Thomas Hooke McCallie was a Presbyterian minister in Chattanooga, Tennessee. McCallie was born on 1837 August 1 in Washington, Rhea County, Tennessee to Thomas McCallie and Mary Alexander Hooke McCallie. In 1841, McCallie’s family moved from Rhea County to the newly-incorporated Chattanooga, located at the former ferry crossing, Ross’s Landing, on land that had been part of Cherokee Nation. A few years prior in 1838, the United States government forcibly... removed members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations from their lands in the southeast, opening the area to white settlement.

Thomas H. McCallie’s father, Thomas, was a merchant and businessman who, according to McCallie’s autobiography, enslaved seven people: two boys named Alfred and Ed and their mother named Kiziah Harris, a women referred to as Aunt Phyllis, a woman named Mereda, a man named Steve, and an unnamed “man of 20.” Upon Thomas McCallie's death in 1859, the people he enslaved were evidently freed. In his autobiography, McCallie reports that Steve and Kiziah... left the McCallie household, while Aunt Phyllis, who had been enslaved by the McCallie family for over 30 years, remained with the family for a few years before she died in 1863. Steve died of tuberculosis in 1870.

Thomas H. McCallie grew up in Chattanooga in a Presbyterian family. The family lived at the corner of McCallie Avenue and Lindsay Street. At sixteen years old, McCallie attended Burritt College in Spencer, Tennessee, and afterwards, he attended seminary at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1856 to 1859. Upon completion of his education, McCallie immediately began his career in ministry at the Lebanon and Bethesda Churches in Hinds County,... Mississippi in 1859 October. A month later, McCallie was called back to Chattanooga when his father died and he remained there to manage his father’s estate. In 1860, McCallie became the pastor of the Cleveland Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Tennessee. Two years later, in 1862 January, McCallie left his position in Cleveland to become the pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he remained for the next decade and through the Civil War (1861-1865).

On 1862 January 28, Thomas H. McCallie married Ellen Douglas Jarnagin (1843-1915). After eleven years, McCallie resigned as minister of First Presbyterian in 1873. He continued his ministry as an evangelist, preaching at congregations and other meetings in the surrounding area and remained engaged in public life in Chattanooga as the president of the Pastor’s Association. McCallie and his wife moved to the base of Missionary Ridge in 1882, where he... founded the Missionary Ridge Presbyterian Church where he continued his ministry until his death in 1912.

In 1905, two of McCallie’s sons, Spencer Jarnagin McCallie (1876-1949) and James Park McCallie (1879-1971), endeavored to open a college preparatory school for boys in Chattanooga. McCallie offered them a loan of $2000 for start-up costs along with the use of land and a vacant building at the base of Missionary Ridge, where the McCallie school remains located to this day. A year later in 1906, McCallie’s daughter, Grace McCallie (1865-1918), along... with public school teachers Tommie Payne Duffy and Eula Lea Jarnagin, opened a college preparatory school for girls, Girls Preparatory School, in the McCallie’s old home on Oak Street in downtown Chattanooga.

Thomas H. McCallie was an outspoken voice in Chattanooga against lynching. On 1906 March 19, Ed Johnson, a young Black man was lynched by a mob in Chattanooga after he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced for the rape of Nevada Taylor. During the trial and following Johnson’s murder, McCallie, along with other local ministers in the Pastor’s Association, used his sermons to condemn mob violence. McCallie also offered support to Noah Parden, one... of the Black attorneys who appealed Johnson’s case to the Supreme Court.

Thomas H. McCallie died on 1912 April 30 in Chattanooga, Tennessee and is buried in Forest Hills Cemetery, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“Beloved Minister and Good Citizen: Dr. T. H. McCallie, Oldest Presbyterian Preacher, Passes to His Reward.” Chattanooga News (Chattanooga, Tenn.), May 1, 1912.

Cate, Margaret. "Girls Preparatory School." Tennessee Encyclopedia. October 8, 2017. http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/girls-preparatory-school/.

Curriden, Mark and Leroy Phillips Jr. Contempt of court: the turn-of-the-century lynching that launched 100 years of federalism. New York: Anchor Books, 1999.

"History of McCallie." McCallie School. Accessed August 19, 2025. https://www.mccallie.org/about/history-of-mccallie

Loop, Sue Mills. “M’Callies Leaders in Church and School Work.” Chattanooga Times (Chattanooga, Tenn.), April 23, 1933.