Montgomery County, Tennessee

Montgomery County Education, Geography, and History

Montgomery County is a county located in the state of Tennessee. Based on the 2010 census, the population was 172,331. The county seat is Clarksville. The county was created in 1836.

Montgomery County is included in the Clarksville, TN–KY Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Etymology - Origin of Montgomery County Name

Named in honor of John Montgomery (?-1794), explorer, Revolutionary War officer, signer of the Cumberland Compact, founder of Clarksville, Nickajack Expedition commander who was killed by Indians in Kentucky.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: CensusBureau Quick Facts

History of Montgomery County

Created 1796 from Tennessee County; named in honor of John Montgomery (?-1794), explorer, Revolutionary War officer, signer of the Cumberland Compact, founder of Clarksville, Nickajack Expedition commander who was killed by Indians in Kentucky.

Montgomery County was formed in 1796 from Tennessee County
(Acts of Tennessee 1796 [1st Session], Chapter 30).

There were fires at the Montgomery County courthouse in 1878 & 1900, and a tornado in 1999.

Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture
Long before the dawn of written history, humans inhabited the lands along the Cumberland and Red Rivers. In successive order Paleoindian, Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian Indians left evidence of their occupancy in this area. In the eighteenth century John Donelson led a flotilla of flatboats on a historic journey on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers through the area. An excerpt from Donelson's journal notes that on April 12, 1780, Moses Renfroe and company took leave of the main party, ascended the Red River and made a short-lived settlement upstream.

By the early 1780s three principal stations had been erected in the Cumberland-Red River area: Prince's Station, established in 1782, near Sulphur Fork and Red River; Neville's Station founded ca. 1784 between Prince's Station and Clarksville; and Clarksville, the only station to become a city, established near the confluence of the Cumberland and Red Rivers. In January 1784 John Montgomery and Martin Armstrong surveyed the present site of Clarksville and proceeded to sell lots. The town, established by North Carolina in 1785, was named for General George Rogers Clark, Indian fighter and Revolutionary War leader.

In 1796 when Tennessee became the sixteenth state, Tennessee County, of which Clarksville was a part, was divided into Montgomery and Robertson Counties, with Clarksville the county seat of Montgomery County. The name Montgomery honored John Montgomery, who was a founder of Clarksville as well as a Revolutionary War leader. By 1797 Clarksville contained thirty houses, a courthouse, and a jail. Cultivation of tobacco in Montgomery County antedates the county's name. Three years after its establishment, Clarksville was declared a tobacco inspection site. Find more from the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: MONTGOMERY COUNTY

Geography: Land and Water

As reported by the Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 544 square miles (1,409 km²), of which, 539 square miles (1,397 km²) of it is land and 5 square miles (12 km²) of it (0.84%) is water.

Montgomery County lies in a region of heavy karst topography and has a cave system named Dunbar Cave.

Neighboring Counties

Bordering counties are as follows:

• Christian County, Kentucky (north)
• Todd County, Kentucky (northeast)
• Robertson County (east)
• Cheatham County (southeast)
• Dickson County (south)
• Houston County (southwest)
• Stewart County (west)

Education

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