Minor E. Bragg was born in 1894 in Woodbury, Tenn., to Thomas D. Bragg and Mary Elizabeth Keele. Married to the former Callie Luree Bragg, with no known prior relation to Minor Bragg, they had two children, including John, who followed him into the publishing business. In the 1920s, Minor Bragg was the editor and publisher of the Cannon Courier, a publication he sold in 1933 after launching the Rutherford Courier in Murfreesboro and Smyrna two years before. Minor launched the new Courier and a printing company despite existing competition. His son John remembered him as an old-school journalist who thought it important for the public to have more than one source for news and discussion of public affairs. Minor Bragg attended Middle Tennessee Normal School, which later became MTSU, taught briefly at Bradyville School in the 1920s, and had interests in a funeral home, a radio station and grocery store in Woodbury. The Rutherford Courier was sold in 1958. It's founder died in 1966. Tommy and brother David would resume publishing their grandfather's first newspaper - the Cannon Courier -- between 1980 and 1995 - marking a third generation of Braggs in journalism.
