James Gettys McGready Ramsey (March 25, 1797 – April 11, 1884) was an American historian, physician, planter, slave owner, and businessman, active primarily in East Tennessee during the nineteenth century.

Ramsey is perhaps best known for his book, The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century, a seminal work documenting the state's frontier and early statehood periods.

[2] After his father's death, Ramsey began compiling a vast collection of historical documents related to the state's Watauga, Franklin, and Southwest Territory periods.

While the book has been praised for its attention to accuracy and factual detail, modern historians have criticized it for its lack of historical inquiry and its overemphasis on biography and warfare.

[2] A lifelong states' rights Democrat, Ramsey supported the Confederacy during the Civil War, and as a Confederate treasury agent, he was forced to flee Knoxville under an armed guard ahead of the city's Federal occupation in 1863.

[4] Also during 1783, Ramsey's father helped James White explore what is now the Knoxville area, and later served in various capacities in the State of Franklin and Southwest Territory governments.

He began writing The Annals of Tennessee in 1840, but the project stalled as Ramsey struggled with a lack of information regarding certain periods, and attempted to address certain contradictions in his source documents.

Draper, who was compiling documents for a history of the Trans-Allegheny region, helped Ramsey fill in a number of gaps, and provided him with technical advice.

Contemporary historians such as Draper, George Bancroft, and Benson John Lossing, praised the Annals, while others, such as William B. Campbell and A. W. Putnam, derided it.

Modern historians, however, criticize Ramsey for focusing almost solely on battles and biographies of key figures, while ignoring economic and social factors that contributed significantly to the state's early settlement.

This brought him into conflict with Brownlow and business leaders such as Perez Dickinson, who believed the region's abundant coal and iron resources made industrialization Knoxville's most lucrative option.

[12] During the secession crisis that followed Lincoln's election in November 1860, Ramsey grew increasingly frustrated with East Tennessee's refusal to align itself with the South.

[8] After the fall of Fort Sumter, Ramsey wrote to Governor Isham Harris, and suggested he bypass a voters' referendum on Tennessee's Union ties and simply dissolve them by proclamation.

[16] While criticized by modern historians, the Annals of Tennessee remains an important source of factual information regarding the state's early settlement,[2] 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.

[6] 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.