to pardon Ramsey, and ordered his arrest. Ramsey's friends, however, managed to obtain for him a presidential pardon from Andrew Johnson, issued in November 1865. Ramsey returned to Knoxville 1872. He began practicing medicine again, and managed to regain some of his property through a series of complicated lawsuits. Within various letters from 1875 collected for his edited "Autobiography and Letters" by William B. Hesseltine, Ramsey noted that he had suffered an '...ignoble accident from an unruly horse", that he had a crushed limb, that he was a "cripple", that he used crutches, and that he was confined to his room. When Ramsey died in 1884, the flag at the Tennessee State Capitol was lowered to half-staff. The Knoxville Chronicle reported that Ramsey's funeral procession was the largest in the history of Knoxville. Ramsey was buried nearby his father at the Lebanon in the Forks Cemetery, near the confluence of the French Broad and Holston rivers at the beginning of the Tennessee River. Legacy During his lifetime, Ramsey helped establish the East Tennessee Medical Society, serving as its first president, as well as the East Tennessee Historical Society, serving as its first recording secretary. After the war, he served as president of the Tennessee Historical Society. The stone house of Ramsey's father, completed the year of Ramsey's birth, still stands on Thorngrove Pike in East Knoxville, and is currently a museum. Ramsey was the inspiration for the George Washington Harris short story, "The Doctor's Bill," which describes a doctor's comical attempt to obtain payment from the county for the treatment of a local pauper. Ramsey, called "Doctor Blank" in the story, probably told the story to Harris at some point. The story also mentions Ramsey's old mentor, Joseph Strong ("Dr. S"). While criticized by modern historians, the Annals of Tennessee remains an important source of factual information regarding the state's early settlement, and has been republished several times. In 1918, the East Tennessee Historical Society published a short pamphlet written by Ramsey that details the history of the Lebanon-in-the-Fork Presbyterian Church. In 1954, the Tennessee Historical Commission published an autobiography Ramsey had written to venerate his family's actions during the Civil War, along with some of his personal correspondence. See also John Haywood "Father of Tennessee History" Thomas William Humes Oliver Perry Temple Samuel Cole Williams References External links J. G. M. Ramsey Papers, 1789-1944 — University of North Carolina's