The story goes that in 1942, Nashville Historian Stanley Horn was in a Philadelphia antique shop when he found an old portrait of a dark-eyed man dressed in colonial-period clothing. On the back of the portrait, Horn found an inscription written: “Major Joseph McMinn, painted at Philadelphia, 1796. R. Peale.” Horn’s discovery solved a mystery that many historians had struggled with for years: what Joseph McMinn actually looked like.

Even though today we can put a face on the Governor who also bequeathed McMinn County its name, it still puzzles historians as to exactly how Joseph McMinn ever got elected to be Governor in the first place. He was not from an affluent family, did not have a large amount of wealth except for what he acquired working in his own fields himself, and was no great orator nor a skilled politician. But one thing is clear: he was a man of determination, somewhat overbearing, and more than a little sly. It certainly seems that these were the qualities that got him into the Governor’s office, and they are best seen in his dealings with the Cherokees.

Joseph McMinn was born to Quaker parents in Pennsylvania in 1758. In 1787 he had married Hannah Cooper and moved to Hawkins County in what would become Tennessee. He worked the farm fields with his wife, and in 1790 joined the Hawkins County militia, becoming a Major and a Justice of the Peace. In 1796, McMinn was one of five delegates sent by Hawkins County to Knoxville to help draft the first state constitution, and throughout that January he worked alongside such men as Andrew Jackson and James Robertson. When it was ratified, McMinn was honored to be chosen to deliver the document to U.S. Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering in Philadelphia. It was during this time that the 38 year-old McMinn very likely met George Washington and John Adams, and had his portrait painted by Rembrandt Peale, who had also painted Washington’s portrait.

Upon his return, he was elected Colonel of the militia, followed by six terms in the Tennessee legislature, and also served as Speaker of the Senate. During this time, in 1811, his first wife died. He remarried the next year to 18 year-old Rebecca Kincade, who died three years later of a “nervous fever”, followed two weeks later by the death of his daughter, Jane.

The same year, 1815, he was approached by a group of citizens to run for Governor. He would serve three terms, each time gaining a huge percentage of the vote. And while Governor, McMinn set himself to one particular task: removal of the Cherokee. He considered them a “set of vagrant hunters” and an “unprincipled foe”.

Rather than employ others to negotiate with the Indians, McMinn came himself. He was not a healthy man, having a chronic stomach problem that Native American food particularly aggravated. But he went from town to town, gathering Cherokee chiefs together, calling councils, pushing and pushing the Cherokee toward leaving their lands to settle in the West. Often, Chiefs would refuse to talk to him, whereupon he would camp nearby, and daily press the Chiefs for an audience until he got to speak to them.

He was downright pushy, and looking back, it is a wonder that the Cherokees did not waylay and kill him on some remote trail.

Finally, in June of 1817, McMinn was successful in gathering a large number of Cherokees at Walker’s Ferry (soon to be renamed Calhoun) on the Hiwassee River. It was the time of the Green Corn Dance, and McMinn caught enough Cherokees together to arrange a council. He was assisted by General Andrew Jackson, who was just as tenacious as McMinn, and who shared in the desire to remove the Cherokees. With enough Chiefs present, McMinn and Jackson were able to get a treaty signed to encourage any Cherokee willing to go west by providing them a “rifle gun and ammunition, a blanket, one brass kettle, or in lieu of a brass kettle, a beaver trap”.

Throughout the rest of his tenure as Governor, McMinn continued to make trips to the Cherokee country, and encouraged the Hiwassee Purchase to take place in 1818. When some counties were formed out of the purchased land in 1819, one of them bore his name.

He left the governor’s office in 1821, and divorced his last wife, Nancy Williams, when she would not go with him back to Hawkins County. In 1823, at age 65, he moved to Calhoun and returned to Government service as Indian Agent, dying at his desk a year later, alone except for “his faithful body servant Dave”, still working tirelessly to expell the Indians from Tennessee.

 Joe D. Guy is a nationally published author, newspaper columnist, and historian residing in McMinn County, TN. He may be reached via email at guyjd@hotmail.com or at PO Box 489, Englewood, TN 37329.