Institution

Designated as the George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University since 1979, this distinguished institution has a 213-year lineage through seven name changes. In 1784 Nashville set aside three land tracts for a collegiate institution; Davidson Academy (1785-86) was chartered by…

The Girl Scouts came to Tennessee as word of the movement spread across the United States during World War I. Individual, or lone troops, unaffiliated with any council, established independently in Tennessee cities during this era of patriotic fervor. Girls…

The Girls Preparatory School is the largest independent secondary day school for girls in the country. Three highly respected public school teachers established the school in 1906. Tommie Duffy, a history and science specialist, Eula Jarnagin, a language teacher, and…

The Golden Circle Life Insurance Company was first established in 1950 as a fraternal organization through the efforts of Charles Allen Rawls, a Haywood County mortician who believed that the African American community should unite and create a cash benefit…

Goldsmith's is a well-known Memphis department store which traces its origins to the antebellum period and German immigrant Louis Ottenheimer. After moving to Memphis from Arkansas, where he had operated a provisions store, Ottenheimer opened a store on Main Street…

Organized by nineteen farmers in May 1877, the Goodlettsville Lamb and Wool Club has the distinction of being the oldest cooperative livestock organization in the United States. This farmer-owned association was the progenitor of future cooperative marketing organizations that, by…

In the early 1880s Westin A. Goodspeed, a successful Nashville-based publisher, discovered that volumes combining local history, biography, and state historical records had sold well in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and several other northern states. In the South, except for…

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was the preeminent national organization for Union veterans. Founded in Springfield, Illinois, by physician Benjamin F. Stephenson in the spring of 1866, the GAR quickly organized posts within ten states and the District…

No mass media event has been more associated with the state of Tennessee than the WSM radio program called the Grand Ole Opry. Not only is it the longest-running radio show in U.S. history, but it has become the cornerstone…

A family business that grew from a backyard foundry to a major commercial enterprise, Hardwick Stove Company shaped Bradley County's industrial history for over one hundred years. Its founder, Christopher Hardwick, began building cast iron stoves in his Cleveland, Tennessee,…

Harpeth Hall School opened in 1951 in Nashville on a twenty-six-acre campus that had previously been the Estes estate. While new in name and location, the school continued in spirit and manner the education of girls and young women that…

HCA Healthcare, one of the nation's largest healthcare companies and private employers, is based in Nashville. The present company represents the merger of several hospital and healthcare companies, primarily the Hospital Corporation of American (HCA) and the Columbia Hospital Corporation.…

The history of the Highlander Folk School reflects the course of organized labor and Civil Rights movements in the South, as well as the struggles of southern activists between the 1930s and early 1960s. Established near Monteagle in 1932 by…

Chartered in 1961, the Highlander Research and Education Center is the institutional successor of the Highlander Folk School. The adult education center operates in a considerably different context, however, working with more diverse, complex, and far-reaching issues and constituencies. Its…

Hiwassee College is a two-year coeducational liberal arts institution located near Madisonville in Monroe County. Originally a Methodist campground school known as Bat Creek, the college was established in 1850 as one of Tennessee's oldest educational facilities. A typical school…

The Holston Conference is the organization of nearly one thousand United Methodist churches in thirty-three East Tennessee counties, seventeen southwest Virginia counties, a county and portions of two others in northwest Georgia, and one church each in Alabama and West…

Holston Ordnance Works (HOW) sprawled over 6,000 acres along the Holston River in Sullivan and Hawkins Counties around Kingsport, manufactured a powerful explosive for the military during World War II. Construction of the munitions plant, at an original estimated cost…

Homecoming '86 was a year-long celebration in almost every Tennessee community. The focus of the event, according to state officials, was to be "part hoe-down, part history lesson and part homecoming celebration." Many communities put into place organizations that continued…

Built on a ninety-foot limestone bluff overlooking the Tennessee River and housed within a 1904 Classical Revival mansion and contemporary-style 1975 structure, the Hunter Museum of American Art features one of the finest collections of American art in the Southeast.…

In 1902 Mary Grimes Hutchison established a place of learning that today is known as Hutchison School. The Old Love Place on Union Avenue was the site of Miss Hutchison's School for Girls from 1916 until 1925, when increased enrollment…