State Seal

Tennessee's seal is a small farm-and-river picture with a date problem. The central emblems are a plow, a bundle of wheat and a cotton plant, with Agriculture beneath them and Commerce on the river half below, and the Roman numeral XVI marks the sixteenth state. The 1796 constitution called for a seal, but design work began only in 1801 and the first version was finished in 1802. The date on the original read February 6, 1796, and the month and day were dropped in 1929. The version in use today was adopted in 1987.

What the plaque says

State Seal ne-quarter mile SW on the main street of Jonesboro stood the silversmith shop of William and Matthew Atkinson, designers of the Great Seal of the State of Tennessee. Although authorized by the Tennessee Constitution of 1796, the seal was first used on April 24, 1802, by Archibald Roane, the second governor. Because of legislative failure to provide for a seal, the first governor, John Sevier, used personal seals during his first three terms.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jonesborough Historic District — 0.3 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 — 10 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 — 12 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

• Thomas Emmerson — 0.3 mi
• Warner Institute — 0.3 mi
• DeVault Tavern — 0.3 mi
• Chester Inn — 0.6 mi