A-Z

A group of black women, wives of prominent black leaders in Nashville's church, business, and professional arenas, organized the Phillis Wheatley Club in 1895. The club, established its headquarters at the AME Publishing House on the public square in Nashville,…

In 1886 William Shirley, a stonecutter, discovered phosphate on Gholston Hill near Columbia. This deposit proved to be too limited to be mined economically. In 1891 Shirley found a stratified blue rock deposit around Knob Creek, north of Columbia. A…

The Pi Beta Phi Settlement School in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, is one of the best extant examples of the early twentieth-century settlement school movement. The school’s origins date to 1910, when Pi Beta Phi, the first women’s fraternity, which was founded…

Known as the "Queen of the Confederacy," Lucy Holcombe Pickens was born in LaGrange in Fayette County, the daughter of Beverly Lafayette Holcombe and Eugenia Dorothea Hunt. At some time between 1848 and 1850, the family left their home, "Westover…

Samuel F. Pickering Jr. was born in Nashville, attended Montgomery Bell Academy and the University of the South, and took advanced degrees at Cambridge and Princeton on his way to becoming a scholar of children's literature. In addition to scholarly…

Located along Tennessee's northern border with Kentucky, Pickett County lies in the picturesque Cumberland Plateau region of upper Middle Tennessee. In 1878 Lem Wright and Howell L. Pickett, legislators from Wilson County, led the move to organize Pickett County. The…

The Michigan-based Stearnes Coal and Lumber Company acquired forested land in Pickett and Fentress Counties in 1910 and used the land until 1933, when the company deeded the property to the State of Tennessee. On December 13, 1933, Tennessee Governor…

Pickwick Landing State Resort Park, located along Pickwick Lake (the dammed Tennessee River) in southern Hardin County, began as a demonstration park constructed and administered by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Construction at Pickwick Dam, the third completed TVA dam,…

Founder of the Tennessee Vocational School for Colored Girls, J. Frankie Pierce was born during or shortly after the Civil War to Nellie Seay, the house slave of a Smith County legislator. Frankie Pierce received her education at the McKee…

In September 1916, entrepreneur Clarence Saunders opened the first Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Memphis. Despite its funny name and the flamboyance of its founder, this new style of store was serious business. Nearly a century later, Piggly Wiggly and…

Located in Bolivar, Tennessee, “The Pillars” was home to the politically and socially prominent Bills family. The house once accommodated such notable guests as Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, James K. Polk, and Jefferson Davis. Owners of the house…

Gideon J. Pillow, politician and general, was born in Williamson County and raised in Maury and Giles Counties. He received a classical education at local academies and graduated from the University of Nashville in 1827. He then read law and…

The area of North Memphis commonly known as the “Pinch District” has played an important role in local immigration since the early nineteenth century. The city’s first business district, the Pinch encompassed all of Memphis north of Adams Street. Although…

The Pink Palace is both a house and a museum. In 1922 Clarence Saunders, the father of self-service grocery shopping and founder of Piggly Wiggly, began building a mansion. Memphians called his 36,500-square-foot house, faced with pink Georgia marble, his…

The largest Middle Woodland Period (ca. 200 B.C.-A.D. 400) archaeological site in the Southeast, Pinson Mounds is located about ten miles south of Jackson on the South Fork of the Forked Deer River. Within an area of approximately four hundred…

Pittman Center was founded by Dr. John S. Burnett, a Methodist minister and educator who had long dreamed of establishing an educational and medical facility in one of the most isolated sections of East Tennessee. In 1921 funding for this…

Within a year of his birth in 1892 in Tupelo, Mississippi, Abe Plough moved with his family to Memphis, where his father Moses operated a clothing and furnishings store. Abe Plough attended Market Street School where a teacher taught him…

Pocket Wilderness Areas are part of a conservation program involving a corporate-state partnership. Beginning in 1970, the Hiwassee Land Company of the Bowater Southern Paper Corporation developed in Tennessee four pocket wilderness areas, defined as "a pocket of land set…

Established by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1839, Polk County was named to honor newly elected Governor James K. Polk. It is located in the extreme southeastern corner of the state, bounded by North Carolina and Georgia. Most of the…

James K. Polk, a native of North Carolina, served one term as United States president, 1845-49; won election seven times to Congress and presided over the U.S. House as its Speaker for the last four of his fourteen-year tenure (1825-39);…