The people, papers and photographs ofMcNairy County
A free archive kept by volunteers since the county's own early records burned. Marriage books, census rolls, cemetery lists, family bibles, tax rolls and more than five hundred photographs.
Searches the text inside all 115 record books, not just the page titles.
Why this archive exists
In 1881 the courthouse at Purdy burned, and the county lost nearly everything.
McNairy County was cut out of Hardin County in 1823. For fifty-eight years its whole written memory sat in one brick building at Purdy. When that building burned, every record but the land deeds went with it.
What survives was rebuilt afterwards, a page at a time, out of family bibles, church rolls, funeral home ledgers, newspaper columns and headstones. That is what is gathered here, and it is free to read.
The collection
Twelve collections, 115 record books
Every book here is a scanned original you can read in full. Nothing is paywalled and nothing asks you to register.
4 booksMarriages
The oldest continuous record the county still holds, beginning about 1861.
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7 booksBirths & Deaths
County birth and death registers, with the gaps the fire left in them.
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19 booksCemeteries
Headstone by headstone surveys of the county burying grounds, walked and typed by volunteers.
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18 booksFamily Bibles
The pages families wrote themselves, and in many cases the only surviving proof of a birth.
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5 booksCensus Records
Federal census rolls transcribed by name, including the 1840 enumeration.
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11 booksCounty & Court
Chancery and County Court files, wills, and the deeds that outlived the fire.
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12 booksTax Rolls & Car Tags
Who owned what, and where, in a year when no census was taken.
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12 booksChurches & Schools
Congregation rolls and school registers, often naming children years before any other record did.
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9 booksFuneral Homes & Obituaries
Funeral home ledgers and newspaper obituaries, the record that usually names the parents.
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9 booksBiographies
Lives written up at length, from county officials to farming families.
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9 booksOther Resources
Everything that fits nowhere else and is too good to leave out.
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DirectoryFamily Links
Where the McNairy County families are being researched elsewhere.
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The Sheriff's Archive
Five hundred and sixty two photographs and newspaper pages covering a century of McNairy County law, including the sheriff the films were made about.
Two galleries, scanned page by page
The county's law enforcement record was never written down in one place. It exists as photographs in family albums and as columns in the county paper, and both are collected here: arrests, elections, line of duty deaths, moonshine stills stacked barrel on barrel behind the courthouse.
Named in the captions
Nearly every photograph carries the names of the people in it, which is why the gallery is worth searching and not only browsing. Where a face was never identified the caption says so plainly, and the archive still wants the answer.
Sheriff Buford Pusser, the ambushes, and the jail tours that still bring visitors to Selmer are all in the first gallery.
Written up at length
Life & Times of McNairy County
Longer pieces on the county's past, grouped by what they cover.
Ten municipalities
The county
AdamsvilleBethel SpringsEastviewFinger GuysMichieMilledgevilleRamer SelmerStantonville
Bordered by Chester, Hardeman and Hardin Counties in Tennessee, and Alcorn County, Mississippi.
A country store in McNairy County
Add to the archive
Do you have records we should have?
A bible page, a funeral card, a school photograph with the names written on the back. If you have something that belongs in the county record, or you want to volunteer the time to transcribe it, the archive would like to hear from you.
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