Encyclopedia

In 1888 an enterprising student at Fisk University petitioned his fellow senior classmates to join with the fledgling Fisk Alumni Association (organized in 1884) to raise funds for a new multipurpose building for the school's campus. The unwavering dedication and…

James I. Vance, longtime pastor of Nashville's historic First Presbyterian Church, the largest Presbyterian Church in the South in 1914, was voted one of the nation's twenty-five leading pulpit ministers in 1925. A great-grandson of John Sevier, Vance was born…

Vanderbilt University in Nashville owes its inception to the vision of a great university dreamed by the leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in the 1850s. Efforts to realize the dream were abandoned during the Civil War and finally…

One of the nation's premier academic health centers, Vanderbilt University Medical Center traces its lineage to the University of Nashville and to Shelby Medical College. The latter institution, open only a brief time (1858-61), was established by the Methodist Episcopal…

James D. Vaughan, “the father of southern gospel music,” was born on December 14, 1864 in Giles County, Tennessee. Vaughan grew up in Middle Tennessee surrounded by the sounds of gospel music. As a teenager, he attended his first singing…

Called the "Master Builder of Maury County," Nathan Vaught is credited with the construction of many of the most imposing antebellum homes in southern Middle Tennessee. Vaught was born in Shenandoah County, Virginia, and his family moved to Rutherford County,…

Confederate soldier and spy Loreta Janeta Velazquez was born in Cuba, raised in New Orleans, and lived in Memphis at various times during the Civil War. As a young girl Velazquez developed an admiration for Joan of Arc and expressed…

The majority of Tennessee residences were neither designed nor built by architects or master craftsmen. Nor were they designed with one particular architectural style in mind. They do, however, fall under the rubric of "vernacular architecture." This term is used…

The log house is perhaps the most enduring architectural icon associated with Tennessee. Scholars continue to debate how the knowledge of log construction was diffused through the cultural patterns of the colonial South, but it is generally agreed that Scandinavian…

A wide variety of terms have been used to describe American vernacular religious music: religious ballads, hymns, spiritual songs, folk hymns, revival religious songs, gospel songs, folk tunes, and fuguing tunes. Overwhelmingly revivalistic, nineteenth-century vernacular religious music began to express…

Nashville attorney and vocal opponent of woman suffrage and prohibition, John J. Vertrees was born in Sumner County on June 16, 1850. He attended Cumberland University and read law with W. S. Monday before being admitted to the bar. Vertrees…

Olympic medal-winning swimmer from the University of Tennessee, Matt Vogel was born June 3, 1957, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. As a high school senior swimming for the Huntingdon YMCA in Indiana, Vogel won the 1975 YMCA National Championship in the…

Country music icon Porter Wagoner defined the genre’s image during the 1960s and 1970s with his blonde pompadour, dazzling stage wear, and down-home friendly manner. But his stage persona sometimes overshadowed the creativity and business acumen that he possessed. A…

Before Dr. Emma Rochelle Wheeler opened Walden Hospital in Chattanooga in 1915, African Americans who required medical care were hospitalized in the basements of existing majority hospitals such as Erlanger Hospital or Newell Clinic. Wheeler, a physician who had practiced…

Sequatchie Valley is a long, arrow-straight scenic slash into eastern North America's Appalachian Plateau that divides the southern half of its Tennessee portion into unequal parts. The valley extends southwestward for about two hundred miles from its northern end in…

Jo Walker-Meador, the first executive director of the Country Music Association, was born Josephine Denning in Orlinda. One of ten children, her early ambition was to become a girls' basketball coach. She attended Lambuth College and George Peabody College and…

Joseph E. Walker, noted physician, banker, businessman, civic and religious leader in Memphis, was born in the cotton fields near Tillman, Mississippi, in 1880 and rose to become one of the most successful African Americans of his time. Walker overcame…

Orton Caswell "Cas" Walker was one of the most flamboyant politicians in mid-twentieth century Knoxville as well as a major force in promoting country music in East Tennessee. Born in Sevier County, Walker grew up in a working family, and…

Thomas Walker, a colonial Virginian, significantly marked Tennessee through his discovery and naming of the Cumberland River in 1750 and his establishment of the North Carolina-Virginia western line in 1780. He was born in Tidewater Virginia, probably in King and…

William Walker was a leading filibuster in Latin America in the 1850s. He was born May 8, 1824, in Nashville and died in 1860 before a firing squad in Central America. His strange, brief career earned him the sobriquet "Grey-Eyed…