Biography

William George Crutchfield was born November 16, 1824 to Sarah Cleage and Thomas Crutchfield in Greene County, Tennessee. He moved with his family to Chattanooga, Tennessee in the late 1830s. As an adult in the 1840s, William worked with his father running the family’s brickmaking and contracting business, and managing a farm and mill in Jacksonville, Benton County (now Calhoun County), Alabama. The Crutchfields were enslavers and used enslaved people for labor in their households, farms, brick kiln, and other businesses. On August 15, 1850, William married Nancy J. Williams in Jacksonville, Alabama, and together they had six children.

After his father’s death in 1850, William returned to Chattanooga. A decade later in the fall of 1860, with the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, several states began to earnestly debate secession from the United States to preserve the institution of slavery. Despite being an enslaver himself, William was openly opposed to secession. He gained notoriety for a well publicized confrontation in January 1861 between himself and Jefferson Davis, who gave a pro-secession speech at Crutchfield House on his return journey from Washington, D.C. to his home state of Mississippi. The Chattanooga Press reported the gathering became unruly and had to be broken up by William’s brother and the hotel's proprietor, Thomas Crutchfield Jr.

During the Civil War, William remained in Chattanooga and provided assistance to the Federal Army. He never enlisted, but in 1863 William served as an honorary captain and a guide to General Wilder and General Thomas at the Battle of Chickamauga and served under General Grant and General Hooker in the Chattanooga campaign.

In 1860, before the war, William enslaved five people. It is unknown exactly when the people enslaved by William Crutchfield were emancipated or escaped to freedom. Tennessee was exempt from President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, under a provision that the state was under Federal control at the time. Tennessee’s Military Governor Andrew Johnson issued his own proclamation on October 24, 1864 freeing all enslaved people in the state. Slavery was officially abolished in Tennessee when voters ratified an amendment to the State’s constitution on February 22, 1865.

After the war, William ran a dry goods wholesale business in Chattanooga called William Crutchfield & Company. He also invested in the expansion of railroad lines in the southeast, supporting the construction of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad and the Chattanooga Southern Railroad. In 1872, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Republican, representing Tennessee’s majority-Democrat Third District. He served in the Forty-Third Congress for one term from 1873 to 1875.

In 1878, William moved to a rural estate in North Georgia in what is now Flintstone, Walker County, Georgia. William Crutchfield died January 26, 1890 near Flintstone, Georgia and was buried at Citizens Cemetery in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Citation:

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Chattanooga Press, January 24, 1885 quoted by William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 296.

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“Chronology of Major Events Leading to Secession Crisis.” Sixteen Months to Sumter: Newspaper Editorials on the Path to Secession. American Historical Association. Accessed December 21, 2023. https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/sixteen-months-to-sumter/chronology.

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“Crutchfield, William 1824-1890.” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Congress.gov. Accessed December 4, 2023. https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/C000961.

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Entry for William Crutchfield, 1860 June 26. Slave Schedule, Vol. 1 (311-662). In Population Schedule of the Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. Washington, DC: National Archives Microfilm Publications, 1967. Microfilm, p. 559, 1282. Accessed December 21, 2023. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GBSF-9HKB.

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Hubbard, Rita Lorraine. African Americans of Chattanooga: A History of Unsung Heros. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2007.

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“Speaker Tells How Chattanooga Revived in Reconstruction Days.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), June 10, 1941. Accessed from Newspapers.com January 10, 2024.

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“Worthy Son of Able Father.” Walker County Messenger (LaFayette, GA), 1910 September 2. Accessed November 29, 2023. https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn89053488/1910-09-02/ed-1/seq-1/.

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“William Crutchfield.” Find A Grave. Accessed December 4, 2023. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6910409/william-crutchfield.

Citation:

Wilson, John. Chattanooga’s Story. Chattanooga, TN: Chattanooga Times-Free Press, 2013.

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