A-Z

Speaker of the Senate and Lieutenant Governor John S. Wilder was born in Fayette County in 1921. He attended the public schools of Fayette County, then went to college, majoring in agriculture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His law…

Union general and postwar industrialist John T. Wilder was born in Hunter County, New York, to Reuben and Mary Merritt Wilder. As a young man, ca. 1848, he moved to Ohio and worked as an apprentice engineer. In the late…

The Wilderness Road served as the principal route from the east coast colonies to the interior lands drained by the Ohio River. The configuration of the Wilderness Road may be described as a broad loop, open on the north. Its…

Included in this category are all flowering plants (botanically, Angiosperms) that grow naturally without cultivation. Although most wildflowers are herbaceous (non-woody), flowering vines, shrubs, and trees may also be included. Most Tennessee wildflowers are native; however, many, perhaps one-fourth, are…

The site of Wiley Memorial United Methodist Church, formerly Wiley Memorial Methodist Episcopal, at 500 Lookout Street has been significant throughout the history of Chattanooga. The site served as the center of community life for Ross's Landing before the name…

Born in Coal Creek (now Lake City), Tennessee, in 1879, Anna Catherine Wiley played an instrumental role within Knoxville's art community at the beginning of the twentieth century. Educated in the public school system of Knoxville, Wiley in 1895 enrolled…

Michael K. Wilkinson, a solid state physicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was born at Palatka, Florida, in 1921 and attended The Citadel and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning his Ph.D. degree in physics in 1950. Wilkinson joined Oak Ridge…

A. N. C. Williams, prominent African American merchant and community leader in Williamson County, was born into slavery in Spring Hill, Tennessee, in 1844. At age six, he was sold to D. R. Crutcher and moved to Franklin, Tennessee, where…

Educator, suffragist, and Democratic Party worker Charl Ormond Williams was born in Arlington, Tennessee, the third of six children of Crittenden and Minnie Williams. She graduated from Arlington's "high school on the hill" in 1903 and began teaching at Millington…

Few entertainers have conveyed the sincerity and realism reflected in Hank Williams's southern working class lyrics and singing style. Even fewer have enjoyed the lanky Alabaman's phenomenal degree of success. His songs permanently etched the nation's consciousness in the brief…

A powerful advocate for African Americans, Avon N. Williams Jr. became the leading African American lawyer in Tennessee in the protection and advancement of the rights of blacks in education, the workplace, criminal justice, and voting. Born in 1921 in…

Jurist and historian Samuel Cole Williams was born in Gibson County in 1864 and educated in the schools of Humboldt. Encouraged by Judge Horace Lurton--a family friend and later a U.S. Supreme Court justice--he enrolled in the Vanderbilt University law…

Centuries before Europeans settled in what was to become Williamson County the area was home to at least five prehistoric cultures. Over many centuries these occupants of the Harpeth Valley progressed from a nomadic existence to a settled lifestyle in…

Civil rights lawyer and Memphis businessman A. W. Willis Jr. was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on March 16, 1925. Willis received his B.A. from Talladega College in 1950 and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1953. He…

The Tennessee General Assembly created Wilson County on October 26, 1799. Its prehistoric heritage is rich. The Sellars temple mound on Spring Creek, for example, yielded an outstanding piece of pre-Columbian sculpture that has been the emblem of the Tennessee…

Originally known as the Ashland Manufacturing Company, Wilson Sporting Goods was created in 1913 in Chicago as a subsidiary of the Swarzchild and Sulzberger meat packing concern. The company moved into the sporting goods trade by manufacturing gut strings for…

In 1951 Kemmons Wilson, his wife, and five children drove from Memphis to Washington, D.C., for a vacation. Appalled by the uncomfortable and cramped rooms with no air conditioning in the motels in which they were forced to stay, as…

James Winchester, pioneer, entrepreneur, military commander, and founder of Memphis, was born in Westminster, Maryland, and served in Maryland regiments during the American Revolution. He was wounded and captured in a raid on Staten Island in mid-1777 and imprisoned until…

Marcus B. Winchester, land developer and first mayor of Memphis, was born on May 28, 1796, at Cragfont, the eldest son of James Winchester and Susan Black. Winchester was educated in Baltimore but left school at age sixteen to serve…

European settlers brought grape growing and winemaking to Tennessee in the mid-1800s. After the Civil War, the production of wine became a thriving business. J. A. Killebrew devoted an entire chapter to grape cultivation in his 1874 book, Introduction to…