NOTE:\u00a0 The Tennessee State Penitentiary opened in 1831.\u00a0 Prior to 1831 convicted felons were held in county jails.\u00a0 The Tennessee State Library and Archives has the surviving records of the Tennessee State Penitentiary and their index of\u00a0inmates was taken from ledger volume 43 of those records.\u00a0 TSLA will provide a copy of the actual entry from the ledger upon request.\u00a0 Please see their email research policy at tn.gov\/tsla .<\/p>\n
This list names only those individuals convicted in Anderson County, whether they lived in Anderson County or not<\/strong>, and sent by the Court to the state penitentiary.\u00a0 It does not include anyone convicted in a military court.<\/p>\n Inmates of the Tennessee State Penitentiary from Anderson County, 1831-1850<\/strong>:<\/p>\n [In addition to the name, offense and age listed here, the\u00a0ledger states the inmates\u2019 state of birth, date received at the penitentiary and date of discharge from the penitentiary.]<\/p>\n Coleman, Oscar S. \u2013 felony, age 37<\/p>\n Dunavan, Ephraim \u2013 larceny, age 25<\/p>\n Kesterson, Hazard – petit larceny, age 52<\/p>\n Kirk, Elvin \u2013 malicious stabbing, age 24<\/p>\n Kirk, Elvin \u2013 robbery, age 35<\/p>\n Knight, John \u2013 counterfeiting, age 24<\/p>\n Langston, George R. \u2013 petit larceny, age 27<\/p>\n Leath, Addison \u2013 stabbing, age 25<\/p>\n Massey, Ransom \u2013 larceny, age 24<\/p>\n Qualls, John \u2013 malicious stabbing, age 23<\/p>\n Shelton, James \u2013 petit larceny, age 22<\/p>\n Smith, Warren \u2013 petit larceny, age 18<\/p>\n Smith, William R. \u2013 counterfeiting, age 35<\/p>\n Sparks, William \u2013 petit larceny, age 33<\/p>\n Inmates of the Tennessee State Penitentiary from Anderson County, 1851-1870<\/strong>:<\/p>\n [Ledger gives name of inmate, crime of which convicted, age, race (not always stated), year convicted and county or court in which the inmate was convicted.]<\/p>\n Burton, William \u2013 robbery, no age stated, 1865<\/p>\n Frost, George \u2013 larceny, age 18, 1853<\/p>\n Griffith, Henry \u2013 murder, no age stated, 1870<\/p>\n Harness, Jacob \u2013 larceny, age 26, 1856<\/p>\n Harrison, Lewis \u2013 larceny, age 25, 1866<\/p>\n Hogshead, John\/Johnson \u2013 murder, age 23, 1866<\/p>\n Kesterson, James \u2013 larceny, age 31, 1859<\/p>\n Mathis, James \u2013 larceny, age 25, 1861<\/p>\n McDonald, Ed \u2013 larceny, age 20, 1868<\/p>\n Nash, Joseph \u2013 larceny, age 27, 1866<\/p>\n Ragsdale, Mike \u2013 horse stealing, age 28, 1867<\/p>\n Raley, Moses \u2013 burglary, age 36, 1852<\/p>\n Robbins, Samuel – felony, age 32, 1861<\/p>\n Shelton, James \u2013 larceny, age 58, 1859<\/p>\n Shope, Robert \u2013 larceny, no age stated, 1865<\/p>\n Short, Alexander \u2013 counterfeiting, age 18, 1858<\/p>\n Short, Ritta \u2013 counterfeiting, age 50, 1858<\/p>\n Short, William \u2013 counterfeiting, age 60, 1858<\/p>\n Smith, William \u2013 larceny, age 20, 1869<\/p>\n Stewart, Frederick \u2013 robbery, no age stated, 1865<\/p>\n Taylor, Levi \u2013 murder, age 24, 1865<\/p>\n Taylor, W. J. \u2013 larceny, age 29, 1860<\/p>\n White, Charles \u2013 horse stealing, no age stated, 1865<\/p>\n White, Jacob \u2013 larceny, age 18, 1868<\/p>\n White, Richard \u2013 larceny, age 26, 1866<\/p>\n [Abstracted from index at tn.gov\/tsla by Stephanie A. Hill.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NOTE:\u00a0 The Tennessee State Penitentiary opened in 1831.\u00a0 Prior to 1831 convicted felons were held in county jails.\u00a0 The Tennessee State Library and Archives has the surviving records of the Continue Reading \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4660,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3381\/revisions\/4660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/andersoncounty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}