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At the end of the nineteenth century no universally accepted standards or requirements for any level of education existed in the South. Defeated in the Civil War and their economies devastated, the southern states had little monies to expend on…

Located in East Tennessee, Sevier County has the distinction of having three birthdays: in 1785 under the State of Franklin, in 1794 under the Southwest Territory, and in 1796 under the State of Tennessee. Sevierville, the county seat, and the…

Also known as "Bonnie Kate," Catherine S. Sevier was the wife of John Sevier (1745-1815), Revolutionary War hero, Indian fighter, governor of the State of Franklin, and first governor of Tennessee. Legend has it that their courtship began after she…

John Sevier, pioneer, soldier, statesman and a founder of the Republic, was Tennessee's first governor and one of its most illustrious citizens. Married and on his own at age sixteen, he was in the vanguard of frontier life and accomplishment…

Shape-note singing, a predominantly rural, Protestant, Anglo-American music tradition, involves singing from hymnals or "tunebooks" having shaped notes (aka "character notes," "buckwheat notes," or "patent notes") as opposed to the standard "round notes." Shape-note singing is rooted in the Singing…

Technically defined, sharecropping is a land and labor arrangement whereby an individual or family receives a stipulated proportion of the crops produced on a particular plot of land in return for their labor on that same plot. The legal status…

Jack Sharp, internationally acclaimed botanist and author of over two hundred publications, was born in Plain City, Ohio, on July 29, 1904, the son of Prentice Daniel H. Sharp and Maude Herriott Sharp. His mother died when Sharp was only…

Portraitist Samuel M. Shaver was born in Sullivan County, the son of David Shaver and Catherine (Barringer) Shaver. He may have been influenced by William Harrison Scarborough (1812-1871), a native-born Tennessee artist, four years Shaver's senior, who did portraits of…

The only dwelling designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Tennessee is the Shavin House in Chattanooga. In 1949 newlyweds Gerte and Seamour Shavin contacted Frank Lloyd Wright to design a home for them on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. Wright (1870-1959),…

The Shawnees, the most southerly located of all the Algonquian tribes, are one of several tribes who speak the Central Algonquian dialect. In most Algonquian languages they are called Shawunogi, which literally translates as "Southerners." Legends indicate that they were…

The Tennessee General Assembly established Shelby County on November 24, 1819, just a little over a year after the "Jackson Purchase" and Chickasaw treaty freed West Tennessee from Indian claims. The county is named after one of the successful treaty…

Isaac Shelby, early Tennessee settler, Revolutionary War veteran, and governor of Kentucky, was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, in 1750 to Evan and Letitia Cox Shelby, who moved their family to Sapling Grove, the present site of Bristol, in 1771. Their…

A significant figure in Tennessee’s early medical history, John Shelby submitted a medical dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania “On Gunshot Wounds,” the interest of a true frontiersman. Shelby was the first Caucasian child born in what became Sumner County.…

In 1852 Gillen, Webb, and Company established Sylvan Mills on the Duck River outside of Shelbyville as a woven cotton fabric mill. It produced fabric from raw cotton throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the early 1920s,…

In February 1862 a Union army-navy offensive succeeded in capturing Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, located respectively on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, near the Tennessee-Kentucky border, and the fall of the two forts initiated a series of Union triumphs…

Brigadier General Austin C. Shofner, retired, a native of Bedford County, was a career Marine Corps officer and soldier in World War II. Shofner's heroic exploits in the Philippines--his escape from a Japanese POW camp and his work in guerrilla…

Leap-year baby Fannie Rose Shore was the second daughter born to Russian Jewish immigrants Anna and Sol Shore on February 19, 1916, in Winchester. In 1923 the family moved to Nashville where they prospered. Poliomyelitis left Fannie Rose with a…

A noted feature of the Eastern Highland Rim landscape of Middle Tennessee is Short Mountain. Located in northeastern Cannon County, the mountain looms above adjacent portions of DeKalb and Warren Counties as well. Capped by Pennsylvanian sedimentary rocks that have…

Of all historical housing forms found in Tennessee, the shotgun house is perhaps the least understood and most burdened with confusion and misconceptions. The shotgun sometimes represented the worst evidence of the treatment of the impoverished and, therefore, was viewed…

A Nobel laureate who pioneered neutron diffraction research at Oak Ridge, Clifford Shull was born at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1915. He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology and New York University, where he earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1941.…