People

One of the wealthiest women of the antebellum South, Adelicia Acklen was born March 15, 1817, the daughter of Oliver Bliss Hayes, a prominent Nashville lawyer, judge, Presbyterian minister, land speculator, and cousin to President Rutherford B. Hayes.

Roy Acuff, known as the "King of Country Music" due to his long association with the Grand Ole Opry, was born in Maynardville, Union County, on September 15, 1903. At age sixteen, he moved with his family to a Knoxville…

Jesse F. Adams, rural Middle Tennessee medical pioneer and entrepreneur, was born in Cannon County on October 19, 1881. He married Laura Elizabeth Hudson, a Texas native, in 1907, and they had nine children. Adams graduated from Vanderbilt University Medical…

James R. Agee was born in Knoxville on November 27, 1909. His father, Hugh James Agee, was of southern Appalachian yeoman background; his mother, Laura Tyler, came from a family of means and education. The couple also had a younger…

The Agrarians were a group of social critics centered around Vanderbilt University in the 1930s. They drew their name from their frankly reactionary resistance to industrial capitalism and their insistence that southern rural and small-town culture offered the best antidote…

Historian and editor William T. Alderson was born and raised in Schenectady, New York. After service in the navy during World War II, he graduated from Colgate University in 1947. He then entered the graduate program in history at Vanderbilt…

Lamar Alexander, governor, university president, and U.S. secretary of education, was born on July 3, 1940, in Blount County. His parents were teachers in Maryville, and Alexander attended public schools there. Active in the Boy Scouts as a youngster, Alexander…

David Allison, backcountry lawyer, political operative, and land speculator, was an agent for the Blount brothers, especially William Blount, Tennessee's first territorial governor. Allison's date of birth and exact birthplace (he was apparently from North Carolina) are unknown, but he…

William R. Anderson, U.S. Navy captain and congressman, is best known as the commander of the submarine USS Nautilus during the first underwater crossing of the North Pole in 1958. Anderson was born on June 17, 1921, in the Sycamore…

The Archaic in Tennessee is the longest defined prehistoric cultural period, spanning approximately seven thousand years. The beginning of the Archaic Period roughly coincides with the Pleistocene/Holocene glacial boundary at about ten thousand years ago. The period ends with the…

John Armfield, slave trader and businessman, descended from North Carolina Quakers who were Loyalists during the American Revolution. While still a boy, Armfield ran away from home, vowing not to return until he had acquired more wealth than his father,…

Reconstruction legislator and congressman Samuel M. Arnell was born at Zion Settlement in Maury County on May 3, 1833. After attending Amherst College, Arnell returned to Tennessee, studied law, and practiced in Columbia. Although a slaveholder, Arnell sided with the…

The most successful commercial artist in country music for the years immediately after World War II was Eddy Arnold. Arnold's success in country music sales centered on two eras: the period from 1945 to 1953, when he dominated country sales…

Francis Asbury, bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, was born near Birmingham, England, to Joseph and Elizabeth (Rogers) Asbury and apprenticed as a blacksmith. At an early age Asbury joined the Methodist movement under John Wesley's leadership and…

Chet Atkins, one of country music's greatest instrumentalists, producers, and promoters of the Nashville Sound, was born the son of a fiddler in Luttrell, Union County in 1924. He took up guitar at an early age but first performed on…

Attakullakulla was a powerful eighteenth-century Overhill Cherokee leader who played a critical and decisive role in shaping diplomatic, trade, and military relationships with the British Colonial governments of South Carolina and Virginia for over fifty years. He effectively led and…

A founder of the science of radiation ecology and staff leader at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Auerbach was born in Chicago in 1921. He studied at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, earning his Ph.D. in zoology in…

Marilou Awiakta, Cherokee and Appalachian poet, storyteller, and essayist, was born in Knoxville in 1936 and reared in Oak Ridge. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Tennessee in 1958. Awiakta's unique fusion of her Cherokee and Appalachian…

Herman Baggenstoss, conservationist, was a native of Grundy County, the son of Swiss settlers who founded the Dutch-Maid Bakery in Tracy City in 1903. An alumnus of the University of the South, Baggenstoss served as superintendent of the Civilian Conservation…