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In 1788 North Carolina established a Superior Court district to serve the Cumberland frontier. The district was named in honor of the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Esteban Rodrigues Miro, who had served with Spanish troops assisting the Americans during the…

John A. Merritt, one of Tennessee's most successful football coaches, was born on January 26, 1926, in Falmouth, Kentucky, the son of a stonemason, Bradley Merritt and his wife, Grace. After completing grade school, he moved to Louisville to live…

Tennessee's eighth largest private employer, with 7,900 workers in the Memphis area and West Tennessee, Methodist Health Care, Memphis, is headquartered on Union Avenue in downtown Memphis. Founded by John M. Sherard in 1918, the Methodist Hospital in Memphis has…

The Metropolitan Government of Nashville/Davidson County created the Metropolitan Human Relations Commission in 1965 during a period of heightened racial tensions in the community and the nation. Composed of fifteen persons representative of the various social, economic, religious, cultural, ethnic,…

In 1846 the United States went to war with Mexico as a result of a boundary dispute fueled by an American expansionist desire to control the entire North American continent. With an army of fewer than 9,000, a number wholly…

Located in Murfreesboro, Middle Tennessee State University was created by the General Education Bill of 1909 and dedicated on September 11, 1911, as Middle Tennessee State Normal School. Many local residents joined President Robert L. Jones, the faculty, staff, and…

Born in Memphis on July 4, 1942, the Reverend Harold Middlebrook was a friend of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. and an active member of the civil rights movement. Middlebrook received his bachelor’s degree from Atlanta’s Morehouse College…

This important munitions facility was created in October 1945 by the combination of the Wolf Creek Ordnance Plant and the Milan Ordnance Depot. The combined physical plant of the two installations includes 88 miles of railroad track and 231 miles…

Emma Bell Miles, artist, naturalist, and author of The Spirit of the Mountains (1905) as well as poems, stories, and essays, was born in Evansville, Indiana, on October 19, 1879, to schoolteachers Benjamin Franklin and Martha Ann Mirick Bell. She…

The builder of Milky Way Farm, Franklin C. Mars, was the founder of Mars Candies Incorporated, maker of the famous Milky Way candy bar for which the estate was named. Mars and his wife, Ethel V. Mars, came to Tennessee…

One of the most influential figures in Tennessee politics and law during the first half of the nineteenth century, Pleasant M. Miller was born the son of a tavern owner in Lynchburg, Virginia. Miller studied law under Judge Archibald Stewart…

Randolph Miller, former slave and newspaper editor, was emancipated with hundreds of other African Americans on June 9, 1864, in Newton County, Georgia, as General William T. Sherman's army swept through the region. Miller came to Chattanooga in October of…

Milligan College is located in Carter County in East Tennessee. Its origins go back to a Buffalo Male and Female Institute (1866) chartered by a small Christian (Disciples of Christ) congregation. In 1882 Josephus Hopwood upgraded it to a college…

Woman suffrage leader Abby Crawford Milton became involved in the suffrage movement after marrying newspaper publisher George Fort Milton, moving from Georgia to Chattanooga, and giving birth to three daughters. Milton received a law degree from the Chattanooga College of…

George F. Milton, Chattanooga newspaper publisher and Democratic political activist, was born in Macon, Georgia, and educated in Chattanooga. After attending the University of the South at Sewanee, Milton entered the banking business in Chattanooga. He left banking to become…

Tennessee has a long, rich, and varied mining history. Although the industry today accounts for only about three-tenths of a percent of the state's gross products and two-tenths of a percent of nonagricultural jobs, Tennessee remains among the national leaders…

Although Memphis fielded a professional baseball team in 1877, organized minor league baseball in Tennessee dates to 1885 and the founding of the Southern League of Professional Clubs (SL), a circuit that lasted through 1899. From 1885 to the present,…

There are five bridges that span the Mississippi River from Tennessee. A “Hands Across the River” Committee was formed in 1946 to discuss the construction of a bridge linking West Tennessee to Missouri. The U.S. Department of Commerce and Bureau…

Dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the natural and cultural history of the Lower Mississippi River Valley, a region that stretches from Cairo, Illinois, to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River Museum is situated on a fifty-two-acre park…