Encyclopedia

The most serious outbreak of influenza (also known as grippe, grip, or flu) in Tennessee history, with 7,721 recorded deaths from the disease, was the influenza pandemic of 1918-19. What happened in Tennessee was part of an international pandemic, or…

Bronson Ingram was Tennessee's only billionaire when he died of cancer at the age of sixty-three on June 15, 1995, in his Nashville home. His net worth was estimated at $1.3 billion. In 1994 Forbes national business magazine placed Ingram…

Rooted in the close relationship many country-music performers develop with their fans, the multi-day series of concerts, autograph sessions, and fan club parties now known as the CMA Music Festival, formerly the International Country Music Fan Fair, is unique to the country music genre.…

The International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union of North America (IPPAU-NA), was organized in 1889, when disgruntled pressmen and press feeders left the International Typographical Union (ITU) and, with the combined membership of thirteen locals, formed a new pressmen's union.…

Organized in Nashville in 1897, the Interstate Cotton Seed Crushers' Association operated from 1897 to 1929. It was the second cottonseed trade association, the first having been disbanded in 1887 after the American Cotton Oil Trust absorbed most of the…

Officially named the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways, the interstate highway system has had a profound impact upon the physical, economic, and cultural landscapes of the United States. Most Americans travel the system without thinking about…

Tennessee's nineteenth-century iron industry was located along the Western Highland Rim. Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, a large part of this upland portion of the Tennessee River Valley, from Stewart to Decatur Counties, produced a high-quality brown iron ore…

The Iroquois Steeplechase, a rite of spring for horse enthusiasts, has been held every second Saturday in May since 1941. The amateur horse races take place at a three-mile course of wood, water, and brush jumps at Nashville's Percy and…

The opening of hostilities between the Confederate States and the United States in the spring of 1861 found both belligerents woefully unprepared for the struggle ahead. Confederate strategists realized that the Mississippi River offered a broad avenue of invasion into…

The first Nashville firm to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, J. C. Bradford and Company was founded in 1927 by James Cowdon Bradford Sr. Bradford was born in Nashville to Alexander and Leonora Bradford on November…

The oldest registered distillery in the nation, Jack Daniel Distillery is located in Lynchburg in Moore County. Established by Jasper "Jack" Daniel in 1866, the distillery produces sour mash whiskey. Daniel located the distillery near his birthplace, recognizing that what…

The second largest city in West Tennessee stands on land acquired by treaty from the Chickasaws on October 19, 1818. The city is located in the geographic center of Tennessee's western district in Madison County, created by the Tennessee General…

Located in the picturesque foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, Jackson County is known as the "Switzerland of the Cumberlands." Although the western part of Jackson County lies within the Nashville Basin, most of the eastern part of the county is…

The Jackson Purchase included the area of West Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky between the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers. The Chickasaws had historically occupied this large tract, which they ceded in the Treaty of Tecumseh, negotiated by Andrew Jackson and Isaac…

An articulate advocate of scientific agriculture, Alexander Jackson completed a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1824 and came to Tennessee five years later, establishing a medical practice at Paris in Henry County. Jackson soon demonstrated his interests…

Andrew Jackson was the seventh president of the United States, serving from 1829 to 1837. As war hero and the "savior of his country," he was one of a handful of Americans who dominated the first half of the nineteenth…