John Wesley Overall was born on a farm near Liberty, Dekalb county, Tennessee, February 7, 1855, and was a son of Wesley and Arena (White) Overall. The family comes of English ancestry, representatives of the name having been prominent in England for several centuries. The American branch of the family is directly descended from Bishop Overall, who was the author of the convocation books mentioned by Macaulay in his history of England. He was also one of the sixty men chosen by King James to translate the Bible and he and Bishop Cosen compiled the Book of Common Prayer of the Established church. The first representative of the name in the new world settled in Pennsylvania in the latter part of the seventeenth century. About the year 1700 a member of this family, John Overall, joined a colony of one hundred families to settle in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia. This colony had been formed by one, Joist Hite, through contract with Lord Fairfax to settle a large grant of land, which Lord Fairfax had received from the English crown. Joist Hite was a German baron and was for years prominent in the affairs of the colony. John Overall married Christina Froman, a granddaughter of Joist Hite, and they reared a family of seven children, one of whom was named John and he was the ancestor in direct line, being the great-grandfather of Mr. Overall of this review. He married Elizabeth Waters and they were the parents of three sons: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Of these Isaac married a Miss Carson and settled in what is now Page county, Virginia. Abraham and Jacob, the latter being grandfather of John Wesley Overall, came to Tennessee, settling in the South Fork valley of Dekalb county. They brought with them their teams and their negroes and established their home in the midst of an unbroken wilderness. Wesley Overall, the father of J. W. Overall, married Miss Arena White and they became the parents of six children, all of whom are deceased. The father was not of robust physique and passed away at the age of forty-one years, having spent his life on his farm in Dekalb county.

The youthful days of John Wesley Overall were spent on the home farm and he faced many hardships and privations through the early period of his life, being denied many of the advantages which most boys enjoy. He had little time to attend school and learned the multiplication table while pulling fodder. He would work until he became very tired and then while resting he would tackle the multiplication table, thus making a decided step forward in his knowledge of arithmetic. He had many friends who felt proud of what he accomplished in making his way up from obscurity and poverty to prominence and prosperity. One of these friends relates that during the war the Overall home, being situated between two contending armies, was the prey of each, the Federals keeping them depleted one week and the Confederates another. To keep from starving the family had hidden what little corn and meat they possessed in an old sink hole, covered with weeds. The father was an invalid and could not work and soon afterward passed away. It, therefore, devolved upon John W. Overall to slip out at night or early in the morning and get the provisions for the next day. One cold Christmas following the battle of Murfreesboro he made his way to that hole in the ground to find that the soldiers had visited it first and there was nothing left but a sack of coarse wheat bran, so that the entire Christmas dinner was made of that. Mr. Overall improved every opportunity to promote his knowledge and when quite young began teaching school. In that way he earned enough money to enable him to spend two years as a law student in Cumberland University at Lebanon. Hitherto his life had been spent in the open and he applied himself so assiduously to his studies that the close confinement and work broke down his health and he was obliged again to take up farming and trading. He had won his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1877 and his law degree in 1881. He began his career as a farmer and merchant at Liberty, Tennessee, in 1886 and in 1892 he organized and was made president of the Bank of Liberty. Each year chronicled the notable advance which he made in business, his activities constantly broadening in scope and importance, while his worth made him one of the most forceful factors in the upbuilding of the section in which he lived. In 1904 he organized the Bank of Auburn and was made a member of its board of directors but sold his interests in that institution a decade later. In 1908 he organized and was made president of the Overall-Hawes Hat Company of Nashville, with which he was associated for ten years and then severed his connection with the firm. He became the president of the Lebanon-Sparta Turnpike Company and for several years was a member of the board of directors of the Tennessee Bank & Trust Company of Nashville, while at the time of his death he was a director in the Broadway National Bank of this city.

