Rogersville, Tennessee
History, Specialized
In the year 1791, George Roulston, the first printer to enter the State of Tennessee, took his press apart in Fayetteville, North Carolina, packed it on horses’ backs or in wagons and trekked over the trails of the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Holston Valley where Kingsport now stands. There, on the banks of the Holston River at James King’s Boat Yard, he loaded it on a flatboat and floated it down to Rogersville where he set it up and started printing the Knoxville Gazette, the first piece of printing ever attempted in Tennessee