M. H. EDMONDSON, Sheriff of Blount County, was born in this county, in 1849. He was reared on a farm, and educated at Friendsville, this county. He followed agricultural pursuits until appointed deputy sheriff, by R. B. McREYNOLDS, in 1876. In 1882 he was elected to his present office, and is now serving his third term. In 1879 he married S. E. COKER, a native of Knox County. Of their seven children, four sons and one daughter are living.
His father, John, is a native of this county, and has always followed farming in the Sixth District. The mother, Margaret (DUNLAP), also of this county, died in 1884. Our subject is the fifth child of four sons and two daughters, the two latter being both deceased. At the beginning of the war, our subject’s brothers went to Illinois, and joined the Ninety-eighth Illinois Mounted Infantry, with which J. P. EDMONDSON served until the close, and then returned home, and made up a company, of which he became captain, for Gov. BROWNLOW’S militia. J. C. and W. H. EDMONDSON were discharged after about a year’s service, and the former came home and assisted in organizing a company, of which he was elected first lieutenant.
The great-grandfather of our subject came from Scotland, and our subject’s father, William , came from Virginia, and afterward moved to East Tennessee, where he died, in Blount County.
Source: Goodspeed Publishing Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of from Twenty-Five to Thirty Counties of East Tennessee. Chicago: Goodspeed, 1887.