Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Finger, TN

Finger is an incorporated town in West Tennessee that spans McNairy and Chester counties.

The community was settled in the early to mid-1820s and was first known as McIntyre’s Crossing, named for Robert Thompson McIntyre, an early political leader and businessman.

When a post office required an official name in 1895, the town was renamed Finger; according to historian Horry Hodges, Reverend J. J. Franklin jokingly suggested “Finger” after watching residents point their fingers at one another during a heated naming meeting, while a rival claim that it honored early resident Andrew Jackson Finger is considered unlikely by place-name scholar Larry Miller.

The Finger area was strongly Unionist during the Civil War, and many of its men served in the Union Army despite Tennessee’s secession.

From 1895 until the Great Depression, Finger boomed along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, at its peak supporting eight stores, two banks, a hotel, a funeral parlor, two physicians, a cotton gin, a post office, and both an elementary school and a high school.

The annual Finger Barbecue has been held, with few interruptions, since 1895, making it one of the oldest events of its kind in Tennessee.

The Finger Diner served as the original model for the Hard Rock Cafe restaurant chain.

Finger’s local history fills a 511-page book, “Let’s Call It Finger,” published in 2015 by Finger native John E. Talbott.

Finger was the birthplace of Buford Pusser, the McNairy County sheriff from 1964 to 1970 whose career inspired the “Walking Tall” films.

Finger was also the birthplace of Jim Clayton and Joe Clayton, founders of Clayton Homes, the largest producer of manufactured housing in the United States and now a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary.