John Bell Brownlow was born to William Gannaway "Parson" Brownlow, an ardent East Tennessee Unionist and editor of the Knoxville Whig, and Eliza O'Brien Brownlow in Elizabethton, Tennessee on October 19, 1839. He graduated from Emory and Henry College in Virginia and then served a long internship at his father's newspaper. During the Civil War, Brownlow commanded the Union's 9th Regiment of Tennessee Cavalry. After the war, he served as a special agent for the United States Treasury Department (1865-1866) and then worked for the United States Post Office. In 1904, Brownlow and his son, William G. Brownlow II, started Knoxville's first real estate firm, J. B. & W. G. Brownlow Co. John Bell Brownlow died in 1922.

William Gannaway "Parson" Brownlow (1805-1877) was an influential East Tennessee minister, journalist, and governor. In 1838 he became owner/editor of an Elizabethton newspaper popularly known as Brownlow's Whig . His newspaper, which on the eve of the Civil War reached nearly eleven thousand subscribers across the nation, moved to Knoxville in 1849. The Parson was a prominent spokesperson for the Whig Party and a staunch defender of the Union. After Tennessee left the Union, Brownlow continued speaking out against the Confederacy. He was eventually jailed in Knoxville and later expelled from the Confederacy for his anti-secession editorials. After traveling on a speaking tour throughout the North, the Parson returned to Knoxville with the Union troops in the fall of 1863, continuing to rail against the Confederacy and secession. In March 1865, Tennessee Unionists chose Brownlow to succeed Andrew Johnson as governor of Tennessee. After two terms as Tennessee's Reconstruction-era governor, Brownlow was chosen to represent the state in the U. S. Senate. He served only one term before returning to Knoxville, where he died on April 28, 1877.

Jonathan A.J. Creswell was born in Cecil County, Maryland on November 18, 1828. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1848 and married Hannah J. Richardson on May 25, 1857. From 1850 to 1861, he practiced law while participating in politics as a Whig, a Democrat, and then a Republican. He was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1861, to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1862, and to the U.S. Senate in 1865. In 1868, President Grant appointed him Postmaster General and he served in this capacity until resigning in 1874. After this political career, Creswell practiced law and banking in Maryland. He died on December 23, 1891.