Existing comment:
Early Settlement:
River transportation ... high ground ... good soil .. spring-fed fresh drinking water ... all that could be asked for to begin a new homestead.
During the 1790s, the site at the juncture of the Cumberland and Red Rivers was called Sevier Station. It marked the western edge of the Cumberland Settlements and was part of a cluster of small forts and farms along the central Cumberland and its tributaries. Frontier warfare was common, including several attacks on Sevier Station.
In 1819, as population grew north of the Red River, the area around Sevier Station became the Town of Cumberland. TW Atkinson and Henry Trice established a keelboat landing and agricultural market including a large tobacco warehouse near Trice's Landing. The keelboats gave way to steamboats along with the development of the Red River Landing near here and two others downstream. A bridge was built across the Red River in 1829.
By the 1840s, the Town of Cumberland was replaced by the communities of New Providence and Meachamville, near the landings and along the Hopkinsville Pike. These hamlets were much smaller in population than Clarksville, which had 1,754 residents in 1840. By the 1850s the two towns had merged as New Providence and became a market and transportation center for the northern section of Montgomery County. |