Giles County, population 29,447, of which Pulaski is the county seat, was created by an act of the Tennessee General Assembly on November 14, 1809 from a portion of a Cherokee Indian grant.
General Andrew Jackson suggested the name Giles, in honor of William Branch Giles, Congressman, Senator and Governor of Virginia, who, 12 years earlier, had sponsored the admission of Tennessee as the sixteenth state in the Union.
The same bill which created the county named a five-man commission with instructions to establish the county seat "on Richland Creek, as near the center of the county as practicable." They were also commissioned to sell lots, reserving a public square of two acres on which should be erected a courthouse and stocks for the punishment of criminals.
It is hard to believe that the town square was once a desolate waste of canebreak and forests. Early settlers hacked the 18-foot tall canebrakes from the shores of Richland Creek and established the town of Pulaski which was incorporated in 1810. The first courthouse was built on the present site in 1811. It and three others burned. The present court house was built in 1909.
Three Giles Countians have served as governor of Tennessee: Aaron V. Brown (1845-47), Neill S. Brown (1847-49) and John C. Brown (1871- 73). Neill S. Brown also served as Ambassador to Russia.