R

Uniquely located in sprawling Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County, Radnor Lake State Natural Area is an 1,100-acre park designed to include only foot trails for passive recreation and educational purposes. In the midst of Nashville's fast-paced development, this site remains an island…

Martha Ragsdale Ragland, reformer in political, health, and women's issues, was born near Russellville, Kentucky. She wanted to attend law school and later run for Congress, but the Great Depression put law school beyond her reach. She graduated from Vanderbilt…

Julius E. Raht, pioneer in the mining and smelting of copper in East Tennessee, was born in Dillenburg, Duchy of Nassau, Germany, on June 26, 1826. He attended Bonn University and the University of Berlin before immigrating to the United…

Tennesseans considered railroads as early as 1827, when a rail connection between the Hiwassee and Coosa Rivers was proposed. The general assembly granted six charters in 1831 for railroad construction, but these early efforts failed when financial support did not…

Ramsey House, the home of Colonel Francis Alexander Ramsey (1764-1820), was built between 1795 and 1797 by master carpenter and cabinetmaker Thomas Hope. Colonel Ramsey migrated to the North Carolina frontier from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1783. Settling first in the…

J. G. M. Ramsey made an indelible mark on the political, economic, and social development of antebellum East Tennessee. He was a physician, public official, religious leader, banker, railroad advocate, scholar, and staunch secessionist, one of the most accomplished East…

Tennessee's preeminent poet and arguably the South's most influential literary critic and teacher, John Crowe Ransom was born in Pulaski and educated at Vanderbilt, where he later taught English and became the leading member of the Fugitives, whose magazine contained…

The mansion Rattle and Snap at Ashwood in Maury County is considered one of the most emphatic examples of Greek Revival plantation architecture in Tennessee. George Polk's elaborate Corinthian mansion is the largest and most pretentious of the great Maury…

Located five miles northeast of Cleveland in Bradley County, Rattlesnake Springs in 1938 served as the site of the last council of the eastern band of the Cherokees, where approximately thirteen thousand Native Americans assembled to begin the long journey…

Read House Hotel, located in downtown Chattanooga at the corner of Broad Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard, was constructed in 1926 at a cost of over two million dollars. The hotel was designed by Holabird and Roche, an architectural…

In the immediate aftermath of Confederate defeat, northerners and southerners alike widely recognized two clear-cut consequences of the Federal victory in the Civil War. First, the Union had been preserved and the right of secession as a legitimate expression of…

Red Clay State Historic Park, located twelve miles south of Cleveland, was the site of the last seat of Cherokee government before their forced removal by federal troops along the Trail of Tears. From 1832 to 1837 it was the…

Congressman B. Carroll Reece was born in Butler to John Isaac and Sarah Maples Reece. He was one of thirteen children in the Reece family. Named for an ancestor, War of 1812 General Brazilla Carroll McBride, Reece never used his…

Ishmael S. Reed, contemporary African American satirist, poet, playwright, and essayist, was born in Chattanooga, on February 22, 1938, and lives in Oakland, California. Having left Chattanooga as a child and grown up in Buffalo, New York, he attended public…

This three-hundred-acre state park on an eighteen-thousand-acre lake is located in the northwest corner of Tennessee. The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 probably enlarged a series of oxbow lakes that had existed here long before. Permanent settlement was slow to…

Lee Roy Reeves, designer of the Tennessee State Flag, was born in Johnson City in June 1876, the son of Elbert Clay and Alice D. Robeson Reeves. After graduating from the local high school and normal school, Reeves taught in…

Regions Financial Corporation of Birmingham, Alabama, and Union Planters Corporation of Memphis merged in June 2004 to form a new company with over eighty billion dollars in assets and over five million customers. By consolidating, the new Regions Financial Corporation…

Religion is a word that almost defies any consensual definition. Most people reflect some of their own religious beliefs, or at least those of their own culture, in defining religion. Thus, those from the Semitic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) tend…

Tennessee’s roadside religion is widespread, varied, and includes much more than church architecture. It reflects a range of religious beliefs and experiences, as well as Tennessee’s cultural diversity. Religious roadside architecture encompasses everything from large-scale works of art commissioned by…

Formed by the general assembly on December 3, 1807, Rhea County came out of a portion of Roane County. The new county was situated in a valley between the Tennessee River and the Cumberland Plateau. Though enlarged in 1817, parts…