TN Writers/TN Stories with Scott Williams

Scott Williams, Townmania: Marcus Winchester and the Making of Memphis

Marcus Winchester (1796–1856) devoted his life to transforming the small settlement on the fourth Chickasaw bluff into a thriving center of transportation, commerce, and industry that became Memphis. Sent there at Andrew Jackson’s request while still barely out of his teens, Winchester went on to become the city’s first real estate agent, mayor, store owner, banker, postmaster, and one-man chamber of commerce. His leadership helped establish Memphis as the westernmost outpost of American expansion along the Mississippi River and laid the foundation for its later emergence as one of the South’s most important commercial cities. Townmania: Marcus Winchester and the Making of Memphis tells the forgotten story of the man who transformed a frontier settlement on a Mississippi River bluff into the thriving city of Memphis. This first full-length biography of Memphis’s founding father explores ambition, race, politics, and identity in early Tennessee, uncovering a chapter of Southern history that shaped the nation.