Van Buren County Courthouse
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Van Buren County
encompasses 274 square miles straddling the Cumberland Plateau
and the eastern Highland Rim. The western 30 percent of the
county stands 960 feet above sea level; its limestone outcroppings
have resulted in numerous caves. The best known, Big Bone
Cave, was important in the early settlement period. In 1811
the discovery of bones of a giant sloth in the cave provided
its name; remnants of a Pleistocene jaguar were unearthed
there as well. The U.S. Department of the Interior designated
the 334-acre site a Pleistocene vertebrate fossil site. It
is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places:
in both the War of 1812 and the Civil War saltpeter was mined
there, and the well-preserved vats, tramways, and ladders
remain in place today.
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The other 70 percent of Van Buren County, the
Plateau region, rises 800-1,000 feet higher than the western
section and is generally level except where streams have cut
gorges (called gulfs) through the sandstone. The Caney Fork
River and its tributaries drain all of Van Buren County except
for the southeast corner, which is drained by the headwaters
of Brush Creek. The Caney Fork also creates the northern border
of the county, and the Rocky River serves as part of its western
boundary.
Van Buren County was formed out of parts of
White, Warren, and Bledsoe Counties in 1840 and named for
the U.S. president at the time, Martin Van Buren. Andrew K.
Parker gave fifty acres of land for a county seat, and the
first county court was held at the home of William Worthington
on April 6, 1840. The county seat was named Spencer in honor
of Thomas Sharp Spencer, who had died nearby in 1794 on what
became Spencer's Hill. The township was officially formed
in 1850 and incorporated in 1909.
Prior to that time, the settlement had become
the home of Burritt College, founded in 1848 as the first
coeducational college in the South. Named for Elihu Burritt
of Worcester, Massachusetts, a prominent member in the peace
movement, the school was situated in Spencer to insulate students
from the vice and corruption of city life, though many of
its graduates chose moving to cities over staying in rural
Tennessee. Burned during the Civil War and rebuilt, Burritt
College survived until the economic failures of the depression
forced its closure in 1939.
In 1860 Van Buren County's population of 2,337
included at least thirty-five slaveholders who owned 239 slaves.
The county supported the Confederacy with four companies--one
reason Spencer was burned when Union troops took the area
in 1863. Earlier, Confederate General Braxton Bragg had marched
the Army of Tennessee through the county on his way to Kentucky
and the campaign that ended with Confederate defeat and the
deaths of twelve Van Buren Countians at Perryville on October
8, 1862.
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