Mr. Overall entered upon the duties of his first official position when in 1881 he was made superintendent of the public schools of Dekalb county, acting in that capacity until 1885. In 1898 President McKinley appointed him to the post of United States marshal for the middle district of Tennessee, a position he continued to hold through the Roosevelt and Taft administrations, and holding over two years after the election of President Wilson in 1912. Because of the inability of the democrats to agree upon his successor, it was not until 1914 that he was succeeded by Colonel Jonas Amis, democratic leader. Long before his appointment to that position, however, he had become a recognized power in republican circles in this state. He was a member of the republican state central committee from 1890 until 1900, was a delegate to the republican national convention at Minneapolis in 1892 and at St. Louis in 1896, serving as a member of the credentials committee at the latter place. In 1904 he was made a delegate to the national convention which met in Chicago and in 1908 was sent to Philadelphia. In 1912 he was again a delegate at Chicago and throughout the remainder of his life he continued a most prominent, forceful and influential factor in political circles. He declined the nomination on the republican ticket for governor of Tennessee in 1910, on account of ill health. He received the entire republican vote in the legislature for United States senator in 1913 and in 1916 he was the candidate of his party for governor. He served as chairman of the republican state central committee in 1917 and in 1920 he was elected national republican committeeman from Tennessee, in which important official position he was serving at the time of his death. He was acquainted with many of the eminent leaders of the party throughout the country and enjoyed in full their confidence and high regard.

On the 4th of December, 1894, Mr. Overall was united in marriage to Miss Mary Oliver of New Middleton, Tennessee, a daughter of Luther Oliver, a Confederate soldier, who was killed in battle. Mr. and Mrs. Overall became the parents of two daughters: Elizabeth and Mary John. The elder daughter is a graduate of the Vanderbilt School of Expression, there pursuing her course under Dr. Harris, and is now attending the Morse School of Expression in St. Louis. The younger daughter was a pupil in the public schools of Nashville, afterward graduated from Miss Allison's Preparatory School for Girls in this city and later attended Vanderbilt University for two years. She then became a student in Goucher College at Baltimore, Maryland, and was afterward graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts from the Sophia Newcomb College at New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1921. She is now the wife of D. H. McCollough.

Mr. Overall belonged to the Knights of Pythias and to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and he was also a member of the Hermitage and Commercial Clubs of Nashville. His widow and daughters are members of the West End Avenue Methodist Episcopal church, South. In addition to his city property Mr. Overall owned nine hundred acres of farm lands in Dekalb county and six hundred acres in Davidson county, all of which he personally supervised and cultivated. He operated a dairy on his Davidson county farm, having about one hundred cows milked daily, while his Dekalb county property was conducted as a stock farm. He was a splendid type of a progressive farmer, of an enterprising and reliable business man and banker, and as a public-spirited citizen he did not hesitate to sacrifice his personal interests and ambition to the public welfare. He stood as a high type of Tennessee manhood and a Christian gentleman honored and respected by all.

A man of wide popularity, Mr. Overall's chief personal characteristic, his friends agree, was his genuine and rugged honesty. “I believe he was the most strictly honest man I ever saw,” said A. V. McLane, United States district attorney. When he passed away the following editorial appeared in one of the local papers: “Back in 1910, when the republican party had a chance to elect a governor and did not know which of its favorite sons to put forward, a staff correspondent of the Banner sent in a story from the field, under a Lebanon date line, gossiping about the possible candidates for the nomination. It was ‘First Monday,’ and the metropolis of Wilson had, that day, many visitors from ‘the upper counties.’ John W. Overall had been more or less casually mentioned for the nomination. The correspondent talked with numerous old neighbors of his, all of whom said, ‘John was always a mighty good neighbor. If any fellow in the neighborhood needed a mule to make a crop with or a cow to give milk for his children, John would always let him have it, just as an accommodation, you know.’ Before the convention came on Mr. Overall was very close to the nomination. If, on the night before the convention, Captain Hooper had not appeared on the scene, a dark horse sprung into the lead, Overall would have been nominated. He always attributed his close approach to the nomination largely to that story about his neighborly qualities. That may or may not have been the fact. The Banner did not take the influence of the story as seriously as Mr. Overall did. But that does not matter. The point is that the statement of his neighborly qualities is as true, now that Mr. Overall is dead, as it was when he was a possible candidate for governor. And there can be paid to a man no higher tribute than that. This man, in the sixty-eight years of his life, all of them busy, many of them spent in high places in party council and executive office, with very considerable wealth at his command, never did any greater service to society than in his simple, neighborly offices among his home folk in Dekalb. The other things that he accomplished will be much spoken of by many people. This one will, likely, be overlooked. The Banner is glad to revert to it.”
Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1769-1923, Vol. 2 -- transcribed by, Amanda Jowers