 The first European settler of what eventually became Morristown was farmer Gideon Morris.It is recorded in Goodspeed's "History of Tennessee" that Gideon, along with an unspecified number of his siblings, arrived in the area of present-day Morristown from the Watauga Settlement, a short-lived semi-autonomous settlement located in northeast Tennessee that was originally leased from the resident Cherokee tribes during the 1770s.Records in North Carolina indicate that a Morris family moved to the Watauga Settlement from North Carolina.