John Haywood (historian)

Judge John Haywood II (1762–1826) was an American jurist and historian known as "the father of Tennessee history."

Haywood was born in Halifax County, North Carolina in 1762, the son of prosperous tobacco planter Egbert Haywood. His Father Egbert Haywood was the son of John Haywood (politician) the controversial 2nd Treasurer of North Carolina, whom upon his death the state found sums amounting to over one ½ the state's yearly budget missing from the NC Treasury. Despite limited educational opportunities on the colonial frontier, Haywood taught himself law and in later life became widely read. Admitted to the bar in 1786, he quickly gained a reputation as one of the best legal minds in the state.

After serving as clerk of the North Carolina Senate and then the lower house, he became the state's solicitor general in 1790 after the Revolutionary War. He was appointed as the state attorney general the next year. In 1794 he was appointed as a judge, but resigned in 1800 to defend a longtime friend, North Carolina Secretary of State James Glasgow, who, along with several other prominent citizens, had been charged with land warrant fraud. This scandal proved so unpopular that Haywood's own reputation was injured in defending Glasgow.

Following the trial in which Glasgow was convicted, Haywood moved to Raleigh and returned to private law practice. At this time he began his career as an important legal scholar.

His North Carolina Reports (1806) and A Manual of the Laws of North Carolina (1808) were the first important compilations of the state's statutes. He produced equally important legal texts for Tennessee, including A Revisal of All the Public Acts of the State of North Carolina and of the State of Tennessee (1809), Duty and Authority of Justices of the Peace (1810), and The Statute Laws of the State of Tennessee (1831), the latter completed after his death by Robert L. Cobbs.

Haywood owned land in Middle Tennessee. At the encouragement of his friend John Overton, he moved his family to Davidson County. He built a home called Tusculum some eight miles south of Nashville and soon added two log offices. There he trained young men for the law in what may have been the first "law school" in the Old Southwest. As in his native state, Haywood quickly established an enviable legal reputation. In 1816 he was appointed to the Tennessee Supreme Court of Errors and Appeals, a position he held until his death in 1826.

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