Jonesboro: Oldest Town in Tennessee

For a few years the town carried two governments. Jonesborough was the first capital of the State of Franklin from August 1784, and Greeneville took over in December 1785. When North Carolina sent troops under John Tipton in 1787 and re-established its courts and government here, rival administrations operated side by side in the same small place. A 1786 treaty negotiated for Franklin pushed settlement south to the Little Tennessee, but Dragging Canoe's Chickamauga faction rejected it, and Chickamauga and Chickasaw warriors attacked Franklin settlements in 1788.

What the plaque says

Jonesboro: Oldest Town in Tennessee Formally established in 1779, by the General Assembly of North Carolina, as county seat of Washington County, first county west of the mountains. In 1784, the State of Franklin was organized here, with Jonesboro as its first capital.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jonesborough Historic District — 0.7 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.
• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 10 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 11 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.
• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 13 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.

More markers nearby

• Alfred Eugene Jackson — steps away
• First Abolition Publications — 0.3 mi
• Alfred Martin Ray, Buffalo Soldier — 0.4 mi
• Christopher Taylor House — 0.4 mi