An 1831 map that shows Perry County
PERRY

County Seat: Linden
Maps are interesting things; the thing to remember about maps is that they sometimes have mistakes. As you can see from this 1831 map, Perry County once included land on the east and west sides of the Tennessee River. But in spite of what this map seems to indicate, the county seat of Perry County was never Barrysville, on the east side of the river, but Perryville, on the west side of the river.

Perry County on a current road map
In 1846 the part of Perry County west of the river was turned into a separate county called Decatur County. The county seat of Perry County ended up at a place called Linden, which as you can see here, is in the middle of what we now call Perry County.

By the way, Perryville had an interesting history. It was an important stop on the Tennesee River, and among the famous Tennesseans who visited Perryville were Andrew Jackson, David Crockett, James K. Polk and Sam Houston. Unfortunately, the Perryville that they would have remembered is gone now, flooded when the Tennessee Valley Authority built Kentucky Dam.
A bridge over the Buffalo River in Perry County, around 1900
PHOTO: A. J. Dyer III
Here's another story about Perry County that illustrates just what a big deal the Civil War was. In 1860 there were about 5,400 people living in Perry County, about half of them male. Obviously, a lot of them were either too old or too young to fight. Nevertheless, 800 of them went to fight the Civil War – about 600 for the South and about 200 for the North. Many of them didn’t come home.
The Perry County Courthouse

By the way, Perry County also has the distinction of being one of the slowest growing counties in Tennessee. Today -- nearly a century and a half after the Civil War -- less than 7,000 people live there.

 

SOURCE: Goodspeed’s History of Tennessee, Perry County

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