Lawrence Tyson

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. At one point, Tyson worked for the law firm of Edward Terry Sanford (1865–1930), future Supreme Court justice. ==Spanish–American War and business ventures==

Upon the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898, Tyson returned to active military duty. Appointed a colonel by President William McKinley, he organized and trained the 6th Regiment U.S. Volunteer Infantry in the Summer of 1898. 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. Simultaneously, he served as a brigadier general and inspector general of the Tennessee National Guard, a position he held from 1902 to 1908. In 1913, he made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate, seeking the Democratic nomination from the state legislature. That year, the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, providing for popular election of US senators. It generally affected elections for US senators beginning in 1914. ==World War I==

, six kilometers from Ypres, Belgium, September 1, 1918. Upon the American entry into World War I, in April 1917, Tyson applied to return to active military duty, and was appointed brigadier general over all Tennessee National Guard troops by Governor Tom C. Rye. This commission was subsequently federalized by President Woodrow Wilson. Tyson was assigned to the command of the 59th Brigade in succession to Brigadier General William S. Scott, part of the 30th "Old Hickory" Division, and helped train the brigade (composed of the 117th and 118th Infantry Regiments and the 114th Machine Gun Battalion) at Camp Sevier near Greenville, South Carolina. 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. , commanding U.S. II Corps, Major General Edward M. Lewis, commanding the 30th Division, and Brigadier General Lawrence Tyson, spectators at II Corps Field Meet boxing matches. Pictured here at Corbie, Somme, France, November 4, 1918. In September 1918, the 30th Division, now commanded by Major General Edward M. Lewis and serving with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), was ordered to the Somme area in northern France, and positioned opposite the heavily fortified Cambrai-Saint Quentin Canal section of the Hindenburg Line. On the morning of September 29, the 30th attacked German fortifications along this section of the line. Marching in dense fog, the troops pushed across a stretch of "wire entanglements and trench defenses" before crossing the canal and securing the area. According to some reports, the 59th was the first Allied brigade to break through the Hindenburg Line. In subsequent weeks, the 59th captured the northern French villages of Prémont, Brancourt, and Busigny, and fought its last action on October 20. In the course of the war, 1,879 of the 59th's 8,000 troops were killed or wounded. The brigade received nine Medals of Honor, the most of any single brigade of the U.S. Army during World War I, while Tyson himself was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal. The citation for the medal reads: 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. He located his son's body, and shipped it back to Knoxville for burial. Tyson left active duty for the final time in 1919. ==Senate career==

In 1920, Tyson made an unsuccessful effort to gain the vice presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention. 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. ==See also==