Estes Kefauver

Carey Estes Kefauver was born on a farm in Monroe County, near Madisonville, Tennessee. His mother was Phredonia Bradford Estes and his father, a hardware merchant, was Robert Cooke Kefauver. Estes attended public schools in the area and graduated from high school in 1922. He then went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1924. Kefauver left Tennessee to join the staff of a Hot Springs, Arkansas, high school where he taught mathematics and coached football for a year.

Kefauver then moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to attend law school at Yale University. He was admitted to the bar (the legal profession) in 1926, received a law degree with honors from Yale in 1927, and then returned to Tennessee to establish a law practice. Kefauver settled down in Chattanooga where he met Nancy Pigott of Glasgow, Scotland, while she was visiting relatives. The young couple married in 1935; they would become the parents of four children, one of them adopted.