People

Born in a log cabin on December 29, 1808, in Raleigh, North Carolina, Andrew Johnson knew abject poverty and personal tragedy almost from the very beginning of his life. Jacob Johnson, Andrew's father, a landless and illiterate worker in Raleigh,…

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Cal Johnson was born to Cupid and Harriet Johnson in Knoxville on October 14, 1844. The Johnson family, slaves of Colonel Pless McClung, lived on the site of the old Farragut Hotel Building at the corner of…

Cave Johnson, a prominent Jacksonian, served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives (1829-37, 1839-45), postmaster general of the United States (1845-49), and president of the Bank of Tennessee (1854-60). Johnson was born near Springfield in Robertson County,…

Charles S. Johnson, distinguished sociologist and African American leader, was born in 1893 in Bristol, Virginia. He was educated at Wayland Academy in Richmond, Virginia Union University, and the University of Chicago, where he undertook graduate work with the distinguished…

The wife of President Andrew Johnson, Eliza McCardle Johnson was the daughter of Sarah Phillips and John McCardle, a Greeneville shoemaker, who once also operated an inn at Warrensburg. After her father's death, Eliza McCardle helped her mother make quilts…

Appalachian entrepreneur and promoter of the model city of Kingsport, J. Fred Johnson was born on June 25, 1874, in Hillsville, Virginia, the son of J. Lee Johnson and Mary Pierce Early Johnson. A nineteenth-century American value system heavily imbued…

The first commander of Confederate forces in the Western Theater, Albert Sidney Johnston was born at Washington, Kentucky, on February 2, 1803. Johnston graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1826. While there, he developed a friendship with another…

Joseph E. Johnston, the most underrated Confederate commander in either theater of the Civil War and the only man to command armies in both, was born at Farmville, Virginia, in 1807. A classmate of Robert E. Lee at West Point,…

One of Memphis's most significant Victorian-era architects, Edward C. Jones was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and educated there and in Northampton, Massachusetts. He began his career as an architect in Charleston in 1848. After serving in the Confederate army,…

One of the most popular Whig politicians in antebellum Tennessee, James C. Jones was born in Wilson County. Reared by an uncle after his father's death, Jones learned farming by working for his guardian. He occasionally attended common schools and…

In an era when spectacular train wrecks were common, the fate of Illinois Central engineer Jonathan Luther Jones should not have aroused popular interest. Yet "Casey Jones, the Brave Engineer" has become one of Tennessee's great folk heroes and a…

Joseph Jones, Nashville's first health officer, was born in Liberty County, Georgia, the son of Charles Colcock Jones. Educated at Princeton University, he received his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1856. A fierce proponent of secession, Jones…

Madison Jones, novelist, was born in Nashville and grew up on a farm located on Franklin Pike. After military service in and immediately after World War II, Jones completed a B.A. at Vanderbilt University, where he studied under Monroe Spears…

A flamboyant Methodist evangelist, Samuel Jones came to Nashville in 1885 as the result of a boast he made in Memphis that no church in the "city of churches" would be able to contain the crowds he would attract. When…

In 1871, only four years after the incorporation of Fisk Free School as Fisk University in Nashville, the school for emancipated African Americans faced impending closure. Classrooms and living quarters continued to be housed in the decaying barracks of the…

George Kabalka, pioneer in the use of organoborane chemistry in the area of radiopharmaceuticals containing short-lived nuclides, was born in Wyandotte, Michigan, February 1, 1943. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1965 and his Ph.D.…

An important twentieth-century architect, Edwin A. Keeble was born in Monteagle Assembly, the fourth of six children of John Bell and Emmie Frazer Keeble. His father was a Nashville attorney and later the dean of the Vanderbilt University Law School.…

Marshall Keeble, born in Rutherford County in 1878, became the best-known African American leader in the Churches of Christ of the twentieth century. In May 2000 The Christian Chronicle named Keeble as its person for the decade 1940 to 1950…

This Nashville barber, businessman, and politician became the first African American elected to the Tennessee General Assembly. Keeble was born circa 1832 in Rutherford County to slave parents, Sampson W. and Nancy Keeble. From the age of nineteen until 1863…

U.S. Congressman and Senator Estes Kefauver was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1956. Kefauver was born in Madisonville and received his education at the University of Tennessee (1924) and Yale Law School (1927). He practiced law in Chattanooga (1927-39) and…