Austin Peay was born on June 1, 1876 in Christian County, Kentucky to Austin and Cornelia Francis Leavell Peay. He studied at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky and was admitted to the Kentucky Bar in 1895. He married Sallie Hurst on September 19, 1895 and the couple settled in Clarksville, Tennessee the following year. After serving as member of the Tennessee House of Representatives (1901-1903) and Chairman of the Democratic State Committee (1905), Peay was elected governor of Tennessee in January of 1923.

Peay proved to be an extremely progressive leader. Among his major accomplishments were reorganizing the inefficient and unfair internal revenue system, establishing state licensing requirements for teachers, procuring funds to allow most public schools to offer an eight month school year, introducing a state salary schedule for teachers to ensure that they were paid a fair wage, establishing new universities and improving the quality of existing ones, and vastly improving Tennessee's road system. Most of these improvements were made in spite of an uncooperative legislature that met for only 75 days every two years. Peay died of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 2, 1927, shortly before he would have begun a third term as governor.