Harvey Magee Watterson

Harvey Magee Watterson (November 23, 1811 – October 1, 1891) was an American lawyer, newspaper editor, and politician. Watterson was what his only child Henry later described as an "undoubting Democrat of the schools of Jefferson and Jackson", active in Tennessee politics at both the state and federal level.

Biography Watterson was born in Bedford County, Tennessee. He pursued classical studies, studied law at Cumberland College in Princeton, Kentucky, was admitted to the bar, and commenced practice in Shelbyville, Tennessee.

Career Watterson established and edited a newspaper in Shelbyville in 1831. He was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835.

Elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Congresses, representing Tennessee's ninth district in the U.S. House of Representatives, Watterson served from March 4, 1839, to March 3, 1843. His son Henry described those years in his autobiography:

Death Watterson died in Louisville on October 1, 1891. He is interred at Cave Hill Cemetery.