William Tecumsah Avery

William Tecumsah Avery was an American politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives for the 10th congressional district of Tennessee. He was born in Hardeman County, Tennessee on November 11, 1819. He attended the common schools, graduated from old Jackson College near Columbia, Tennessee in Maury County, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1840 and engaged in the practice of law.

He was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1843. He was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congress. He served from March 4, 1857 to March 3, 1861, but he was not a candidate for renomination in 1860. During the Civil War, he served as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army. He was a clerk of the criminal court of Shelby County from 1870 to 1874. He resumed the practice of law in Memphis, Tennessee. He accidentally drowned in Ten Mile Bayou in Crittenden County, Arkansas, opposite Memphis, on May 20, 1880. He was interred in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis.