Gov. McMinn's Home

McMinn was born in Pennsylvania in 1758, fought in the Continental army and bought a Hawkins County farm in 1786. In 1796 the state constitutional convention chose him to carry a copy of the new constitution to Philadelphia for the Secretary of State. He was three times Speaker of the Senate, and his three terms as governor saw the Jackson Purchase completed, the capital moved from Knoxville to Murfreesboro and the Bank of Tennessee incorporated. He died at the Cherokee Agency on the Hiwassee in 1824; McMinn County is named for him.

What the plaque says

Gov. McMinn's Home Near here was the site of "New Market," home of Joseph McMinn, Revolutionary veteran, Governor of Tennessee, 1815-1821, and Indian agent for the Cherokee from 1823 to his death near Calhoun, on the Hiwassee River, in 1824. He is buried there.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Long Island of the Holston — 3.1 mi
  A four-mile island in the Holston at Kingsport, Cherokee council and treaty ground, the start of Boone's Wilderness Road in 1775, and in part returned to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in 1976.
• Warriors' Path State Park — 9.8 mi
  A state park around Fort Patrick Henry Lake on the Holston at Kingsport, named for the Great Indian Warpath, with an unfinished late-1800s railroad grade, mountain-bike trails and a marina.
• Jonesborough Historic District — 20 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 20 mi
  William Cobb's log house at Piney Flats, where Governor William Blount ran the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1792, now a living-history museum set in 1791 with a reconstructed cabin for the enslaved.

More markers nearby

• Donelson's Flotilla — 5.3 mi
• Douglass High School — 5.4 mi
• Battle of Island Flats — 7.3 mi
• Ford vs. Ford — 11 mi