Joseph McMinn was born on June 22, 1758, in West Marlborough Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was the fifth of ten children of Robert and Sarah (Harlan) McMinn. Early in life he settled in the region that was to be Hawkins County, Tennessee.
McMillin was a member of the territorial legislature of 1794 and for more than a quarter of a century thereafter was in public office. In 1796, he was a member of the convention that framed the constitution of Tennessee, and it was upon his motion that a bill of rights was incorporated in that document. He served almost continuously in the first eight general assemblies of the state and was three times speaker of the Senate.
In 1815, he defeated four other candidates for governor, and in 1817 and 1819 was re-elected, thus serving the constitutional limit of six successive years. In 1823, he was appointed United States agent to the Cherokees, a position that he retained until his death. To the surprise of friend and foe, white man and redskin, he practiced "kindness to those miserable Deluded People, " his "Red Brethern, the Cherokee. "
At the solicitation of the Cherokee chief known as the Path Killer, he served notice on intruders from Georgia "to remove their families without the limits of the Cherokee Nation. " Then, without awaiting orders from his superior, the secretary of war, thinking that any delay "would prejudice the Public Interest, " he burned their houses and cut down their corn. The luckless squatters answered by firing on McMinn's troops: not until October 1824 was quiet restored.
McMinn joined the Presbyterian Church late in life, and was buried in an unmarked grave at the Shiloh Presbyterian Cemetery in Calhoun.
As governor McMinn advocated public education, from which he thought "advantages incalculable would arise to the citizens of the state, " and charged the legislature, unsuccessfully, to guard well the lands allotted by Congress for two colleges. He favored improving the navigation of Tennessee River and sponsored a plan for a canal connecting the Holston and Tennessee.
He championed a project for penal reform, but to no avail. Neither was he successful in his attempt to solve the currency and banking difficulties by the establishment of loan offices. One of the major problems of his administration was that constituted by the presence of the Indians within the borders of Tennessee.
McMinn desired their removal to a region west of the Mississippi, for he believed it an injustice to withhold lands from the white settlers "with no other object than to serve the Cherokee and Chickasaw Indians for a hunting ground". While he was governor, the Chickasaws ceded their claims to the western third of the state. He himself negotiated a treaty by which the Cherokees ceded vast tracts in East Tennessee.
Despite a crowded public life, the democratic ex-governor maintained "a plain but reputable 'hostelry'" at Rogersville, Tennessee. Guests found him "affable, kind, and communicative. "
McMinn was thrice married: on May 9, 1785, to Hannah Cooper of Pennsylvania, who died in 1811; on January 5, 1812, to Rebecca Kincade of Hawkins County, Tenn. , who died in 1815; and some time later to Nancy Williams of Roane County, Tenn. , whom he sought unsuccessfully to divorce.
