The printers George Roulstone and Robert Ferguson introduced the first Tennessee printing at Hawkins Court House, now Rogersville, with the November 5, 1791, issue of The Knoxville Gazette. Both men came to the Tennessee country, or Southwest Territory, by way of North Carolina. Their newspaper remained at Hawkins Court House until October 1792, while Knoxville, chosen as the seat of the Territorial government, was being constructed.

The earliest Tennessee imprint in the Library of Congress is probably the eight-page official publication entitled Acts and Ordinances of the Governor and Judges, of the Territory of the United States of America South of the River Ohio, which according to Douglas C. McMurtrie "was certainly printed by Roulstone at Knoxville in 1793, though it bears no imprint to this effect."[44] Its contents, relating principally to the definition of separate judicial districts within the Territory, are dated from June 11, 1792, to March 21, 1793, and the printing could have been accomplished soon after the latter date.

The Library of Congress copy is one of those afterwards prefixed to and issued with a much more extensive work printed by Roulstone in 1794: Acts Passed at the First Session of the General Assembly of the Territory of the United States of America, South of the River Ohio, Began and Held at Knoxville, on Monday the Twenty-Fifth Day of August, M,DCC,XCIV. The Library's volume lost its 1794 title page at an early date, and it is the exposed second leaf, the title page of 1793, that bears the inscription, "Theodorick Bland June 1st 1799." Theodorick Bland (1777-1846) was to be chancellor of Maryland for many years. His correspondence preserved by the Maryland Historical Society reveals that he practiced law in Tennessee from 1798 to 1801. From such evidence as its Library of Congress bookplate, the volume would appear to have entered the Library around the late 1870's.

The earliest dated example of Tennessee printing in the Library is the Knoxville Gazette for June 1, 1793, issued a month after Ferguson retired from the paper. The issue begins with a lengthy selection by Benjamin Franklin, which is prefaced in this way:

The subscriber was undoubtedly William Blount, the Territorial Governor appointed by President Washington in 1790, who perhaps hoped that the sympathy towards Indians expressed by Franklin might temper public reaction against Indian raids figuring so large in the local news. Readers of the same June 1 issue learned of such crimes as the scalping of a child near Nashville, and they may have been moved by the following paragraph which the editor interjected in the news reports:

Both this issue and the June 15 issue, the sole Library of Congress holdings of the Gazette for the year 1793, are inscribed "Claiborne Watkins, esq^r." They probably belonged to the person of that name residing in Washington County, Va., who served as a presidential elector in 1792.[47]