Tennessee's 1st congressional district

Tennessee's 1st congressional district
Tennessee's 1st congressional district - since January 3, 2013.
Current Representative		Phil Roe (R–Johnson City)
Population (2000)	632,143
Median income	$31,228
Ethnicity	95.8% White, 2.2% Black, 0.4% Asian, 1.5% Hispanic, 0.2% Native American, 0.0% other
Cook PVI	R+21

The Tennessee 1st Congressional District is the congressional district of northeast Tennessee, including all of Carter, Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Hancock, Hawkins, Johnson, Sullivan, Unicoi, and Washington counties and parts of Jefferson County and Sevier County. Cities and towns represented within the district include Blountville, Bristol, Church Hill, Elizabethton, Erwin, Greeneville, Johnson City, Jonesborough, Kingsport, Morristown, Mountain City, Newport, Pigeon Forge, Roan Mountain, Rogersville, Sneedville, Sevierville and Tusculum. The 1st District's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives has been held by Republicans since 1881.

The district was created in 1805 when the At-large seat was divided among multiple districts.

The district's current Congressman, Phil Roe was first elected in 2008 after defeating one-term incumbent David Davis in the Republican primary

Political characteristics

The 1st has generally been a very secure voting district for the Republican Party since the American Civil War, and is one of only two ancestrally Republican districts in the state (the other being the neighboring 2nd district).

Democratic
U.S. Representatives Andrew Jackson (1796-1797, at large) and Andrew Johnson (1843-1853, 1st) represented this area and later served as President of the United States

Republicans (or their antecedents) have held the seat continuously since 1881 and for all but four years since 1859, while Democrats (or their antecedents) have held the congressional seat for all but eight years from when Andrew Jackson was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1796 (as the state's single at large representative) up to the term of Albert Galiton Watkins ending in 1859.

Andrew Johnson later ascended to the office of President of the United States.

The 1st was one of four districts in Tennessee whose congressmen did not resign when Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861. Thomas Amos Rogers Nelson was reelected as a Unionist (the name used by a coalition of Republicans, northern Democrats and anti-Confederate Southern Democrats) to the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was arrested by Confederate troops while en route to Washington, D.C. and taken to Richmond. Nelson was paroled and returned home to Jonesborough, where he kept a low profile for the length of his term.

Like the rest of East Tennessee, slavery was not as common in this area as the rest of the state due to its mountain terrain, which was dominated by small farms instead of plantations. The district was also the home of the first exclusively abolitionist periodicals in the nation, The Manumission Intelligencer and The Emancipator, founded in Jonesborough by Elihu Embree in 1819.

Due to these factors, this area supported the Union over the Confederacy in the Civil War, and identified with the Republican Party after Tennessee was readmitted to the Union in 1867, electing candidates representing the Unionist Party--a merger of Republicans and pro-Union Democrats--both before and after the war. This allegiance continues to this day, with Republicans dominating every level of government. While a few Democratic pockets exist in the district's urban areas, they are not enough to sway the district.

The district typically gives its congressmen long tenures in Washington; indeed, it elected some of the few truly senior Republican congressmen from Southern districts before the 1950s. Only eight people have represented it since 1921.

List of representatives

Representative	Party	Years	Electoral history
District created March 4, 1805
John Rhea	Democratic- Republican	March 4, 1805 – March 3, 1815	Redistricted from the at-large district
Samuel Powell	Democratic- Republican	March 4, 1815 – March 3, 1817	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
John Rhea	Democratic- Republican	March 4, 1817 – March 3, 1823	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
John Blair	Jacksonian Democratic- Republican	March 4, 1823 – March 3, 1825	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
	Jacksonian	March 4, 1825 – March 3, 1835	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
William B. Carter	Anti- Jacksonian	March 4, 1835 – March 3, 1837	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
	Whig	March 4, 1837 – March 3, 1841	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Thomas D. Arnold	Whig	March 4, 1841 – March 3, 1843	Retired
Andrew Johnson	Democratic	March 4, 1843 – March 3, 1853	Elected Governor of Tennessee
Brookins Campbell	Democratic	March 4, 1853 – December 25, 1853	Died
Vacant		December 25, 1853 – March 30, 1854	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Nathaniel G. Taylor	Whig	March 30, 1854 – March 3, 1855	Lost re-election
Albert G. Watkins	Democratic	March 4, 1855 – March 3, 1859	Redistricted from the 2nd district Retired
Thomas A. R. Nelson	Opposition	March 4, 1859 – March 3, 1861	Re-elected in 1860, but captured en route to Congress and failed to take his seat in 1861
Civil War and Reconstruction
Nathaniel G. Taylor	Unionist	July 24, 1866 – March 3, 1867	Retired
Roderick R. Butler	Republican	March 4, 1867 – March 3, 1875	Lost re-election
William McFarland	Democratic	March 4, 1875 – March 3, 1877	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
James H. Randolph	Republican	March 4, 1877 – March 3, 1879	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Robert L. Taylor	Democratic	March 4, 1879 – March 3, 1881	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Augustus H. Pettibone	Republican	March 4, 1881 – March 3, 1887	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Roderick R. Butler	Republican	March 4, 1887 – March 3, 1889	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Alfred A. Taylor	Republican	March 4, 1889 – March 3, 1895	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
William C. Anderson	Republican	March 4, 1895 – March 3, 1897	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Walter P. Brownlow	Republican	March 4, 1897 – July 8, 1910	Died
Vacant		July 9, 1910 – November 7, 1910	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Zachary D. Massey	Republican	November 8, 1910 – March 3, 1911	Retired
Sam R. Sells	Republican	March 4, 1911 – March 3, 1921	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
B. Carroll Reece	Republican	March 4, 1921 – March 3, 1931	Lost renomination to Oscar Lovette
Oscar B. Lovette	Republican	March 4, 1931 – March 3, 1933	Lost renomination
B. Carroll Reece	Republican	March 4, 1933 – January 3, 1947	Retired to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee
Dayton E. Phillips	Republican	January 3, 1947 – January 3, 1951	Lost renomination
B. Carroll Reece	Republican	January 3, 1951 – March 19, 1961	Died
Vacant		March 20, 1961 – May 15, 1961	[Data unknown/missing. You can help!]
Louise Reece	Republican	May 16, 1961 – January 3, 1963	Elected to finish her husband's term Retired
Jimmy Quillen	Republican	January 3, 1963 – January 3, 1997	Retired
William L. Jenkins	Republican	January 3, 1997 – January 3, 2007	Retired
David Davis	Republican	January 3, 2007 – January 3, 2009	Lost renomination
Phil Roe	Republican	January 3, 2009 – present	First elected in 2008

Historical district boundaries

2003 - 2013

See also

• Tennessee's congressional districts
• List of United States congressional districts

Source

• Political Graveyard database of Tennessee congressmen

References

• Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present