Sections

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Mary Noailles Murfree depicted the scenery and people of the Tennessee mountains for a national audience. At a time when local color fiction was much in vogue throughout the country, she came…

The sixth largest city in Tennessee, with 68,816 citizens, Murfreesboro is located in Rutherford County, thirty-five miles southeast of Nashville. Adjacent to the west fork of the Stones River, it marks the geographical center of Tennessee. Following over twenty years…

After U.S. Brigadier General James Negley’s June 7-8 attacks on the Confederate forces at Chattanooga, U.S. Major General Don Carlos Buell moved his Army of the Ohio from Corinth, Mississippi, toward Chattanooga to reinforce Negley. The Confederate response was to…

John A. Murrell, a thief and counterfeiter, spent much of his short life in prison and was a notorious outlaw in antebellum Middle Tennessee. In 1844 he died in Pikeville at the age of thirty-eight, shortly after completing nine years…

Located near the town of Norris in Anderson County, the Museum of Appalachia contains the state's best collection of historic buildings, artifacts, and folk art associated with the diverse cultures of Appalachia. Established by John Rice Irwin, the museum is…

Commonplace but enduring, the wood-cased pencil industry ventured onto the Tennessee industrial landscape in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The industry took advantage of the state's ubiquitous and prolific red cedar and a recycling scheme that exchanged cedar…

Folk music expresses the oldest and most basic forms of Tennessee music carried into the region by its earliest settlers and usually passed on from generation to generation by oral tradition. Though instrumental music--especially that of the fiddle and banjo--formed…

The fabled Music Row in Nashville forms a rectangle between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Avenues South and Division and Grand Streets. While tourists may be surprised to find that its outward appearance resembles a neighborhood punctuated by a few corporate office…

Typically, musseling has been a part-time, seasonal occupation to supplement the income of timber workers, farmers, or fisherman living near Tennessee's great rivers, though it always held the allure of a treasure hunt. Indians of the Woodland Period gathered mussels,…

Public health physician, author, and professor Harry S. Mustard became a national figure in the emerging field of public health in the early twentieth century through his work in Tennessee. Mustard was educated in his native state at the Medical…

William E. Myer was a leading figure in the early twentieth-century transformation of Tennessee archaeology from a casual hobby to a professional science and in the development of both overland and river transportation systems. Myer was born in Kentucky in…

Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives James O. Naifeh was born and raised in Covington. He attended local public schools, graduating from Byars Hall High School, and went on to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he took a…

African American businessman and leader James C. Napier was born to free parents on June 9, 1845, in Nashville. His father, William Carroll, was a free hack driver and a sometime overseer. James attended the free blacks' school on Line…

In the vanguard of the national civil rights and antiwar movements from 1959 to 1967, Diane Judith Nash was born on May 15, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois. Reared a Roman Catholic, Nash received her primary and secondary education in the…

Nashoba was a short-lived, but internationally famous, utopian community on the present-day site of Germantown in Shelby County. Nashoba was founded in 1826 by Frances Wright, who dreamed of demonstrating a practical and effective alternative to the South's slave-based agricultural…

With a population of 545,524 in 2000, Nashville is the capital of Tennessee and a national business, transportation, and tourism center for the United States. The Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County government was organized in 1963, and the downtown stands on the…

The Nashville and Chattanooga (N&C) Railroad created new towns, new wealth, and a new corporate landscape as it brought the industrial age to Middle Tennessee. The railroad was the first complete line to operate in Tennessee in 1854 and was…

The Nashville Banner published its first edition on April 10, 1876. William E. Eastman, one of the founding partners, served as its first president; Thomas Achison, another partner, was its first editor. Other partners included two local newsmen, John J.…

Arthur J. Dyer, an 1891 graduate of the Vanderbilt Engineering School, founded the Nashville Bridge Company, the state's most productive and important bridge building firm. Dyer worked for a variety of bridge companies over in the 1890s before he borrowed…

The South was considered a cultural backwater in the 1920s. It lagged behind the rest of the nation economically, and there was scant opportunity to enjoy the arts. There were no important museums, symphonies, galleries, or opera companies. Nashville prospered…