Blountville, Tennessee

Blountville is one of Tennessee's oldest towns, established in seventeen ninety-five and named for William Blount, the territorial governor who guided Tennessee toward statehood. It has served as the seat of Sullivan County ever since.

The land was originally purchased by a man named James Brigham in seventeen eighty-two. In seventeen ninety-two, Brigham donated thirty acres to Sullivan County for a courthouse and opened a tavern nearby. The first courthouse was built of massive logs with a jail in the rear.

Blountville holds an unusual distinction for a county seat: it has never been incorporated as a town. It remains to this day an unincorporated community that still runs county government, making it the only unincorporated county seat in Tennessee. By eighteen thirty, it had two churches, six stores, two taverns, ten craftsmen, one doctor, and one lawyer, which sounds like almost everything a small Appalachian town could want.