James White (general)

James White (1747 – August 15, 1821) was an American politician, frontiersman, and soldier who founded Knoxville, Tennessee, in the early 1790s. Born in the Province of North Carolina, White served as a captain in the county militia during the American Revolutionary War. In 1783, he led an expedition into the upper Tennessee Valley, where he discovered the future site of Knoxville. White served in various official capacities with the failed State of Franklin (1784–1788) before building James White's Fort in 1786. In 1789, he was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons from Hawkins County, which later became part of the Southwest Territory. James White's fort was chosen as the capital of the Southwest Territory in 1790, and White donated the land for a permanent city, Knoxville, in 1791. He represented Knox County at Tennessee's constitutional convention in 1796. He was first elected the speaker of the Tennessee Senate in 1797 and resigned in the first session. He was later re-elected speaker in 1801. White was a brigadier general in the Tennessee militia in the Creek War during the War of 1812.

White had a reputation for patience and tactfulness that was often lacking in his fellow settlers on the Appalachian frontier. As lieutenant colonel commandant of the Knox County militia, White managed to defuse a number of potentially hostile situations between the settlers and the local Native Americans. He donated the land for many of Knoxville's early public buildings, and helped establish Blount College (now the University of Tennessee). White's descendants continued to play prominent roles in the political and economic affairs of Knoxville into the twentieth century.