Editing Putnam County, Tennessee (section)

==History==

Putnam County is named in honor of [[Israel Putnam]], who was a hero in the [[French and Indian War]] and a general in the [[American Revolutionary War]]. The county was initially established on February 2, 1842, when the Twenty-fourth [[Tennessee General Assembly]] enacted a measure creating the county from portions of [[Jackson County, Tennessee|Jackson]], [[Overton County, Tennessee|Overton]], [[Fentress County, Tennessee|Fentress]], and [[White County, Tennessee|White]] counties.<ref name=tehc />

After the survey was completed by Mounce Gore, the Assembly instructed the commissioners to locate the county seat, to be called "Monticello," near the center of the county. Contending, however, that the formation of Putnam was illegal because it reduced their areas below constitutional limits, Overton and Jackson counties secured an injunction against its continued operation. Putnam officials failed to reply to the complaint, and in the March 1845 term of the Chancery Court at [[Livingston, Tennessee|Livingston]], Chancellor Bromfield L. Ridley declared Putnam unconstitutionally established and therefore dissolved. The 1854 act reestablishing Putnam was passed after Representative Henderson M. Clements of Jackson County assured his colleagues that a new survey showed that there was sufficient area to form the county. [[White Plains (Putnam County, Tennessee)|White Plains]], near modern [[Algood, Tennessee|Algood]], acted as a temporary county seat.<ref name=nrhpnom>Randal William, [http://tn.gov/environment/hist/pdf/whiteplains.pdf National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for White Plains]{{dead link|date=April 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}. Retrieved: September 27, 2009.</ref>

The act specified the "county town" be named "Cookeville" in honor of Richard F. Cooke, who served in the [[Tennessee Senate]] from 1851 to 1854, representing at various times Jackson, Fentress, Macon, Overton and White Counties. The act authorized Joshua R. Stone and Green Baker from White County, William Davis and Isaiah Warton from Overton County, John Brown and Austin Morgan from Jackson County, William B. Stokes and Bird S. Rhea from DeKalb County, and Benjamin A. Vaden and Nathan Ward from Smith County, to study the Conner survey and select a spot, not more than two and one-half miles from the center of the county, for the courthouse. The first County Court chose a hilly tract of land, then owned by Charles Crook, for the site.

Putnam County was the site of several [[niter|saltpeter]] mines. Saltpeter is the main ingredient of gunpowder and was obtained by leaching the earth from several local caves. Calfkiller Saltpeter Cave, located in the Calfkiller Valley, was a major mining operation, as was Johnson Cave, also located in the Calfkiller Valley. Both caves still contain significant remnants of the mining activity. Several other caves in the county were the site of smaller operations. Most saltpeter mining in [[Middle Tennessee]] occurred during the [[War of 1812]] and the [[American Civil War|Civil War]].<ref>Thomas C. Barr, Jr., "Caves of Tennessee", Bulletin 64 of the Tennessee Division of Geology, 1961.</ref>