page_title: History of Randolph, Tennessee
section_title: Establishment
hierarchical_section_title: History of Randolph, Tennessee / European settlement / Establishment
caption_attribution_description: English: Lloyd's steamboat directory, and disasters on the western waters..., Philadelphia: Jasper Harding, p. 46.
context_page_description: Randolph is an unincorporated rural community in Tipton County,
  Tennessee, United States, located on the banks of the Mississippi River. The lands of the Mississippi River Basin were inhabited by Paleo-Indians and later Native American tribes of the Mississippian culture for thousands of years. The Tipton Phase people and the Chickasaw Indian tribe populated the Mississippi River valley near Randolph during the Mississippian period. In 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto crossed the Mississippi River at or near Randolph. French explorer Cavelier de La Salle built the first French fortification at or near Randolph on his 1682 canoe expedition of the Mississippi River.
  European settlers arrived in the area around 1800. The town of Randolph was founded in the 1820s as one of the earliest European settlements in Tipton County. The location of Randolph, on the second Chickasaw Bluff along the banks of the Mississippi River, just south of the lower mouth of the Hatchie River, provided for an ideal harbor for flatboats and steamboats and made the town an early center of river commerce in West Tennessee. Randolph shipped more cotton annually than Memphis until 1840.
context_section_description: Early in the 1820s, landowners and investors John T. Brown and Robert Bedford were the proprietors of the land on the second Chickasaw Bluff that would form Randolph a few years later. Only 40–50 miles (60–80 km) north of Memphis by water, they described the area as "a good landing for Mississippi River flatboats". The Hatchie River, joining the Mississippi River just north of the second Chickasaw Bluff, was accessible to steamboats for 60 miles (100 km) upriver to Bolivar, in Hardeman County. Brown and Bedford chose the site on the second Chickasaw Bluff to lay out the plan for Randolph, a promising river town.
  The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture gives the date of Randolph's official establishment as 1823. Other reports date the foundation to 1827 or 1828. The founders of Randolph named the community for John Randolph (1773–1833), a leader in the United States Congress from Virginia and spokesman for the "Old Republican" faction of the Democratic-Republican Party. The Old Republican faction wanted to restrict the federal government's roles.
caption: Mississippi River steamboat (1815)
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