Named in the 1794 Charter of Blount College as one of its trustees, John Sevier was the first (and only) governor of the State of Franklin, from 1784 to 1787. He was indicted for treason by the State of North Carolina but was rescued by friends from Morganton and returned to Tennessee. Following the dissolution of the treason charges in 1789, he became a member of the North Carolina State Senate, and was reinstated as brigadier general of Washington District. He was appointed brigadier general of the United States in 1781 after moving from Nolichucky to near Knoxville. He was the first governor of Tennessee and served six terms. He served in the US Congress from Tennessee from 1811 to 1815 and was elected again in 1815 but died before learning of his reelection. He was a hero in the Revolutionary War Battle of King’s Mountain. He is one of the two Tennesseans whose statues are in the Hall of Fame in Washington, DC.
In 1815 he was sent by President James Monroe to locate and mark the boundary line agreed upon at the end of the Creek War. While on this mission, he died suddenly of a fever and was buried near Fort Decatur, Alabama. In 1897 his body was returned to Knoxville and ceremonially reinterred on the courthouse lawn in Knoxville, the state’s first capital. His two wives, Sarah Hawkins (with whom he had ten children) and Katherine Sherrill (Bonny Kate, with whom he had eight children) were later reburied on the lawn—one on either side of Sevier.