The mayoralty of Memphis has been important or not by varying degrees since the city's incorporation in 1826.  Major Marcus B. Winchester, the first mayor of Memphis resigned the job once legislation forced him to choose between being mayor or postmaster.  Having been both, he forfeited the mayor's office as it paid no salary.

While the proprietors of the planned community of Memphis had accurately predicted the site would spawn a large city, the growth was delayed and no mayor earned a salary until Mayor Spickernagle in 1841.  The office of mayor was a two year term which was sometimes awarded a person who had scarcely been in town a year or two.

The mayoral succession was broken twice, once when the Union Army decided to appoint a military mayor of Memphis and once when the city surrendered its charter after the Yellow Fever epidemics.  In the latter case four different men served at various times as "President of the Taxing District of Shelby County"

The only break in the mayoral succession since 1891 might be said to be the period in which Edward Hull Crump held sway as political boss of first the fourth ward, then the city, followed by the county and ultimately the state of Tennessee.  Crump so easily handpicked mayors and forced them to resign that many said democracy was suspended in Memphis.  This charge was made often even at a national level, but Crump never lost absolute dominance of the city from his election as mayor in 1909 until his death in 1954.