Paris, Tennessee

The present site of Paris was selected by five commissioners appointed to the task of choosing a county seat at the December 1822 session of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of Henry County. Their choice was a 50-acre (20 ha) site, of which 37.5 acres (15.2 ha) were owned by Joseph Blythe and 12.5 acres (5.1 ha) owned by Peter Ruff; both men donated the land to the county to have the seat there. A public square, streets, alleys, and 104 lots were laid off, and the lots were sold at auction over a two-day period in either March or April 1823.[8]

Paris was incorporated on September 30, 1823. It was the first town incorporated in West Tennessee, followed by Lexington on October 9, 1824, and Memphis on December 19, 1826.[8][9][10] The city was named after Paris, France, in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolutionary War.[1]

As the county seat, Paris was a center of trade for the rural county, which was largely devoted to agriculture and particularly the cultivation of cotton as a commodity crop. The planters depended on a large workforce of enslaved African Americans. In 1927, a man named Joseph Upchurch was lynched in Paris.[11]

Between about 1970 and 1990, Paris became the center of the Old Beachy Amish. Beachy Amish from different regions moved there to maintain their traditional ways. Because of internal conflicts, most Old Beachy Amish left the region in the early 1990s and had completely vacated it by 2000.[12]

Since the civil war, Paris has had an African American community of around 15%. Prior to the early 1960's, young black children attended segregated schools. But beginning in the 1960's, the town of Paris worked in conjunction with Henry County to consolidate all schools, busing all children from the periphery of the county to consolidated, integrated schools in Paris. The process was largely peaceful. Also beginning in the 1960's, there was a gradual process of integration of the races in business around the town, also largely peaceful. See Citizendium's article on Paris, Tennessee for more details about how it went.

Read about the lynching of Joseph Upchurch for one known incident of a racial lynching in the town; it occurred in 1927 and was written up in the New York Times.[13]

Paris is located just south of the center of Henry County at 36°18′4″N 88°18′50″W (36.301229, -88.313815).[14] U.S. Route 641 passes through the city center as Market Street, leading north 21 miles (34 km) to Murray, Kentucky, and southeast 22 miles (35 km) to Camden. U.S. Route 79 passes southeast of the city center as Tyson Avenue and Wood Street; it leads northeast 62 miles (100 km) to Clarksville and southwest 16 miles (26 km) to McKenzie. Nashville, the state capital, is 86 miles (138 km) to the east in a straight line and 113 miles (182 km) by the quickest road route, via Clarksville.

According to the United States Census Bureau, Paris has a total area of 13.0 square miles (33.7 km²), of which 13.0 square miles (33.6 km²) are land and 0.04 square miles (0.1 km²), or 0.27%, is covered by water.[7] The city is drained primarily to the east, by tributaries of West Sandy Creek, flowing to the Tennessee River in Kentucky Lake. The southwest corner of the city drains to the Middle Fork of the Obion River, a west-flowing tributary of the Mississippi River.

Local companies manufacture brakes, small electric motors, aftermarket auto parts, metal doors, rubber parts, school laboratory furniture and Ready to Eat Foods.[17]

From 1922 to 1924, Paris was home to a Minor League Baseball team that played in the Kentucky–Illinois–Tennessee League as the Paris Travelers (1922) and the Paris Parisians (1923–1924).[19] HCHS Football team has won the 5A State Championship twice.

• John Hall Buchanan, Jr. — Representative of Alabama's 6th Congressional District, U. S. House of Representatives 1965–1981, and in other political positions.[20]
• John Wesley Crockett — U. S. House of Representatives 1837–1841, Attorney General of the Ninth Judicial District of Tennessee 1841-1843[21]
• Rosan "Rattlesnake Annie" Gallimore — country musician[22][23]
• Edwin Wiley Grove — established Paris Medicine Company 1886, endowed E. W. Grove High School 1906[24]
• Isham G. Harris — Tennessee State Senate 1847, U. S. House of Representatives 1848–1852, Tennessee governor 1857–1862, United States Senate 1877–1897, President pro tempore of the United States Senate 1893-1895[25]
• John Hudson - son of Richard "Bill" Hudson and professional football player, played for Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens in 2000, played for championship team at Auburn in college.
• Howell Edmunds Jackson — Tennessee House of Representatives 1880–1881, United States Senate 1881–1886, Judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit 1886–1891, Judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court of Appeals 1891–1893, U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1893-95[26][27]
• Vernon Jarrett — political activist, social commentator and Chicago Tribune's first African-American syndicated columnist[28]
• Mordecai Wyatt Johnson — a preacher and the first black president of Howard University, serving 1926-1960
• Bobby Jones — gospel musician[29]
• Cherry Jones — actress, Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play 1991- (nominee, Our Country's Good), 1995 (winner, The Heiress), 2000 (nominee, A Moon for the Misbegotten), 2005 (winner, Doubt); Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play 1995 (winner - The Heiress), 1998 (winner, Pride's Crossing), 2005 (winner, Doubt), 2006 (nominee, Faith Healer)[30]
• Merle Kilgore — country musician, songwriter, manager [22][31]
• Charles Gilbert "Chick" King — outfielder, Detroit Tigers 1954–56, Chicago Cubs 1958-59 and St. Louis Cardinals 1959,[32] first two-sport professional athlete
• Keith Lancaster — singer, songwriter, and founder of The Acappella Company,
• Vernon McGarity — Congressional Medal of Honor 1946[22]
• Bobby Olive — former NFL wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts
• James D. Porter — Judge of the 12th Judicial Circuit of Tennessee (1870–1874), Tennessee governor 1875–1879, president of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railroad Company 1880–1884, Assistant Secretary of State under President Grover Cleveland 1885–1887, Minister to Chile under President Grover Cleveland 1893–1895, Chancellor of the University of Nashville 1901, President of Peabody Normal College 1902, later President of those two schools' merging (George Peabody College) until 1909[33][34]
• Thomas Clarke Rye — Attorney General of the 13th Judicial District, Tennessee governor 1915–1919, Chancellor of the 8th Chancery Court of Tennessee 1922-1942[35]
• Edward H. Tarrant — Representative of Red River County, Texas in the Texas House of Representatives September–December 1837, Chief Justice of Red River County, Texas 1838, Brigadier General of Fourth Brigade Northeast Texas Defenders, Texas House of Representatives 1849–1853, namesake of Tarrant County, Texas[36]
• Stephen M. Veazey — president, Community of Christ 2005–present[37]
• Hank Williams Jr. — Country musician, has a home "near Paris"[38]
• Felix Zollicoffer — Tennessee State Printer 1835, Comptroller of the Tennessee State Treasury 1845–1849, Tennessee State Senate 1849–1852, U. S. House of Representatives 1853–1859, Brigadier General, Confederate States Army[39]
• Gin Cooley — Model

Radio stations

• WHNY AM/1000
• W248BK FM/97.5
• WHNY-FM FM/104.7
• WLZK FM/94.1 - "94.1 The Lake"
• WRQR-FM FM/105.5 - KF99-KQ105
• WTPR AM/710 - WENK-WTPR
• WTPR FM/101.7

Newspapers

• The Paris Post-Intelligencer

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Paris (Tennessee).

• Official website
• See the Citizendium article on Paris, Tennessee for a more extensive history of the town.