A-Z

Located five miles northeast of Cleveland in Bradley County, Rattlesnake Springs in 1938 served as the site of the last council of the eastern band of the Cherokees, where approximately thirteen thousand Native Americans assembled to begin the long journey…

Read House Hotel, located in downtown Chattanooga at the corner of Broad Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard, was constructed in 1926 at a cost of over two million dollars. The hotel was designed by Holabird and Roche, an architectural…

In the immediate aftermath of Confederate defeat, northerners and southerners alike widely recognized two clear-cut consequences of the Federal victory in the Civil War. First, the Union had been preserved and the right of secession as a legitimate expression of…

Red Clay State Historic Park, located twelve miles south of Cleveland, was the site of the last seat of Cherokee government before their forced removal by federal troops along the Trail of Tears. From 1832 to 1837 it was the…

Congressman B. Carroll Reece was born in Butler to John Isaac and Sarah Maples Reece. He was one of thirteen children in the Reece family. Named for an ancestor, War of 1812 General Brazilla Carroll McBride, Reece never used his…

Ishmael S. Reed, contemporary African American satirist, poet, playwright, and essayist, was born in Chattanooga, on February 22, 1938, and lives in Oakland, California. Having left Chattanooga as a child and grown up in Buffalo, New York, he attended public…

This three-hundred-acre state park on an eighteen-thousand-acre lake is located in the northwest corner of Tennessee. The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 probably enlarged a series of oxbow lakes that had existed here long before. Permanent settlement was slow to…

Lee Roy Reeves, designer of the Tennessee State Flag, was born in Johnson City in June 1876, the son of Elbert Clay and Alice D. Robeson Reeves. After graduating from the local high school and normal school, Reeves taught in…

Regions Financial Corporation of Birmingham, Alabama, and Union Planters Corporation of Memphis merged in June 2004 to form a new company with over eighty billion dollars in assets and over five million customers. By consolidating, the new Regions Financial Corporation…

Religion is a word that almost defies any consensual definition. Most people reflect some of their own religious beliefs, or at least those of their own culture, in defining religion. Thus, those from the Semitic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) tend…

Tennessee’s roadside religion is widespread, varied, and includes much more than church architecture. It reflects a range of religious beliefs and experiences, as well as Tennessee’s cultural diversity. Religious roadside architecture encompasses everything from large-scale works of art commissioned by…

Formed by the general assembly on December 3, 1807, Rhea County came out of a portion of Roane County. The new county was situated in a valley between the Tennessee River and the Cumberland Plateau. Though enlarged in 1817, parts…

John Rhea, pioneer, statesman, and early advocate of higher education, was born in northwest Ireland in 1753. He was the son of Joseph Rhea, a Scottish Presbyterian minister transplanted to Ireland, and Elizabeth McIllwaine, also Scots-Irish. As a child, he…

Cartographer, geologist, and educator Matthew Rhea was born near Blountville in 1795. He attended Washington College and earned his living by surveying, teaching, and farming. In 1820 he moved to Maury County, where surveying and cartography became his major interests.…

Rhodes College in Memphis has been aptly characterized as "the garden in the city," a reference to the college's lush, richly wooded, and landscaped campus in the heart of the state's largest city. Princeton Review's 1995 college guide cited Rhodes…

Ted Rhodes, recognized as the first African American professional golfer, grew up in Nashville. Immediately after becoming the first person of color to win the prestigious Masters Tournament in 1997, Tiger Woods told a national television audience: "I am the…

Grantland Rice, the most widely read and respected American sports writer of the first half of the twentieth century, was born in Murfreesboro and named for his maternal grandfather, Henry Grantland. He was later called "Grant" and "Granny" by personal…

Located in Marion County, Richard City is significant for its associations with the development of industrial company towns in Tennessee in the early twentieth century. In the early 1900s, representatives of the Dixie Portland Company, including engineer Ellis Soper, cement…