Jesse Anderson Forrest (April 9, 1834December 15, 1889) was an American slave trader, Confederate cavalry colonel, livery stable owner, and cotton plantation owner of

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

and

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...

, United States.

Biography

Before the war, the Forrest brothers were engaged in the slave trade at Memphis and up and down the Mississippi River. Jesse Forrest fought alongside his brother Lt. Gen.

Nathan Bedford Forrest Nathan Bedford Forrest (July 13, 1821October 29, 1877) was an List of slave traders of the United States, American slave trader, active in the lower Mississippi River valley, who served as a General officers in the Confederate States Army, Con ...

in the American Civil War, as well as under command of other Confederates such as Gideon J. Pillow. He enlisted as a private in the Tennessee Mounted Rifles and was a lieutenant colonel by 1862. News reports during and after the war describe him as a colonel; the Confederate Officers' Card Index lists his highest rank as lieutenant colonel. He was listed as colonel commanding the 21st Tennessee Cavalry Regiment when he was injured in a fight near Decatur in 1864. After the war he worked as an "extensive levee and railroad contractor, farmer, and dealer in livestock." A father of six, in later life he owned three large plantations at Walnut Bend, Arkansas. He died of "malarial hemaeturia" in Memphis, Tennessee in 1889.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Forrest, Jesse 1834 births 1889 deaths Forrest family Confederate States Army officers People of Tennessee in the American Civil War 19th-century American slave traders American cotton plantation owners Nathan Bedford Forrest