Bledsoe County, Tennessee

Bledsoe County is the oldest county in the Sequatchie Valley, created by the Tennessee legislature in November eighteen oh seven as the state's thirty-third county. It was named for Anthony Bledsoe, a Revolutionary War patriot from Virginia who settled in what became Tennessee and was killed in an attack in seventeen eighty-eight. Settlement of the valley was delayed until after the Third Tellico Treaty of eighteen oh five opened the land, and some of the earliest settlers accepted Sequatchie land as payment for their own Revolutionary War service. The county seat of Pikeville was established between eighteen sixteen and eighteen eighteen, possibly named for General Zebulon Pike, the explorer whose attempt to climb the Colorado peak that bears his name had made him famous about a decade earlier.