Hon. Isaac M. Steele, the oldest lawyer of Lauderdale Co., is the son of David
and Elizabeth (Jetton) Steele. The father was born in Ireland in 1763, and
the mother in Mecklenburg County, N. C., in 1773. He came to America when
about twenty-seven years old, and located in North Carolina, where they were
married in 1795, and soon after moved to East Tennessee, where they remained
until they died. Four children were born to them. Our subject alone
survives. Both parents were strict members of the Associate Reformed
Presbyterian Church, but after Mr. Steele died she joined the Methodist
Church. In politics he was a Jeffersonian Democrat; by trade a double-
coverlet weaver, being skilled in the trade, and he also farmed on a small
scale. Though a laborer, he was a man of fine mind and of fair education, and
died in 1812, the mother surviving until 1849. Our subject was born March 7,
1805, in Knox County, Tenn., and is of Irish descent on the father’s side, and
Scotch-French on his mother’s; was raised on a farm, and received a very
limited education, but at the age of twenty-one he commenced teaching, and
taught for several winters, working on the farm during the summer. In 1829 he
married Jane Hadley, who was born in North Carolina, January 5, 1811, and of
eleven children born to this marriage four sons and two daughters are living:
Stephen H. and David P. are doctors; Thomas, a lawyer. Mr. Steele is not a
church member; his wife is a Presbyterian. In 1840 he was elected county
court clerk, serving also as deputy circuit clerk, and the duties of these
positions not being arduous, he commenced the study of law, which had been a
desire of his for many years. In 1844 he was made circuit court clerk, and
was admitted to the bar the same year. In 1848 he was again elected county
court clerk, and practiced his profession in adjoining counties, and has made
law his chief field of labor. In 1855 he was elected to the State Senate. He
was a Whig until 1856, but has since been a Democrat. In 1857 he moved to
Covington, Tenn., and lived there for seventeen years, then returned to
Ripley. He has been a licensed practitioner at the bar for forty-two years,
and, although advanced in years, still attends to considerable business, and
is held in high esteem.

Goodspeed’s Biographies of Lauderdale Co., TN