The Political Graveyard: Tennessee Politicians Who Died in Office

PoliticalGraveyard.com

Tennessee Politicians Who Died While Still Holding Office

U.S. Senators from Tennessee
U.S. Representatives from Tennessee
Representatives from Tennessee in the Confederate Congress
Governors of Tennessee
Tennessee Secretaries of State
Speakers of the Tennessee State Senate
Members of the Tennessee State Senate

U.S. Senators from Tennessee Who Died In Office:
- Felix Grundy, December 19, 1840
- Andrew Johnson, July 31, 1875
- Isham G. Harris, July 8, 1897
- William B. Bate, March 9, 1905
- Robert L. Taylor, March 31, 1912
- Lawrence D. Tyson, 1929
- Nathan L. Bachman, April 23, 1937
- Estes Kefauver, August 10, 1963
U.S. Representatives from Tennessee Who Died In Office:
- John Sevier, September 24, 1815
- James Israel Standifer, August 20, 1837
- Joseph Hopkins Peyton, 1845
- Brookins Campbell, December 25, 1853
- Samuel McClary Fite, October 23, 1875
- James Phelan, January 30, 1891
- Leonidas C. Houk, May 25, 1891
- Walter P. Brownlow, July 8, 1910
- George W. Gordon, August 9, 1911
- John A. Moon, June 26, 1921
- Lemuel P. Padgett, August 2, 1922
- Edward E. Eslick, June 14, 1932
- Joseph W. Byrns, June 4, 1936
- Clarence W. Turner, 1939
- Sam D. McReynolds, July 11, 1939
- J. Will Taylor, November 14, 1939
- J. Percy Priest, October 12, 1956
- Jere Cooper, December 18, 1957
- B. Carroll Reece, March 19, 1961
- Howard H. Baker, January 7, 1964
- Robert A. Everett, January 26, 1969
- Clifford Robertson Allen, June 18, 1978
- John J. Duncan, June 21, 1988
Representatives from Tennessee in the Confederate Congress Who Died In Office:
- David Maney Currin, March 25, 1864
Governors of Tennessee Who Died In Office:
- Austin Peay IV, October 2, 1927
Tennessee Secretaries of State Who Died In Office:
- Gentry Crowell, December 20, 1989
Speakers of the Tennessee State Senate Who Died In Office:
- Hugh Crump Anderson, March 1, 1915
Members of the Tennessee State Senate Who Died In Office:
- William Blount, March 21, 1800
- Almon Case, January 11, 1867
- Thomas J. R. Swafford, October 17, 1884
- Hugh Crump Anderson, March 1, 1915
- Tommy Burks, October 19, 1998
- Kenneth N. Springer, April 12, 2000

"Enjoy the hospitable entertainment of a political graveyard."
Henry L. Clinton, Apollo Hall, New York City, February 3, 1872

The Political Graveyard is a web site about U.S. political history and cemeteries. Founded in 1996, it is the Internet's most comprehensive free source for American political biography, listing 338,260 politicians, living and dead.

	The coverage of this site includes (1) the President, Vice President, members of Congress, elected state and territorial officeholders in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories; and the chief elected official, typically the mayor, of qualifying municipalities; (2) candidates at election, including primaries, for any of the above; (3) all federal judges and all state appellate judges; (4) certain federal officials, including the federal cabinet, diplomatic chiefs of mission, consuls, U.S. district attorneys, collectors of customs and internal revenue, members of major federal commissions; and political appointee (pre-1969) postmasters of qualifying communities; (5) state and national political party officials, including delegates, alternate delegates, and other participants in national party nominating conventions; (6) Americans who served as "honorary" consuls for other nations before 1950. Note: municipalities or communities "qualify", for Political Graveyard purposes, if they have at least half a million person-years of history, inclusive of predecessor, successor, and merged entities.
	The listings are incomplete; development of the database is a continually ongoing project.
	Information on this page — and on all other pages of this site — is believed to be accurate, but is not guaranteed. Users are advised to check with other sources before relying on any information here.
	The official URL for this page is: https://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/TN/pdio.html.
	Links to this or any other Political Graveyard page are welcome, but specific page addresses may sometimes change as the site develops.
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Copyright notices: (1) Facts are not subject to copyright; see Feist v. Rural Telephone. (2) Politician portraits displayed on this site are 70-pixel-wide monochrome thumbnail images, which I believe to constitute fair use under applicable copyright law. Where possible, each image is linked to its online source. However, requests from owners of copyrighted images to delete them from this site are honored. (3) Original material, programming, selection and arrangement are © 1996-2025 Lawrence Kestenbaum. (4) This work is also licensed for free non-commercial re-use, with attribution, under a Creative Commons License.
What is a "political graveyard"? See Political Dictionary; Urban Dictionary.
Site information: The Political Graveyard is created and maintained by Lawrence Kestenbaum, who is solely responsible for its structure and content. — The mailing address is The Political Graveyard, P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106. — This site is hosted by HDLmi.com. — The Political Graveyard opened on July 1, 1996; the last full revision was done on February 17, 2025.