Harry Thomas Burn 1895-1977

Burn was a Republican from McMinn County, and when the roll call came that decided ratification, the suffragists did not know he carried a letter in his pocket from his widowed mother urging him to vote for the amendment. When his name was called, he voted yes, and Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify. The vote was a single moment in a long career as legislator, state senator and delegate to three constitutional conventions.

What the plaque says

Harry Thomas Burn 1895-1977 A native of Niota, Harry T. Burn held public office for much of his adult life; State House of Representatives, 1919-23; State Senate 1949-53; State Planning Commission 1952-58; delegate of Roane County to the Constitutional Conventions of 1953, 1959, 1965. However, he is best remembered for an action he took during his first term in the legislature. On August 18, 1920, he changed his vote to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and it became law, giving women the right to vote.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sequoyah Birthplace Museum — 19 mi
  The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' museum on Tellico Lake, near the town where Sequoyah was born, telling how he built the Cherokee syllabary and what the Tellico Dam drowned.
• Fort Loudoun State Historic Park — 19 mi
  A reconstructed 1756-57 British fort on the Little Tennessee River in Overhill Cherokee country, besieged in 1760 and surrendered on August 9 of that year.
• Fort Southwest Point State Historic Park — 24 mi
  A reconstructed 1797 federal fort on a knoll at the meeting of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers, headquarters of Cherokee agent Return J. Meigs, a state park since July 2026.
• Cherokee Trail of Tears State Park — 27 mi
  The Blythe Ferry landing at the mouth of the Hiwassee, where Cherokee and Muscogee people camped in 1838 to cross the Tennessee River, made a state park in June 2026.

More markers nearby

• Niota Depot — steps away
• John Tyler Morgan — 4.3 mi
• Tennessee Wesleyan College — 5.5 mi
• Battle of Athens — 5.5 mi