A-Z

Episcopal bishop and Confederate general Leonidas Polk was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, April 10, 1806. He briefly attended the University of North Carolina before entering the U.S. Military Academy. He graduated eighth in his class in 1827. He became…

Sarah Childress Polk, wife of the eleventh president of the United States, privately strengthened the role of first lady, acting as her husband's closest political ally while publicly dignifying her position in a manner her contemporaries held in highest esteem.…

William G. Pollard, nuclear physicist, Episcopal priest, and founder of Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), was a native of New York state. Pollard moved to Tennessee with his family at age twelve. He received his B.A. from the University of…

A Williamson County native, Edith Drake Pope worked as the business secretary (1893-1913) and editor (1914-32) of Confederate Veteran for the magazine's entire forty-year history. As editor, she faced mounting financial problems caused by increased death rate among Confederate veterans,…

The thirty-four-acre site of Port Royal in Montgomery County preserves one of Middle Tennessee's earliest settlement areas. The first permanent settlers arrived in 1784, and the first meeting of the Tennessee County Court, North Carolina, was held nearby in 1788.…

The Porter Wagoner Show was a syndicated musical variety show filmed in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1961 to 1980. It was one of the longest running, most influential, and most successful country music television shows of the late twentieth century. Porter…

Governor and President of Peabody Normal School James D. Porter was born in Paris, Tennessee, on December 7, 1828. An 1846 graduate of the University of Nashville, Porter was admitted to the bar in 1851 and elected to the state…

The manufacturing of pottery has occurred throughout Tennessee during much of its history, but records are nonexistent until the 1820 manufacturing census, which listed eight potteries, all in East Tennessee. Isaac Hart and John Mathorn (later Mottern) produced earthenware in…

During the Second World War, Tennessee was home to eleven prisoner-of-war camps. Four were large installations. Camp Crossville was built on the site of an abandoned 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps work camp. Camp Forrest and Camp Campbell were existing army…

In 1979 a caver exploring a narrow subterranean passageway in southeastern Tennessee noticed scratches and lines in mudbanks that lined the cave walls. He reported the marks to Charles Faulkner of the University of Tennessee, who identified them as prehistoric…

Art in its broadest definition is patterned application of human skill that evokes a feeling of aesthetic sensibility. As such, art is a universal of human culture and can be traced archaeologically to at least forty thousand years ago. Art…

More than seven thousand deep caves have been recorded throughout Tennessee. Concentrated in the limestone uplands of Middle and East Tennessee, these karsts extend from the Mammoth Cave area of central Kentucky through Tennessee into northern Alabama, and they represent…

The President Andrew Johnson Museum and Library, along with the Doak House Museum, form the Museums of Tusculum College, located in Greene County. The college’s Department of Museum Program and Studies administers the museums, which are located on the campus’s…

Elvis. The first name alone invokes images and sounds which spark instant recognition. While he may not have invented rock-n-roll, few can deny that Elvis Presley helped transform a musical fad into a national and international phenomenon. In the process,…

Frances W. Preston, a Nashville native who went to work for Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) at the age of twenty-one, serves now as that enterprise's worldwide president and CEO. While still a teenager Preston joined WSM as a receptionist, and…

Hollis Freeman Price Sr. was born in Virginia in 1904 at the dawn of the Jim Crow era in the American South. Reared by parents who were prominent educators and devout Christians, young Price’s destiny as a future educator and…

Born in Maury County on April 1, 1900, James Percy Priest went to county public schools before attending classes at the teacher's college in Murfreesboro (now Middle Tennessee State University), George Peabody College for Teachers, and the University of Tennessee…

The Proffitt’s department store chain was started by D. W. Proffitt in Maryville, Tennessee, in 1919. Son Harwell Proffitt opened another Proffitt’s in Athens in 1965, and the first Knoxville location opened in West Town Mall in 1972. The Proffitt…

First settled by freedmen during Reconstruction, the community of Promise Land, north of Charlotte in Dickson County, sheltered its residents from the Jim Crow South, offering them protection from the strife and bigotry surrounding them. At Promise Land, freedmen were…