Texas History and Genealogy - presented by Genealogy Trails

Cherokee County is named for the Cherokee Native American Tribe. Its county seat is Rusk. Early Indian habitation has been thoroughly investigated at the George C. Davis Site at Mound Prairie, six miles southwest of Alto. Evidence of all stages of southeastern Indian development has been found, beginning with the 12,000-year-old Clovis culture. A strong Spanish influence came into the area in 1690 with the establishment of San Francisco de los Tejas Mission in neighboring Houston County.

The first documented entry of Europeans came on November 6, 1691, when the expedition of Domingo Terán de los Ríos and Father Damián Massenet entered the county en route from San Francisco de los Tejas to the Red River. The first land grant in the county went to Nacogdoches merchants William Barr and Peter Samuel Davenport in 1798, but they did not settle there. The Indians for whom the county was named—the Cherokees—joined by Delawares, Shawnees, and Kickapoos, began settling north of the Camino Real (the Old San Antonio Road) about 1820. The county's settlers were mostly from the South and brought with them the economic and social traditions of that region. The 1850 population of 6,673 was the third largest in the state. Cotton was important to the local economy, and in 1860 local farmers produced 6,251 bales of the fiber. The area's principal crops, were corn and wheat. County farmers produced more than 496,000 bushels of corn in 1860, and about 21,000 bushels of wheat.