Culture

The Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area (TCWNHA) tells the story of America’s Greatest Challenge, 1860-1875, through Civil War and Reconstruction sites and resources across the state. The only national heritage area to encompass an entire state, the TCWNHA is…

The Tennessee Civil War Veterans' Questionnaires form an extensive collection of documents housed in the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville and are a useful tool for the study of the state's nineteenth-century social conditions. The questionnaire's 1,650 respondents…

Organized in 1896, the Tennessee Federation of Women's Clubs was designed to bring together women's clubs from across the state into one organization that would provide communication among its members. A decade after the founding of the first women's clubs…

The Tennessee Folklore Society is a statewide organization of academics, nonprofit activists, and interested citizens who are concerned with the preservation, celebration, and study of the traditional expressive culture of the state. Such culture ranges from the classic forms of…

A joint resolution of the general assembly established the Tennessee Historical Commission on January 23, 1919. The resolution defined the duties of the committee to collect, compile, index, and arrange all data and information relating to the participation of Tennessee…

Early histories of the Tennessee Historical Society (THS) place its origins in the Tennessee Antiquarian Society organized in Nashville in 1820. The purpose of the society, chaired by John Haywood, was the collection and preservation of important events in the…

Chartered in 1974, the Tennessee Humanities Council exists to bring the study of the humanities into public awareness, thus fulfilling the mission of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) at the state level. In the beginning, many associated with…

Founded in 1989 as a service organization of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the Tennessee Presidents Trust supports financially the work of a unique documentary editing center dedicated to the publication of the papers of Tennessee's three American presidents, Andrew…

The Tennessee Daughters of the American Revolution are represented in Washington, D.C., by the Tennessee Room of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Museum. It is located in Memorial Continental Hall, a National Historic Landmark constructed between 1904 and…

The Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA) collects and preserves books and records of historical, documentary, and reference value and encourages and promotes library development throughout the state. It is the state agency responsible for preserving materials which document Tennessee's…

The Tennessee State Museum is devoted to collecting, preserving, and interpreting objects related to the history and culture of Tennessee. These items generally are conserved and displayed at the museum's main facility at the James K. Polk Center in downtown…

Tennessee is particularly rich in official state symbols. As of 1998 the list includes the flag, capitol and seal, two birds, two flowers, two fish, two rocks, two trees, eight songs, a poem, four insects, a reptile, an amphibian, a…

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is an independent public corporation founded by Congress in 1933 to control flooding, improve navigation, assist farmers, provide cheap electric power, and make "surveys of and general plans for [the Tennessee River] basin and adjoining…

An archive is a repository for an organized body of records produced or received by a public, semipublic, institutional, or business entity in the transaction of its affairs and preserved by it, or its successors. The development of the archives…

This Nashville landmark is the world's only exact-size replica of the original temple in Athens, Greece. For the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville drew upon its nickname "Athens of the South" and built the art building as a copy of the…

In mid-July 1925 much of the nation's attention was focused on the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where John T. Scopes was on trial for teaching about evolution. Four months earlier, the Tennessee General Assembly had overwhelmingly passed a bill…

The history of theater runs throughout the Tennessee past. Early touring theater groups performed in the larger towns, with plays such as Child of Nature, or Virtue Rewarded presented in Nashville in 1807. Nashville residents established their first theater in…

Chattanooga philanthropist Anne Taylor Jones Thomas was a native of Cincinnati, Ohio. Anne Thomas met her future husband, Benjamin Franklin Thomas, while he was attending law school at the University of Cincinnati. The couple married in 1894 in Chattanooga. She…

Travellers Rest was the Nashville home of Judge John and Mary Overton and their descendants for 150 years. In 1954 the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in Tennessee rescued the house from threatened demolition by the Louisville…

When appointed as state librarian and archivist in March 1919 by Governor Albert H. Roberts, John Trotwood Moore was best known as a man of letters. A native of Marion, Alabama, he moved to Maury County, Tennessee, in 1885 where…