Encyclopedia

Labor organizer, lobbyist, and administrator Matthew S. Lynch was the grandson of an organizer of New England shoe workers. Lynch began working in a Chattanooga hosiery mill and joined his first union as a teenager. In 1934 he graduated from…

One of many expressions of violence directed mostly towards African Americans following Reconstruction and lasting well into the twentieth century was lynching. According to one set of statistics, lynch mobs in the old Confederate states, including Tennessee, killed 2,805 people,…

The Chattanooga-based Lyndhurst Foundation was organized in 1978 by Coca-Cola Bottling heir John T. (Jack) Lupton II and family following the death of his parents, Thomas Cartter Lupton and Margaret Rawlings Lupton. Named for the former Lupton family estate in…

Physician, journalist, and educator Myles Lynk was born in Brownsville on June 3, 1871, the son of former slaves. His father was killed when Lynk was only six years old, and he was running the farm by the time he…

Influential female country music performer and songwriter and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame Loretta Lynn was born in Johnson County, Kentucky, in 1935. She married Oliver V. “Mooney” Lynn in 1948, and soon thereafter the Lynns moved…

Andrew Nelson Lytle, writer, editor, critic, and teacher, was born the day after Christmas, 1902--like a "wet fire-cracker," his grandmother remarked. He would spend nearly the rest of the century pondering the remote world into which he had been born:…

The Mabry-Hazen House is a key resource for Knoxville’s Civil War and Reconstruction history. The home was built around 1858 by Joseph Alexander Mabry Jr., one of Knoxville’s most influential citizens and largest slaveholders. Born in Knox County in 1826,…

The Maclellan Building in Chattanooga was built as the home office for Provident Life and Accident Insurance Company. Founded in 1887 in Chattanooga, the Mutual Medical Aid and Accident Insurance Company specialized in providing accident coverage to the "uninsurables"--miners, railroad…

Located on the Eastern Highland Rim of the Upper Cumberland and bordering Kentucky is Macon County, formed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1842 from parts of Smith and Sumner Counties. It was named in honor of Nathaniel Macon, a…

Grand Ole Opry star Uncle Dave Macon was born in Warren County in 1870. He learned the craft of entertainment from vaudeville actors and actresses who boarded at his parents' rooming house in Nashville. After traveling the vaudeville circuit for…

Before statehood, West Tennessee was occupied by prehistoric Native Americans who camped and hunted there as early as 9,000 B.C., as well as much later historic tribes such as the Choctaws and Chickasaws. Woodland Culture peoples developed the large mound…

Memphis entrepreneur and Catholic leader Eugene Magevney was born in 1798 in County Fermanagh, Ireland. He studied for the priesthood but changed his mind and became a school teacher. In 1828 he immigrated to the United States and settled in…

Major Ridge, whose Cherokee name meant "walking-the-mountain-tops," is best known as one of the men who signed the 1835 Treaty of New Echota authorizing the removal of the Cherokee Indians. Once in Oklahoma, his political enemies assassinated him as a…

University of Tennessee All-American football player and coach John T. Majors was born May 21, 1935, in Lynchburg, the son of Shirley and Elizabeth Majors. Shirley Majors coached football, first as a high school coach and then at the University…

Located at 652 Adams Avenue in the Victorian Village historic district of Memphis, the Mallory-Neely House is a splendid example of the Italian villa architectural style. Constructed in 1852 for banker Isaac Kirtland and his family, the house later became…

Gleb Mamantov, internationally recognized chemist in molten salt chemistry, was born in 1931 in Kapsava, Latvia, the son of physicians Alexander V. and Elena Pribikov Mamantov. When, in 1944, the Soviets overran the Baltic States, the anti-Communist Mamantov family fled…

An award-winning director of many television and cinema productions, Delbert Mann was born in Kansas in 1920 but grew up in Nashville. In a career that has included 109 live television shows and more than 50 films, Mann has captivated…

Long hunter and early Middle Tennessee settler Kasper Mansker was born on an immigrant ship bound for the American colonies. Little is known about his German ancestry or his early life. Mankser married Elizabeth White of Berkeley County, Virginia, at…

The Emancipator, published in 1820 in Jonesborough, Tennessee, by Elihu Embree, was the first newspaper in the United States devoted entirely to the abolitionist cause. It was an outgrowth of Embree’s first newspaper, the Manumission Intelligencer, published the year before.…