In the 19th century, tobacco and hemp were cultivated here, and planters also raised warm-blooded livestock, including horses and cattle.

This territory had long been inhabited by at least five Native American cultures, including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Shawnee.

Most of the settlers were migrants from Virginia and North Carolina, part of a western movement across the Appalachian Mountains after the American Revolutionary War.

Many brought slaves with them to cultivate the labor-intensive tobacco crops, as well as to care for livestock In 1800, Abram Maury laid out Franklin, the county seat, which was carved out of a land grant he had purchased from Major Anthony Sharp.

As part of the Middle Tennessee region, it had resources of rich soil, which planters developed with slaves for a diversity of crops including rye, corn, oats, tobacco, hemp, potatoes, wheat, peas, barley, and hay.

This diversity, plus timber resources, helped create a stable economy, as opposed to reliance on one cash crop.

By 1850, planters and smaller slaveholders in the county held 13,000 enslaved African Americans, who made up nearly half the population of more than 27,000 (see table below).

"[4] In the post-Reconstruction era and the early 20th century, white violence against African Americans increased in an effort to assert dominance.

[9] Among them was Amos Miller, a 23-year-old black man taken from the courtroom during his 1888 trial as a suspect in a sexual assault case, and hanged from the balcony of the county courthouse.

[11] Numerous blacks left Williamson County from 1880 through 1950 as part of the Great Migration to industrial cities in the North and Midwest for work and to escape Jim Crow oppression and violence.

County population did not surpass its 1880 level until 1970, when it began to develop suburban housing in response to growth in Nashville.

One of the first major manufacturers to establish operations in the county was the Dortch Stove works, which opened a factory in Franklin.

"[1] The completion of the Interstate Highway System contributed to Nashville's rapid expansion in the mid-20th century, stimulating tremendous population growth in Williamson County.

As residential suburban population has increased, the formerly rural county has invested in infrastructure and schools, and its character is rapidly changing.

[1] In addition, Williamson County's overall affluence is also due to an abundance of musicians and celebrities with part-time or full-time residences in it.

The county population decreased from a high in 1880 over most of the next several decades, due in large part to African Americans moving to towns and cities for work, or out of the area altogether.

The oppression of Jim Crow and related violence and the decline in the need for farm labor in the early 20th century, as mechanization was adopted, resulted in many blacks leaving Tennessee for industrial cities of the North and Midwest in the Great Migration.

Combined with the rapid increase in white newcomers in new suburban developments in the county since the late 20th century, African Americans now constitute a small minority.

In 2020, Joe Biden obtained the highest percentage for a Democratic candidate since 1980, but this represented barely one-third of the vote.

[24] The mayor works closely with the 24-member Board of County Commissioners, two members popularly elected to four-year terms from each of the 12 voting districts of roughly equal populations.

Other officials, including the Chancery Court Clerk, Election Administrator, and Highway Superintendent, are appointed for four-year terms.