A-Z

Sara Ward Conley, noted Nashville artist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was born on December 21, 1859, to Dr. William and Eliza Ward. Following an education at Nashville's Ward Seminary (a school for young women founded by…

After Reconstruction, the exploitation of Tennessee's natural wealth rose to a scale unknown before the Civil War. Northern and foreign investors bought and cut timberlands, set up land companies, financed railroads, and extracted the state's coal and iron. Logging in…

During the Civil War many of Tennessee's 275,000 slaves abandoned farms and towns in anticipation of the approach of the Union army. In the summer of 1862, as the army of General Ulysses S. Grant entered the heavily slaveholding territory…

From 1866 to 1896 Tennessee state government adopted the widely used convict lease system to make prisons self-supporting and provide revenue to fund the state debt. Under this system, the state leased prisoners to private companies and made them responsible…

Annie Cook, prostitute and nurse whose real name is unknown, was reportedly an attractive woman of German descent who grew up in Ohio. She worked for a family in Kentucky, where she was remembered for aiding impoverished smallpox victims. After…

Architect James B. Cook was born in England and studied at King's College and Putney College before becoming a supervising architect on the Crystal Palace for London's Great Exhibition of 1851. Cook immigrated to New York in 1855. Two years…

Located near the Leapwood community in northeast McNairy County, Coon Creek is known internationally to geologists and paleontologists for its exceptionally rich Cretaceous fossil beds. Located at the eastern edge of the Coastal Plain of West Tennessee, the area was…

Governor Prentice Cooper was born in Shelbyville to William Prentice and Argentine S. Cooper. He was educated in Bedford County schools, including Hannah's School at Shelbyville, Butler's Creek Elementary School, and the Webb School at Bell Buckle. He attended Vanderbilt…

An important ruling on the concept of self-defense resulted from one of the most famous murder trials in Tennessee history. On November 9, 1908, Robin Cooper shot and killed Edward W. Carmack in downtown Nashville. Cooper was the son of…

Duncan Cooper, journalist, publisher, and leading figure in Tennessee's Democratic Party in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was born in Maury County. Cooper served in the Confederate army during the Civil War and was captured at Fort Donelson.…

A prominent member of the U.S. House of Representatives for almost thirty years, Jere Cooper was born in Dyer County on July 20, 1893. Cooper attended local schools and graduated in 1914 from Cumberland University Law School. He was admitted…

Portrait painter Washington Cooper was born near Jonesborough on September 18, 1802, the third of nine children. The family moved frequently, and young Cooper lived near Carthage and Shelbyville. He briefly received some art instruction in Murfreesboro before settling in…

Located near Byrdstown, Pickett County, the Cordell Hull Birthplace and Museum State Park is a twenty-acre site acquired by the Tennessee Historical Commission in 1990 and placed under the State Division of Parks in 1997. It is the birthplace and…

Corn was the chief agricultural product almost from the beginning of human settlement in Tennessee. Referred to as "Indian corn" throughout the 1800s, the cereal was widely cultivated by the Cherokees and formed a basic element of their diet. Most…

Illustrator and mural painter Dean Cornwell executed several exceptional commissions on Capitol Hill in Nashville during the Great Depression. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 5, 1892. Cornwell began his professional career as a cartoonist for the Louisville…

Cotton was not an aboriginal crop in Tennessee, nor was it widely cultivated by the earliest settlers in mountainous East Tennessee. Gins for separating cotton seed from fiber were brought into Middle Tennessee during the 1780s, however, and soon appeared…

Without the cotton gin Tennessee never would have evolved into a major antebellum cotton market; the cotton fibers produced here were too short for hand ginning or roller ginning, which could be performed on the long-staple cotton found along the…

The Country Music Association (CMA) is one of Tennessee’s most important musical trade associations. The CMA is dedicated to guiding and enhancing country music’s development and demonstrating its viability to advertisers, consumers, and media throughout the world. During the late…

The Country Music Foundation (CMF) is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization dedicated to collecting and preserving artifacts and disseminating information about country music’s development as an art and a business. The State of Tennessee chartered the CMF in 1964. In 1967,…