A-Z

John W. Butler, state representative from Macon, Trousdale, and Sumner Counties (1923-27), wrote the Tennessee Anti-Evolution Act, better known as the Tennessee Monkey Law. The son of a long-settled farming family in Macon County, as a young man Butler taught…

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Joseph W. Byrns was an important political leader in early twentieth-century Tennessee, serving in the Tennessee General Assembly and then fourteen terms in the U.S. Congress. Born at Cedar Hill in 1869,…

Cades Cove, a fertile elliptical valley surrounded on all sides by the Great Smoky Mountains, had already been long inhabited by the Cherokees, who called it Tsiyahi, or "otter place," when John Oliver, his wife, and young child arrived there…

Bobby Cain became the first African American student to graduate from a public formally segregated white high school in Tennessee during the immediate controversial years of integration following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).…

Located in the unincorporated community of Cairo, the Cairo Rosenwald School is one of three extant Rosenwald schools remaining in Sumner County and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1922-23, the school served African American…

Rogers C. Caldwell founded Caldwell and Company in September 1917 to market southern municipal bonds. Few investment houses considered southern bonds a good risk because of their historic default rate. This placed Caldwell and Company in a unique position to…

Rogers Caldwell dominated southern financial circles in the 1920s to the point that he was often called the "J. P. Morgan of the South." In a career that spanned only twenty years, he built a financial empire that collapsed abruptly…

Author Frances Boyd Calhoun was born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, in 1867, one of five children of a newspaper editor and publisher. In 1880 the family moved to Covington, Tennessee, where Frances Boyd attended Tipton Female Academy. She displayed her…

Born in 1907 in Terre Haute, Indiana, Burton Callicott spent much his of childhood and his seventy-year career as an artist and educator in Memphis. Callicott graduated in 1931 from the Cleveland School of Art, where he began an exploration…

Brothers Ebenezer and Peter Ross Calvert were successful photographers and painters in Nashville at the turn of the century. Both were born in Yorkshire, England, near Leeds, and studied art there before arriving in Nashville in the 1870s. The Calvert…

Alexander Cameron, British Indian agent among the Cherokees, was a native of Scotland who emigrated to Georgia in the 1730s and enlisted in the British army during the Seven Years' War. In 1764 the British appointed him commissary to Chota…

James Cameron, portrait and landscape painter, was born in Grennock, Scotland. He came to Philadelphia with his family about 1833. When he was twenty-two, he moved to Indianapolis to become a portraitist, but he was back in Philadelphia by 1847.…

Camp Blount is one of the few historical sites in Tennessee associated with the War of 1812. Situated along the banks of the Elk River in Fayetteville (Lincoln County), Camp Blount served as the rendezvous point and mustering ground for…

Camp Forrest, at Tullahoma, was one of the largest U.S. Army training bases during World War II. The camp served as a training facility for eleven infantry divisions, two battalions of Rangers, numerous medical and supply units, and a number…

Camp meetings were outdoor religious revival meetings popularized on the southern frontier during the early nineteenth century. These meetings generally lasted several days and attracted participants who traveled significant distances and camped on-site for the duration of the meeting. The…

Camp Tyson was the nation's only World War II barrage balloon training center. Established at Paris, Henry County, the camp trained servicemen to fly, build, and repair barrage balloons, which were helium- or hydrogen-filled balloons measuring thirty-five feet in diameter…

The Tennessee General Assembly created Campbell County on September 11, 1806, from land taken from Anderson and Claiborne Counties. The twenty-sixth county was named in honor of Colonel Arthur Campbell, a Revolutionary War soldier and Indian fighter. Jacksboro is the…

Lucie Campbell-Williams, composer, educator, and activist, was born on April 3, 1885, in Duck Hill (Carroll County), Mississippi, the youngest of Burrell and Isabella (Wilkerson) Campbell’s nine children. Her father worked for the Mississippi Central Railroad and her mother worked…