Memphis, Tennessee was named for Memphis, Egypt. The city by the river was founded on May 22, 1819 by General (later President) Andrew Jackson, General James Winchester and Judge John Overton. Because of its strategic position at the head of the Delta of the Mississippi River, the city was named for the ancient capital of Egypt which was located at the head of the Nile River Delta.
General James Winchester, of the MD Winchesters, was the son of William Winchester, and cousin to the NC Winchesters. Andrew Jackson (the future president) was born in Monroe, NC, outside of Charlotte, in the area where many of our original ancestors lived. After Jackson, "Old Hickory," had moved on and settled in TN, his father remained at the home in Monroe, and many of his friends were lifelong neighbors, including the Winchesters. General James Winchester, though he had land purchases elsewhere, had settled in North Carolina after the Revolution.
Sources found in Wikipedia. "TN Encyclopedia: John Overton". The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Retrieved 2008-10-24... Roper, James. "The Founding of Memphis, 1818-1820", West Tennessee Historical Soc., 1970, 100pp.
The area of West Tennessee became available for white settlement after the Federal Government purchased it from the Chickasaw Nation in the 1818 Jackson Purchase.[12] Memphis was founded on May 22, 1819 by a group of investors, John Overton, James Winchester, and Andrew Jackson, and was incorporated as a city in 1826.[15] The city was named after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River. The founders planned for a large city to be built on the site and laid out a plan featuring a regular grid of streets interrupted by four town squares, to be named Exchange, Market, Court, and Auction.[16] Of these Court Square, Market, and Auction remain as public parks in downtown Memphis, Exchange lying under the Cook Convention Center. The city grew as a center for transporting, grading and marketing the growing volumes of cotton produced in the nearby Mississippi delta in the antebellum era (for background, see "King Cotton"). Memphis was a crossing point on the Mississippi River for Native Americans expelled from their original lands to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears. In 1831 Alexis De Tocqueville witnessed "a numerous band of Choctaws" crossing the River at Memphis. The cotton economy of the antebellum South depended on the forced labor of large numbers of African-American slaves, and Memphis became a major slave market. Prior to the Civil War, one quarter of the city's population were slaves.[18] Seeking their freedom, slaves turned to the Underground Railroad to escape to the free states of the North, and the Memphis home of Jacob Burkle was a way-station on their route to freedom. The Gayoso House Hotel was built overlooking the Mississippi River in 1842 and became a Memphis landmark until it burned in 1899. The original Gayoso House was a first class hotel, designed by James H. Dakin, a well-known architect of that era, and was appointed with the latest conveniences, including indoor plumbing with marble tubs, silver faucets and flush toilets. In 1857 the Memphis & Charleston Railroad was completed, linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River. Memphis was one of the two eastern termini of the Butterfield Overland Mail route to California from 1857 to 1861.
James Winchester, pioneer, entrepreneur, military commander, and founder of Memphis, was born in Westminster, Maryland, and served in Maryland regiments during the American Revolution. He was wounded and captured in a raid on Staten Island in mid-1777 and imprisoned until December 22, 1780. After his release, he joined the Maryland Line and fought in General Nathaniel Greene’s command until 1783, when he was discharged with the rank of captain. Winchester came to Davidson County, North Carolina, in 1785 and settled on Bledsoe’s Creek, where he built a mill, distillery, and cotton gin. When Sumner County was created by partition from Davidson in 1787, Winchester became captain of the horse, and was soon elevated to lieutenant colonel, commandant of the county. In 1789 he became the first county trustee. During the Southwest Territory era, James Winchester continued as county militia commander. Appointed to the legislative council of the territory in 1794, he was named acting commander of the Mero District Militia the following year. When the State of Tennessee was organized in 1796, Winchester was elected Speaker of the Senate and brigadier general, commandant of the Mero District. From 1797 to 1800 he surveyed Indian boundary lines, took the census for Mero District, and attended the meetings of the county court more often than most of his fellow magistrates. In 1800 he subdivided and platted the town of Cairo on the Cumberland and acquired an interest in a five-thousand-acre tract on the Mississippi River that he and John Overton developed as the site of Memphis in 1820. Promoter of a school at Cairo, he was also a trustee of Davidson Academy, Nashville, and Sumner and Transmontania Academies in Gallatin. His various business ventures included the Sumner Cotton Factory, a riverfront warehouse, and a variety of shops, all at Cairo. He built flatboats and barges for river transportation, and in 1806 he constructed two oceangoing schooners near his mill on Bledsoe’s Creek. After a safe passage by way of New Orleans to Philadelphia, he sold them at the point of disembarkation. When the War of 1812 began, Winchester won appointment as a brigadier general in the regular U.S. Army. Assigned to the recruiting service, he yearned for a field assignment, an ambition that led to an ongoing controversy with General William Henry Harrison and ultimately to Winchester’s capture and the defeat of his army at the River Raisin on January 22, 1813. During April 1814 Winchester joined General Andrew Jackson on the Gulf Coast and took command at Mobile until the end of the war. Playing secondary roles to two military chieftains who would be future presidents of the United States ended General Winchester’s military career. However, he later published a vindication of his acts in the northwest that charged Harrison with failing to honor his promise to rendezvous his troops with Winchester’s on the fateful day of battle at the Raisin River. After 1815 Winchester organized a steamboat company, bought and sold land, surveyed the boundary line between Tennessee and the Chickasaw Nation, and planned the city of Memphis. He died at Cragfont on July 27, 1826.
Sources from Wikipedia, The History of Memphis, Tennessee and the Tennessee Encyclopedia.