A free archive kept by volunteers since the county's own early records burned. Marriage books, census rolls, cemetery lists, family bibles, tax rolls and more than five hundred photographs.
Searches the text inside all 115 record books, not just the page titles.
Why this archive exists
McNairy County was cut out of Hardin County in 1823. For fifty-eight years its whole written memory sat in one brick building at Purdy. When that building burned, every record but the land deeds went with it.
What survives was rebuilt afterwards, a page at a time, out of family bibles, church rolls, funeral home ledgers, newspaper columns and headstones. That is what is gathered here, and it is free to read.
The collection
Every book here is a scanned original you can read in full. Nothing is paywalled and nothing asks you to register.
4 booksThe oldest continuous record the county still holds, beginning about 1861.
Open the books
7 booksCounty birth and death registers, with the gaps the fire left in them.
Open the books
19 booksHeadstone by headstone surveys of the county burying grounds, walked and typed by volunteers.
Open the books
18 booksThe pages families wrote themselves, and in many cases the only surviving proof of a birth.
Open the books
5 booksFederal census rolls transcribed by name, including the 1840 enumeration.
Open the books
11 booksChancery and County Court files, wills, and the deeds that outlived the fire.
Open the books
12 booksWho owned what, and where, in a year when no census was taken.
Open the books
12 booksCongregation rolls and school registers, often naming children years before any other record did.
Open the books
9 booksFuneral home ledgers and newspaper obituaries, the record that usually names the parents.
Open the books
9 booksLives written up at length, from county officials to farming families.
Open the books
9 booksEverything that fits nowhere else and is too good to leave out.
Open the books
DirectoryWhere the McNairy County families are being researched elsewhere.
Open the directorySpecial collection
Five hundred and sixty two photographs and newspaper pages covering a century of McNairy County law, including the sheriff the films were made about.
The county's law enforcement record was never written down in one place. It exists as photographs in family albums and as columns in the county paper, and both are collected here: arrests, elections, line of duty deaths, moonshine stills stacked barrel on barrel behind the courthouse.
Nearly every photograph carries the names of the people in it, which is why the gallery is worth searching and not only browsing. Where a face was never identified the caption says so plainly, and the archive still wants the answer.
Sheriff Buford Pusser, the ambushes, and the jail tours that still bring visitors to Selmer are all in the first gallery.
Written up at length
Longer pieces on the county's past, grouped by what they cover.
Ten municipalities
AdamsvilleBethel SpringsEastviewFinger GuysMichieMilledgevilleRamer SelmerStantonville
Bordered by Chester, Hardeman and Hardin Counties in Tennessee, and Alcorn County, Mississippi.
A country store in McNairy County
Add to the archive
A bible page, a funeral card, a school photograph with the names written on the back. If you have something that belongs in the county record, or you want to volunteer the time to transcribe it, the archive would like to hear from you.
Send a message
