JOHN T. CANNON, the genial clerk of the Circuit court of Bedford County is a grandson of Clement CANNON, Sr., one of five brothers, who came from North Carolina to Williamson County, Tenn., in the first decade of this century. Clement CANNON, Sr., had five sons, the father of our subject, Henry CANNON, being one of them. Henry CANNON was born in 1812. He lived in this county till 1852, when he moved to Shelby County, Tenn., where he died in 1873, having been a farmer all his life, Of those five brothers, who came to Williamson County, four soon afterward came to Bedford County. Their father’s name was Minos CANNON and their mother was a Thompson, of Scotch-Irish descent. The mother of John T. was Sallie C. M. TILLMAN, a descendant of the Martin family, so numerously represented in the county, and a descendant of the Clay family of Kentucky. She died when John T. was but two weeks old, and he was then reared with Col. Lewis TILLMAN and other relatives.
At fourteen he began his own support and attended school on money earned by himself. He clerked in a store three years and then taught school about four years, having married at twenty-two. He then settled down to farming. In 1861 he enlisted in Company K, Twenty-third Tennessee, as first lieutenant, and served eighteen months. He has been farming very successfully since the war, and now owns nearly 400 acres of good land. He was elected to his office in 1878 and has efficiently served to the satisfaction of his constituents. His birth was December 7, 1835. He was married in 1857 to Narcissa SUTTON, a native of Bedford County. Mr. CANNON has a family of four children, viz.: Sallie C. M. (the wife of C. J. MOODY), Walter S., Lizzie H. and Narcissa W. All the family ware members of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. He is a Royal Arch Mason. His ancestors were old-line Whigs and he is a Democrat.
Transcribed by Kathryn Hopkins
Goodspeed Publishing Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of Maury, Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Bedford & Marshall Counties, Besides a Valuable Fund of Notes, Reminescences [Sic], Observations, Etc., Etc. Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1988.