He was the Tennessee State Historian from 2002 to 2013, and the author of 24 books of local history.
[1][2] His paternal grandfather, J. T. Durham, served as a member of the Tennessee Senate.
[3] He served in the United States Army during World War II between 1943 and 1946.
[1] In 2002, he was appointed as the Tennessee State Historian by Governor Don Sundquist.
[1] He wrote about the Antebellum era like Congressman Balie Peyton or the Rose Mont plantation; the American Civil War of 1861–1865 in Tennessee; and the post-bellum era like the forty-niners from Tennessee who took part in the California Gold Rush.