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Originally named Fort Caswell, Fort Watauga was constructed near the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River near present-day Elizabethton. Settlement in the Watauga Valley had begun before 1768, despite an earlier proclamation by British authorities forbidding encroachment into Native American…

In April 1861 Governor Isham G. Harris ordered Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Wright, 154th Militia Regiment at Memphis, to proceed north and occupy a defensive position on the Mississippi River. Wright and a battalion of men and artillery established camp at…

Woman aviator Cornelia Fort was a Nashville debutante whose love of flying led her to become a pioneer in women's military aviation as a member of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, which later became part of the Women's Air Force…

Abe Fortas, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, was born in Memphis, the son of an English-born Orthodox Jew and cabinetmaker. While attending high school, Fortas worked nights at a shoe store and also earned money playing the…

Located in Murfreesboro, Fortress Rosecrans was the largest fort built during the Civil War; portions of the huge fortification remain intact today. Constructed between January and June 1863 after the battle of Stones River, the project was the responsibility of…

Ephraim H. Foster, United States senator and early leader of the Whig Party, was born in Kentucky. Foster came to Davidson County with his family in 1797 and graduated from Cumberland College in Nashville in 1813. After serving as Andrew…

United States Senator Joseph Smith Fowler was born in Steubenville, Ohio, to James and Sarah Atkinson Fowler. After attending Grove Academy in Steubenville, he graduated from Franklin College in New Athens, Ohio, in 1843. He spent a year teaching school…

The Tennessee General Assembly established Franklin County in 1807, following the extinction of Cherokee claims west of the Cumberland Plateau between the Duck and Tennessee Rivers. Mountain lands were added after Native American claims ended in 1819. Franklin County was…

Franklin's Masonic Lodge is a building of many firsts. Hiram Lodge No. 7, founded in Franklin in 1809, was first affiliated with the parent Lodge No. 55 in North Carolina. The local Lodge surrendered its North Carolina charter when the…

Following the evacuation of Atlanta, Confederate General John Bell Hood formulated an elaborate plan to draw General William T. Sherman away from that city and place his own army in position to recapture Middle Tennessee. Hood planned to march his…

Isaac Franklin, slave trader and planter, was born in Sumner County, the son of a Revolutionary War soldier who had received a military land warrant in Tennessee. Franklin served in the War of 1812, and at age eighteen, while working…

The 1927 merger of two black-owned and -operated Memphis banks which had been instrumental in launching and supporting African American businesses in the 1910s and 1920s created the Fraternal and Solvent Savings Bank and Trust Company. The bank's eventual failure,…

The worst mine disaster in Tennessee history took place on May 19, 1902, at the Fraterville mine, near Coal Creek (now Lake City), Campbell County. At about 7:30 a.m., 184 men and boys entered the mine. Minutes later a horrendous…

Tennessee Governor James B. Frazier was born at Pikeville in Bledsoe County, the son of Thomas Neil and Margaret M. Frazier. His great-grandfather, Samuel Frazier, and grandfather, Abner Frazier, fought at the battle of Kings Mountain during the American Revolution.…

Free Hill (sometimes called Free Hills) is an African American community established in the upper Cumberland before the Civil War. It is located northeast of Celina in a remote section of Clay County near the Kentucky border. The original inhabitants…

Named in honor of former presidents A. G. Freed and N. B. Hardeman, Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson represents the culmination of a succession of private schools reaching back to 1869. It is affiliated with the Churches of Christ. In 1907…

Julius Freed was an important post-Civil War German Jewish merchant in Trenton, Gibson County. A native of Prussia, Freed immigrated in 1854 to Columbus, Georgia, where he worked as a peddler. Three years later he moved to Memphis and established…

Even before the Civil War ended, President Abraham Lincoln and Congress realized that the government must offer assistance to newly emancipated slaves. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau, attempted this task and…

A financial institution chartered by Congress in 1865 for the newly freed black population of former slave states, the Freedmen's Savings Bank was a key component of the African American struggle for equality and independence during Reconstruction. A total of…

Early trading at French Lick, or the Big Salt Springs on the Cumberland River, involved all of the players in the imperial struggle of the eighteenth century. A natural magnet for wild game, French Lick had long attracted native hunters…