Henry County Courthouse/Henry Co.

Few courthouse squares have sent as many leaders to Nashville. Henry County, a gateway for the settlement of West Tennessee, gave Tennessee three governors: Isham G. Harris, who urged secession in 1861 and later sat in the Senate for twenty years; James D. Porter, governor from 1875 to 1879 and later president of Peabody Normal College; and Thomas C. Rye, governor during World War I. Harris moved to Paris as a boy, and Porter and Rye both died at home there.

What the plaque says

Henry County Courthouse/Henry Co. (Front): Henry County Courthouse This Courthouse was designed by Reuben Harrison Hunt of Chattanooga and built by Ed M. Wallen of New Decatur, Alabama, in 1896. It is the third courthouse on this site and is one of West Tennessee's oldest working Courthouses. The murder case Grainger v. State (1830) originated on this site and set precedent for self - defense as a basis for appeal. Confederate military units, including the "Paris Blues," 5th Tennessee Infantry and 46th Tennessee Infantry regiments, were organized on the lawn. (Reverse): Henry County, named for Revolutionary War patriot Patrick Henry, was created on November 7, 1821 from lands that were part of the Jackson Purchase from the Chickasaws in 1818. Andrew Jackson was a member of the commission that negotiated this treaty. Henry County sent more than 2500 volunteers to the Confederate Armies, and claims the title "Volunteer County of the Volunteer State."

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial — 8.5 mi
  An engraved rock off Mt. Carmel Road near Camden marking where a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins went down on March 5, 1963.
• Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 51,000-acre refuge along Kentucky Lake and the Tennessee River, created in 1945 for migratory birds, with a visitor center in Springville and a drowned Archaic site nearby.
• Johnsonville State Historic Park — 16 mi
  A Tennessee River park on the site of a Union supply depot shelled in November 1864 and of the town later drowned by Kentucky Lake, with earthworks, a railroad bed and an African American cemetery.
• Paris Landing State Park — 18 mi
  A Kentucky Lake state park on the site of a Tennessee River steamboat landing, created after the 1944 TVA dam drowned a sulphur-spring resort.

More markers nearby

• Skirmish at Mansfield — 5.0 mi
• Gunboats & Cavalry November 4, 1864 — 10 mi
• Governor Thomas Clarke Rye — 10 mi
• Camp Tyson — 11 mi