doubled, increasing from 4, to 9,, and in the following decade it more than doubled again, rising to 22, in One reason for the rapid increase in population was a steady influx of White farmers from the states of the Old South, attracted to the county by its abundance of rich and relatively inexpensive land.
But even more significant for the rapid growth was a steady rise in the number of Black residents. Because of shortage of labor that followed the Civil War, Brazos valley farmers traveled to parts of the Old South to recruit Black farm hands, who arrived in large numbers over the next decade and a half. As a result by the s Blacks accounted for a majority of the population 53 percent , a position they would continue to occupy until the turn of the century.
Also spurring the postwar recovery was construction of the Houston and Texas Central Railway, which built through the county in the late s. Although a number of towns declined or were abandoned after being bypassed by the railroad, including Wheelock, Owensville, Nashville, Sterling, Staggers Point, Mount Vernon, Little Mississippi, and Port Sullivan, many other communities were founded or began to flourish.
In residents voted to move the county seat to Morgan, on the railroad near the geographical center of the county. When application was made for a post office, the town was renamed Franklin in honor of the original county seat. The coming of the railroads and the steady growth in population led to a resurgence of the county's agricultural economy. Over the next three decades both the amount of acreage under cultivation and overall production steadily increased.
Cotton, corn, and cattle, which had formed the mainstays of the economy after , continued to be the leading products through the second half of the nineteenth century.
But, while agricultural output steadily increased, Robertson County did not escape the hard times experienced by Southern farmers in later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Falling cotton prices and depleted soils reduced profits. To compensate for their shrinking income, large planters increased the acreage allotted to cotton production, and sharecroppers and tenants were forced to do likewise.
Acreage in the county devoted to cotton cultivation rose steadily from 50, acres in to , acres in Yet despite this three-fold increase in acreage, production barely doubled.
Nevertheless, Robertson County farmers annually ginned 30, bales from the s until the Great Depression. Corn production ran a poor second. Farmers allocated 34, acres to corn production in and 50, in Production increased, but at a much slower rate. Stock raising, on the other hand, continued to dominate the upland prairies of the county. As in much of the South, sharecropping replaced slavery as the dominant labor system on Robertson County plantations following the Civil War.
Large tracts were divided into small parcels that were let to former slaves, poor Whites, or immigrants on a sharecrop basis. By only 29 percent of all farmers owned the land they worked, while over 60 percent were tenant farmers. By three out every four farmers 2, of 4, were tenants. The combination of declining yields and tenancy kept many farmers in permanent debt and brought widespread misery. The harsh conditions led to a decline in population after , as a sizeable number of families left to seek better opportunities elsewhere.
Between and the population of the county fell by more than 4,, from 31, to 27, Contributing most to this decline was the flight of many of the large rural Black population, who left to find work in the cities of the North. The Black exodus combined with a small influx of Whites-mostly recent European immigrants-after brought an end to the period of Black majority; by Blacks made up only 40 percent of the population, and by that figure fell below 30 percent.
Like most of the state, Robertson County was hit hard by the Great Depression of the s. Particularly affected were the county's farmers, who were forced to endure the combined effects of falling prices, soil depletion, and boll weevil infestations. Those with large landholdings were able to weather the hard times, but many of the county's legions of tenant farmers and share croppers were forced off the land.
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