Memphis Apartment Reviews

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Memphis Information

The earliest European settlement on the site of Memphis was the French Fort Assumption established in 1739. In 1818, a US treaty edged the Chickasaw nation out of western Tennessee, and Andrew Jackson helped found the settlement he named Memphis. The city was incorporated in 1826 and prospered on the expanding cotton trade of the fertile Mississippi Delta directly south. Early in the Civil War, a Union fleet defeated Confederate naval forces at the Battle of Memphis, and federal troops occupied the city.

Though there was little physical destruction, recovery from the war was hampered by a crippling epidemic of yellow-fever in 1878 that claimed more than 5000 lives. The disproportionate toll on the white population was attributed to a genetic predisposition, and surviving whites virtually abandoned the city. The following year, Memphis officially declared bankruptcy, and its city charter was revoked until 1893.

The black community took over daily operations and brought the town back to its feet. A former slave named Robert Church became a prominent landowner, civic leader and millionaire by buying real estate at bargain rates. Emigrants from the Delta arrived in great numbers, and the city thrived as the centre of the cotton trade.

White citizens (mostly entrepreneurs) moved back to the city as the cotton and logging industries rallied. During the 1890s, Memphis was the world's biggest hardwood market.

In its heyday in the early 1900s, a long stretch of Beale St was the hub of social, civic and business activity for the large African-American community, not only in Memphis but across the mid-South. The street gained a provocative reputation for drinking, gambling and other shady pastimes associated with riverboat towns. The Delta cotton industry was ravaged by the boll weevil in 1914, forcing many people to look for work in Memphis. Some found their feet in the city and stayed; many others pressed farther north to Chicago.