People

Regent of the Ladies' Hermitage Association and woman suffragist, Louise Grundy Lindsley was born in Nashville on March 12, 1858, the daughter of John Berrien and Sallie McGavock Lindsley. She grew up in Nashville and graduated from the State Normal…

Philip Lindsley, an educator, Presbyterian minister, and classical scholar, was born in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. He was educated at private academies and at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and joined the faculty as Latin and Greek…

Influential regent of the Ladies' Hermitage Association, Sallie McGavock Lindsley was born in Nashville on July 19, 1830, the daughter of Jacob and Louisa Grundy McGavock. She married John Berrien Lindsley, the founder of the medical school of the University…

David Lipscomb, a famous and influential second generation Stone-Campbell Movement leader, was born in Franklin County. Educated at Franklin College in Nashville, he matriculated between 1846 and 1849. Tolbert Fanning baptized Lipscomb while he was a student at the college,…

Engineers who modify the fluvial landscape of Tennessee should feel strong ties to Stephen Harriman Long, who served as an army engineer at a time when the role of government in engineering projects had not yet been defined. In the…

One of the most controversial Confederate generals, Longstreet was born in Edgefield District, South Carolina, January 8, 1821, and reared in Georgia. After graduating near the bottom of his West Point class in 1842, "Old Pete" fought in Mexico, where…

Attorney and civil rights activist Z. Alexander Looby was born in Antigua, British West Indies, on April 8, 1899, the son of John Alexander and Grace Elizabeth Joseph Looby. After the death of his father, young Looby departed for the…

Benjamin Lundy, pioneering abolitionist, was born in New Jersey on January 4, 1789, to Quaker parents, Joseph and Eliza Lundy. In 1808 Lundy moved to Wheeling, Virginia, to pursue a career in saddle-making. There Lundy experienced his first contact with…

Chattanooga capitalist and philanthropist John Thomas Lupton was born near Winchester, Virginia in 1862. Lupton received a law degree from the University of Virginia and settled in Chattanooga in 1887, following a visit to the home of a fellow student,…

Horace H. Lurton was the third of six Tennesseans appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was born in Newport, Kentucky, on February 26, 1844. In the 1850s the family moved to Clarksville, Tennessee. Lurton attended Chicago's Douglas University (now…

Labor organizer, lobbyist, and administrator Matthew S. Lynch was the grandson of an organizer of New England shoe workers. Lynch began working in a Chattanooga hosiery mill and joined his first union as a teenager. In 1934 he graduated from…

Physician, journalist, and educator Myles Lynk was born in Brownsville on June 3, 1871, the son of former slaves. His father was killed when Lynk was only six years old, and he was running the farm by the time he…

Influential female country music performer and songwriter and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame Loretta Lynn was born in Johnson County, Kentucky, in 1935. She married Oliver V. “Mooney” Lynn in 1948, and soon thereafter the Lynns moved…

Andrew Nelson Lytle, writer, editor, critic, and teacher, was born the day after Christmas, 1902--like a "wet fire-cracker," his grandmother remarked. He would spend nearly the rest of the century pondering the remote world into which he had been born:…

Grand Ole Opry star Uncle Dave Macon was born in Warren County in 1870. He learned the craft of entertainment from vaudeville actors and actresses who boarded at his parents' rooming house in Nashville. After traveling the vaudeville circuit for…

Memphis entrepreneur and Catholic leader Eugene Magevney was born in 1798 in County Fermanagh, Ireland. He studied for the priesthood but changed his mind and became a school teacher. In 1828 he immigrated to the United States and settled in…

Major Ridge, whose Cherokee name meant "walking-the-mountain-tops," is best known as one of the men who signed the 1835 Treaty of New Echota authorizing the removal of the Cherokee Indians. Once in Oklahoma, his political enemies assassinated him as a…

University of Tennessee All-American football player and coach John T. Majors was born May 21, 1935, in Lynchburg, the son of Shirley and Elizabeth Majors. Shirley Majors coached football, first as a high school coach and then at the University…

Gleb Mamantov, internationally recognized chemist in molten salt chemistry, was born in 1931 in Kapsava, Latvia, the son of physicians Alexander V. and Elena Pribikov Mamantov. When, in 1944, the Soviets overran the Baltic States, the anti-Communist Mamantov family fled…

An award-winning director of many television and cinema productions, Delbert Mann was born in Kansas in 1920 but grew up in Nashville. In a career that has included 109 live television shows and more than 50 films, Mann has captivated…