Editing Johnson County, Tennessee (section)

==History==
Johnson County was created in 1836 from parts of [[Carter County, Tennessee|Carter County]]. This followed several years of bickering over the location of Carter County's seat, with residents of what is now Johnson County arguing that travel to [[Elizabethton, Tennessee|Elizabethton]] was too lengthy and difficult. When their petition to move the seat to a more central location was rejected, they petitioned the state legislature for the creation of a new county. The new county was named after Thomas Johnson, an early settler. The county seat was initially named "Taylorsville" in honor of Colonel James P. Taylor (it was changed to "Mountain City" in the 1880s).<ref name=tehc /><ref>"[http://www.mce.k12tn.net/johnson/history/forming/forming_johnson_county.htm The Forming of Johnson County]{{Dead link|date=November 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}," Mountain City Elementary School website. Retrieved: September 28, 2015.</ref>

Most Johnson Countians supported the Union during the Civil War. The county's residents rejected secession by a margin of 788 to 111 in Tennessee's secession referendum on June 8, 1861.<ref>Oliver Perry Temple, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=g8xYAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22The+detailed+vote+of+the+several+counties+was+as+follows%22&pg=PA199 East Tennessee and the Civil War]'' (R. Clarke Company, 1899), p. 199.</ref>  The county sent a sizable delegation to the [[Greeneville, Tennessee|Greeneville]] session of the pro-Union [[East Tennessee Convention]] in June 1861.<ref name=bryan>Charles F. Bryan, Jr., "[https://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/42626043?uid=14937480&uid=3739912&uid=2&uid=3&uid=67&uid=14937416&uid=62&uid=3739256&sid=21104662885971 A Gathering of Tories: The East Tennessee Conventions of 1861]," ''Tennessee Historical Quarterly'', Vol. 39, No. 1 (Spring 1980), pp. 27-48.</ref>

Due in large part to the county's remoteness, the railroads did not reach Johnson until the early 20th century. The arrival of the railroads during this period aided the development of the timber and [[manganese]] mining industries.<ref name=tehc />