The settlement is situated 36° 21' north 84° 42' west
Rugby is about 15km ESE of Jamestown and 30km SW of Onieda. It is about 90km NW of Knoxville. The settlement is at the junction of three counties and part of it is in Scott County, Tennessee.
The settlement was founded in 1880 by British author Thomas Hughes, who was most famous for writing the novel Tom Brown's School Days. And was named after Rugby, England where Thomas Hughes had spent his school days at Rugby School.
Rugby was set up as a community for the sons of English nobility who, because they were not the oldest, would not inherit. Rugby was an experiment in utopian living and only flourished for a short while. About half the original buildings, many in Ruskinian gothic revival style, survive and have been restored.