Amalphus Pinkney Mays (1862-1947)

From the 1913-14 Tennessee General Assembly composite portrait.

    An obscure resident of the county of Davidson in Tennessee, Amalphus Pinkney Mays represented that county in the Tennessee General Assembly for one term during the early part of the 20th century. Details on his life and work in Tennessee have proven difficult to come by, but the discovery of the above portrait of him (featured on the 1913-14 legislative composite photograph) managed to keep my disappointment to a minimum!

   The son of Andrew J. and Mary Pratt Mays, Amalphus Pinkney Mays was born on October 1, 1862, in Brentwood, Tennessee. Little information could be located on his early life, although it has been found that he was appointed as postmaster of Paragon Mills, Tennessee during the early 1890s and continued to serve in that post through the latter portion of that decade. Amalphus Mays married in 1885 to Fannie Patterson and later had two children, Mabel Clare Mays Welch (born 1890) and Amalphus P. Mays Jr., (1897-1945.) 

   A grocer for many years in Nashville, Mays is recorded as having owned two stores in the Nolensville Road area of the city and was a past director of the Broadway Bank and Trust Company of Nashville. In November 1912 he was elected as one of Davidson County's representatives to the Tennessee General Assembly and took his seat at the beginning of the 1913 term. The Tennessee legislative journal for that session notes that he was a real estate dealer as well as a Methodist.

  Mays' term in the house concluded in 1915 and little is known of his life after this date. He died three decades later on February 15, 1947, at age 84, and was survived by his wife Fannie. Both were later interred at the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Nashville, Tennessee.