Dyersburg Wedding

The lands that make up Dyer County belonged to the Chickasaw. The final treaty by which they relinquished all of West Tennessee was signed in 1818.

In 1823 The General Assembly of Tennessee passed an act to establish two new counties immediately west of the Tennessee River, Dyer County being one of them. John McIver and Joel H. Dyer donated sixty acres for the new county seat, named Dyersburg, at a central location within the county known as McIver's Bluff. In 1825, Joel Dyer surveyed the town site into eighty-six lots. The first courthouse was built on the square in 1827. The current Classical Revival-style courthouse, designed by Asa Biggs in 1911, centers a downtown historic district listed in the National Register of Historic Places.