The seat of county government was established in the back of Rogers' first tavern, a log structure that boasted an attached lean-to with jail-stocks.

In 1810, the State set up a circuit court for Hawkins County, prompting the county justices to build a newer, larger log-and-clapboard structure on what had become Rogersville's Main Street (which corresponded to the Great Stage Road connecting Washington, D.C., with Knoxville and the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky).

In 1836, the Mitchells sold the lot to the Justices of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions of Hawkins County for $500.

[citation needed] The plan was basically an enlargement of the Botetourt design with the addition of a taller tower and a bell-shaped cupola with Georgian-style, copper finials.

The Jeffersonian style chosen by Dameron combines Palladian proportions and themes with the late-Georgian neoclassicism characteristic of the early Republican period.

Features included red brick construction; all-white painted columns; all-white painted trim; unfluted columns; Tuscan, Doric, Corinthian, or Ionic order capitals; portico-and-pediment primary entries; classical moldings; and square, round, octagonal, and fan-shaped windows or pediment openings.

The original Dameron design includes all the elements of Jeffersonian style: the Hawkins County Courthouse is built of red bricks laid in the Fleming bond pattern; it features all-white painted columns and trim, and unfluted Tuscan columns.

The first and second tiers (which were of equal width) are cubic in shape, with large, Georgian-style painted shutters covering a false window opening.

Further Georgian influence can be detected in the original design's twin chimneys, which featured cornice-like molding that matched the dentils elsewhere on the structure.

In that year, the County Court authorized $42,000 for a new addition to the south end of the courthouse, and an updating of the rest of the building.

In 2000, the Hawkins County government, faced with burgeoning Kingsport suburbs in its eastern sections, had once again outgrown its courthouse.