William Gannaway Brownlow
Governor, Tennessee, 1865-69
U. S. Senator, Tennessee, 1869-1875
Born: August 29, 1805, near Wytheville, Wythe County, Virginia.
Died: April 29, 1877, Knoxville, Tennessee.
- Attended the common schools.
- Entered the Methodist ministry, 1826.
- Moved to Elizabethton, Tennessee, 1828, and continued his ministerial duties.
- Published and edited a newspaper called the Whig at Elizabethton, Tennessee, in 1838.
- Moved the paper to Jonesboro, Tennessee, 1839.
- Moved the paper to Knoxville, Tennessee, 1849.
- From his caustic and trenchant editorials he became widely known as "the fighting parson".
- Unsuccessful candidate for election, 1842, to the Twenty-eighth U. S. Congress.
- Appointed a member of the Tennessee River Commission for the Improvement of Navigation by U. S. President Fillmore, 1850.
- Delegate to the Constitutional Convention which reorganized the State government of Tennessee, 1864.
- Elected Governor of Tennessee, 1865, and again in 1867, serving from 1865-1869.
- Elected from Tennessee as a Republican to the U. S. Senate, serving from March 4, 1869 - March 3, 1875.
- Was not a candidate for re-election.
- Returned to Knoxville, Tennessee, and lived in retirement until his death in 1877.
Buried: Old Grey Cemetery, Knoxville, Tennessee.
(Source: U.S. Congress. House. Biographical Directory Of The American Congress 1774-1949, 85th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 607 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950), pp. 759-2057.)