William Walton, owner of the original site of Carthage, was one of the first North Carolina veterans to settle in the area now known as Smith County.

In 1786 Walton and his friend, Tilman Dixon, traveled up the Cumberland River to select and locate their grants. Walton located on the northern bank of the Cumberand River where it joins with the Caney Fork River. Dixon chose an area near the spring which still bears his name.

Other areas of the county were settled in similar means, by soldiers paid with land grants and by the selling of tracts as the area developed and more people settled.

One of the more substantial grants in the county was issued to the heirs of Colonel James Hogan who died in prison camp in 1781. This grant of 12,000 acres included all of Hogan's Creek and much of Mulherrin.

John Gordon settled on the present site of Gordonsville around 1800, building a cabin near the Caney Fork river.

By 1799 the eastern portion of Sumner County, which had been subdivided from Davidson County, was becoming heavily populated. The county seat was located in what is now Sumner County. This required a travel of up to 70 miles for people in what is now the Smith County area to conduct tax and court business.

Petitions for the Tennessee State Legislature to create a new county due to the travel hardships for persons who had to conduct business in "town" began circulating. The legislature passed the act creating the new county of Smith on October 26, 1799. The county was named for General Daniel Smith who was a Virginia native and had worked to survey the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina. He subsequently served as a United States Senator from Tennessee.

Smith county covered a large area when first established. As first laid out by the legislature in 1799, the line began on the "south bank of the Cumberland River at the south end of the eastern boundary of Sumner County, thence north with the said eastern boundary, to the northern boundary of the state, thence east to where it is intersected by the Cherokee boundary as established by the Treaty of Holston, thence with that boundary to the Caney Fork following its meanders to the south thereof, thence down the south bank of the Cumberland River according to its meanders to the mouth thereof to the beginning." Thus, Smith County originally contained portions of what later became Trousdale, Dekalb, Putnam, Jackson, Clay and most of Macon counties. This same act also created Wilson County which contained all of the land west of the Caney Fork and south of the Cumberland Rivers.

Smith County boundaries have changed numerous times since the original act. In 1801 Jackson County was cut off from Smith, but another legislative Act extended Smith County's western boundary to include the land south of the Cumberland River that was previously part of Wilson County. The same legislative session also extended the county southward to the Alabama state line, causing Smith County's borders to extend from the northern to the southern boundaries of the state of Tennessee. The Act of 1805 reduced the county to the constitutional limits of six hundred twenty-five square miles when the boundary between Jackson and Smith counties was moved west approximately five miles. In 1836 the establishment of Cannon County reduced Smith County by taking fifteen square miles from the south side of the county. This portion was incorporated into Dekalb County a year later when it was created. In 1842 the establishment of Macon County reduced the northern border from the Kentucky line to its present border. A tract of the northwestern part of the county was cut off to form a portion of Trousdale County.

Several parcels of land changed counties using The Private Act. Exchanges of this sort changed Smith County's boundaries many times to shape it into its present mass.

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