Lawrence Tyson

Early life and education Tyson was born on the farm of his parents, Richard Lawrence Tyson and Margaret Turnage, near Greenville in Pitt County, North Carolina near the Tar River in the Tidewater region. After graduating from the private Greenville Academy, Tyson initially worked as a clerk in Salisbury. In July 2007, Drew Gilpin Faust, a professor of history, college administrator and a great-granddaughter of Lawrence D. and Bettie Tyson, became Harvard University's 28th president. Her paternal grandmother was Isabella (Tyson) Gilpin, Lawrence and Bettie's daughter. Her parents were McGhee Tyson and Catherine (Mellick) Gilpin, born to a wealthy New Jersey family. Tyson is also a great-grandfather of actor Jack Gilpin and a great-great-grandfather of Jack's daughter, actress Betty Gilpin.

Professor and lawyer With his father-in-law's help, Tyson was appointed professor of military science at the University of Tennessee in 1891.

Tyson also enrolled in the university's law school, from which he graduated in 1894. After his admission to the Tennessee Bar, he resigned his military commission and began practicing law. As the war wound down in February 1899, Tyson's unit was ordered to Savannah, Georgia, where they were mustered out a month later. In December 1910, several dozen children were still working at a Knoxville Cotton Mills factory, as shown in a photograph by National Child Labor Committee photographer Lewis Hine.

State politics Tyson's first foray into politics came in 1902, when he was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives. In 1889, the Democrats had gained control of the state legislature and quickly passed four acts which they described as "electoral reform," including literacy tests, grandfather clauses and poll taxes. These resulted in the disfranchisement of most of the African-American voters in the state, as well as many poor white voters. This sharply reduced competitive politics in the state, leading to Democratic dominance.

From 1903 to 1905, Tyson served as the elected Speaker of the House. Tyson temporarily commanded the entire division three times during his service with the 30th: from December 22−28, 1917, from March 30 to April 7, 1918, and from January 12−15, 1919. After several more months of training, Tyson's brigade, together with rest of the division, embarked for service overseas on the Western Front in May 1918, and were among the first American troops to enter Belgium in July of that year.

In October 1918, Tyson's son, Charles McGhee Tyson (1889–1918), a pilot in the United States Navy, was lost over the North Sea while scouting for mines. After Germany's surrender, Tyson left the front to help search for his son off the coast of Scotland. In 1926, Scripps-Howard merged the Sentinel with the Knoxville News to form the Knoxville News Sentinel. He defeated Republican candidate, Hugh B. Lindsay, in the general election later that year. He was sworn in as a Senator on March 4, 1925.

Death and legacy

Tyson died, at the age of 68, in 1929 at a sanitarium in Strafford, Pennsylvania. He is buried in Old Gray Cemetery in Knoxville.

In 1927, Lawrence and Bettie Tyson donated the land for what is now Tyson Park, as well as land for an airstrip (originally in West Knoxville), to the City of Knoxville, asking in return that the city name the airstrip for their son, Charles McGhee Tyson. In 2012, the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the General Lawrence D. Tyson House.