A-Z

Julia Britton Hooks, an African American clubwoman known as the "Angel of Beale Street," was born free in 1852 in Frankfort, Kentucky. Her parents, Henry Britton, a carpenter, and Laura Marshall Britton, encouraged her training in classical music. In 1869…

Governor Ben W. Hooper was born Bennie Walter Wade in Newport, Cocke County, on October 13, 1870, the illegitimate son of Sarah Wade and Dr. Lemuel Washington Hooper. The child and his mother moved to Dandridge, Mossy Creek (now Jefferson…

Following the Battle of Stone’s River, at the end of 1862, Union forces under General William Rosecrans went into winter quarters at Murfreesboro, and Confederate forces, under General Braxton Bragg, headquartered at Tullahoma in Middle Tennessee. The two forces were…

John Hope, educator and university president noted for his ability to impart encouragement and stimulation to his students, began his distinguished academic career in Tennessee during the racially turbulent 1890s. John Hope was born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1868, into…

Thomas Hope, one of Tennessee's earliest and finest master carpenters and cabinetmakers, was born in England circa 1757. By 1788 Hope was in Charleston, South Carolina, where his reputation spread to the part of the western North Carolina frontier that…

Stanley F. Horn, historian, businessman, and editor, was born at Neeley's Bend in Davidson County on a farm that had been in his family since the eighteenth century. Horn's mother instilled in him an interest in history as she read…

Henry Horton was elected governor of Tennessee with the support of Luke Lea, head of a powerful faction of the Democratic Party, and was little more than a front man for the Lea political machine. When Lea's political and financial…

Myles F. Horton, a founder and director of both the Highlander Folk School and the Highlander Research and Education Center, was a progressive educator whose programs not only contributed significantly to the labor and Civil Rights movements, but also made…

Zilphia J. Horton, activist and artist, was born in Paris, Arkansas, as Zilphia Mae Johnson. A graduate of the College of the Ozarks, she grew up determined to use her musical and dramatic talents on behalf of the southern working…

Leonidas C. Houk, congressman and judge, was born near Boyds Creek, Sevier County. The death of his father in 1839 left him and his mother impoverished. His formal education consisted of only a few months at a country school; thereafter,…

Located near Corryton, House Mountain State Park is a small park of approximately five hundred acres that provides access to a remarkable view of the surrounding countryside and mountains from the 2,100-foot-high House Mountain, the highest point in Knox County.…

Born in 1861 into slaveholding Rutherford County, Callie Guy, later known as Callie House, was a pioneering African American political activist who campaigned for slave reparations in the burgeoning Jim Crow-era American South. In her youth, Callie House lived with…

The Tennessee General Assembly established Houston County on January 21, 1871, and named it in honor of Sam Houston, governor of Tennessee and hero of Texas. The people voted to establish the new county in 1871 because they were too…

Tennessee governor and Texas hero Sam Houston was born to Samuel and Elizabeth Houston in 1793 near Lexington, Virginia, and raised with five brothers and three sisters. His father, a militia colonel, died in 1806. The following year, his mother…

Popular and peer opinion, chart success, and scores of awards for the best of over four thousand songs he penned explain why Harlan Howard was dubbed not only Nashville’s dean of country songwriters but one of the greatest songwriters of…

Hilary Howse, significant Nashville politician and mayor in the early twentieth century, was born in Rutherford County. In 1884 Howse came to Nashville, found work in a furniture store, and helped five of his siblings get started in the city.…

Founder and first president of Meharry Medical College George W. Hubbard was born on August 11, 1841, in North Charlestown on the Connecticut River in New Hampshire. His paternal grandfather, David Hubbard, had been among the first settlers of the…

Louis Hughes, author and businessman, was born a slave in Virginia in 1832. Hughes remained in bondage over thirty years and spent most of that time in Tennessee. While still in slavery, Hughes secretly learned to read and write and…

As congressman, U.S. secretary of state, and Nobel Laureate, Cordell Hull had a remarkable career. Born to a poor family in the isolated "Mountain Section" of upper Middle Tennessee, he was educated first at home, then free schools, and, as…