Encyclopedia

Long Hunter State Park is located along thirty miles of shoreline of Percy Priest Lake in Davidson and Rutherford Counties. In 1968 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers acquired the property for park development as part of its Percy Priest…

Described as the most historic, yet little known, site in East Tennessee, Long Island played a significant role in the state's early history. Situated on the outskirts of present-day Kingsport on the Holston River, the island was located on the…

Engineers who modify the fluvial landscape of Tennessee should feel strong ties to Stephen Harriman Long, who served as an army engineer at a time when the role of government in engineering projects had not yet been defined. In the…

One of the most controversial Confederate generals, Longstreet was born in Edgefield District, South Carolina, January 8, 1821, and reared in Georgia. After graduating near the bottom of his West Point class in 1842, "Old Pete" fought in Mexico, where…

Attorney and civil rights activist Z. Alexander Looby was born in Antigua, British West Indies, on April 8, 1899, the son of John Alexander and Grace Elizabeth Joseph Looby. After the death of his father, young Looby departed for the…

Lookout Mountain has been important to the environmental, military, and tourism history of Tennessee. Point Lookout, the extremity overlooking the river valley at Moccasin Bend, has attracted tourists since antebellum days. The 1863 Civil War battle fought on its slope…

Lotteries appeared in Tennessee before statehood in 1796, were prohibited by constitutional amendment in 1835 and 1870, and continue to generate public debate today. By definition, a lottery is any contest that involves three factors: the payment of money, for…

Established on June 2, 1870, Loudon County was created from portions of Roane, Monroe, and Blount Counties. On September 5, the county court was organized, and the Loudon (formerly Blair's Ferry) town square was donated as the site for the…

The Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad achieved national recognition as one of the most profitable and influential railroads in the southern market from the second half of the nineteenth to well into the twentieth century. The foundation for the company's…

In 1560, twenty years after the Hernando de Soto entrada traversed the Upper Tennessee Valley in its search for gold, burden bearers, and food, a second Spanish expedition crossed into Tennessee near present-day Chattanooga. The Tristan de Luna expedition sought…

Benjamin Lundy, pioneering abolitionist, was born in New Jersey on January 4, 1789, to Quaker parents, Joseph and Eliza Lundy. In 1808 Lundy moved to Wheeling, Virginia, to pursue a career in saddle-making. There Lundy experienced his first contact with…

Chattanooga capitalist and philanthropist John Thomas Lupton was born near Winchester, Virginia in 1862. Lupton received a law degree from the University of Virginia and settled in Chattanooga in 1887, following a visit to the home of a fellow student,…

Horace H. Lurton was the third of six Tennesseans appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was born in Newport, Kentucky, on February 26, 1844. In the 1850s the family moved to Clarksville, Tennessee. Lurton attended Chicago's Douglas University (now…