Luke Lea--A Biographical Sketch
By Doris Boyce
Luke Lea was born in Nashville in 1879. His grandmother was a descendant of Judge John Overton, law partner of Andrew Jackson. His grandfather, John Lea, was mayor of Nashville in 1849. His father, Overton Lea, was an attorney. At the time of his birth his father and mother owned 1,000 acres of land between Granny White and Franklin Pike known as Lealand, part of the original acreage of Travellers Rest.
Lea enrolled at the University of the South at Sewanee in 1896 and was awarded his Master’s Degree in 1900. That same year he travelled in Europe and entered law school at Columbia University. He was editor of the Columbia Law Review in 1903. Upon graduation he opened a law office in downtown Nashville in the Cole Building. In 1906 he married Mary Louise Warner, daughter of Percy Warner. Sons were born in 1908 and 1909.
He organized The Tennessean Company in 1907, and by 1908 the paper was up and running and Lea was able to return to his law practice. In 1910 he chartered the Belle Meade Company for future real estate development of the 5,000 acre farm of the same name. The company donated 144 acres to the golf club which became the Belle Meade Country Club.
He became a U.S. Senator in 1911at 32 years of age. He served until 1917. Lea recruited volunteers for the 114th Field Artillery and served as their colonel through the end of the First World War.
He came home from World War I to manage his newspapers, The Nashville Tennessean and the Evening Tennessean. Late in the 1920’s he also published the Commercial Appeal in Memphis and the Knoxville Journal, which he jointly owned with Rogers Caldwell.
During that decade Lea acquired a number of properties, and he built Nashville’s first ramp-style parking garage on Seventh Avenue between Church and Commerce Streets. In 1927 he donated 868 acres for a Nashville park that was to be named for his father-in-law, Percy Warner. In 1929 Tennessee’s governor appointed Lea to the U.S. Senate to fill an unexpired term, but Lea declined, saying he could “do the greatest good and be of more service to Tennessee as a private citizen.”
The Great Depression brought ruin to Lea’s business affairs because of devalued assets, cash flow problems, and maneuvering by his political enemies. He was convicted of banking law violations in 1931, and his newspapers were silenced. He served two years in the North Carolina State Prison. Less than a month after Lea was paroled, he was approached about running for governor of Tennessee. He refused, wanting to re-enter the publishing field.
Lea regained his health, which had deteriorated while he was imprisoned, but he never regained his wealth. A congressional investigation was under way that might have restored The Nashville Tennessean to him when he died in 1945 at age 66.
