COCKE

 

County Seat: Newport

You may have seen a television show called Christy, about a woman who leaves her home to go teach in a fictional place called Cutters Gap. Well, it really happened in Cocke County. The novel Christy was written by Catherine Marshall. She wrote the book based on the experiences of her mother, Leonora Whitaker Wood, who in 1910 left her home in Asheville, North Carolina, to teach at a Presbyterian mission in Del Rio, Tennessee. The book tells about the many hardships that “Christy” (Wood) encountered and how her faith in God helped her overcome them.


Wilma Dykeman
PHOTO: Asheville Citizen-Times
Cocke County was also the home of one of the finest writers of stories and books about Tennessee. Her name was Wilma Dykeman; among her best-known words were The French Broad, The Tall Woman, and Tennessee: A Bicentennial History. From 1981 until 2002, Dykeman was the official Tennessee state historian, a post now held by Walter Durham of Sumner County.

Click here to read Dykeman's 2006 obituary in the Asheville Citizen-Times.
The Cocke County Courthouse

And here is a photo of the Cocke County Courthouse.

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