Rogersville Historic District

Rogersville was settled around 1775, and Hawkins County was created in 1786. Joseph Rogers's tavern served as the first courthouse in 1787, and North Carolina chartered the town in 1789. On November 5, 1791, George Roulstone printed The Knoxville Gazette here, the first newspaper in Tennessee, and moved his press to Knoxville in October 1792. A replica of the Gazette is in the Tennessee Newspaper and Printing Museum, in the restored 1890 Southern Railway depot, which opens by appointment. The Hale Springs Inn on West Main Street was built about 1824, and Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson all stayed there. Union forces used it as their headquarters. The Rogersville Heritage Association owns it.

Swift Memorial College opened in 1883, founded by the Rev. William Henderson Franklin, the first Black graduate of Maryville College, who served as principal until 1926. In 1901 Tennessee extended its Jim Crow law to private schools, and Maryville had to expel its Black students. Its trustees transferred $25,000 to Swift that year. The Presbyterian Board of Missions backed the school, a four-year college course began in 1904, and it closed in 1955. The main building was torn down in 1964.

The Price Public Community Center and Swift Museum carries the story forward. Price Public School taught Black children in Rogersville for nearly a century, and the building is now a community center and museum.