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John H. Savage, congressman, state legislator, and veteran of three wars, was born at McMinnville on October 9, 1815, the son of George and Elizabeth Kenner Savage. Savage attended common schools and the Carroll Academy at McMinnville before studying law;…

International president of the United Furniture Workers, W. Carl Scarbrough was born in Henderson, the son of Joseph Scarbrough, a farmer. Scarbrough graduated from Chester County High School in 1952 and married his wife Faye that same year. They had…

Scarritt College was moved from its original home in Kansas City, Missouri, to Nashville in 1923. Established as an institution to train women missionaries by the United Methodist Church, the school was dedicated in 1892 as the Scarritt Bible and…

Music director and conductor for the Nashville Symphony Orchestra (NSO) from 1983 until his death in 2005, Kenneth DeWitt Schermerhorn is credited with leading the orchestra to national prominence. His tenure with the NSO included critically acclaimed recordings (including four…

The history of science and technology in Tennessee dates to the early settlement era when explorers recognized the geological and botanical diversity of the state. Soon after the initial tasks associated with homesteading were completed, a survey of the mapping…

The location of Scott County on the Cumberland Plateau abutting the Tennessee-Kentucky state line makes for beautiful landscape, poor soil for farming, and a small population. The region is blanketed with forests and parks, both in neighboring counties and Scott…

Novelist and essayist Evelyn Scott was born Elsie Dunn in Clarksville on January 17, 1893, the only child of Seely and Maude Thomas Dunn. After living in Clarksville as a young child, she moved to New Orleans and enrolled in…

In the autumn of 1942, the War Department decided to resume field maneuvers in Middle Tennessee. Large-scale war games had been conducted in an area around Camp Forrest, near Tullahoma, the previous summer, and General George S. Patton had perfected…

Seeing Eye, Inc., a New Jersey-based corporation that enhances the independence and dignity of blind people through the training and use of "Seeing Eye" dogs, traces its roots to Nashville and the effort of Morris Frank, a Nashville native. In…

Dewitt Senter, farmer, state legislator, and governor, was born in McMinn County on March 26, 1832, the son of William T. Senter, a Methodist minister, and Nancy White Senter. He attended the public schools in Grainger County and the Strawberry…

On December 9, 1857, the Tennessee General Assembly created Sequatchie County from a section of Hamilton County and named Dunlap as the county seat. Europeans first settled in the area in 1806. The land in the Sequatchie Valley was highly…

Sequoyah, the originator of the Cherokee syllabary, was born in the Cherokee town of Tuskegee (or Taskigi) on the Little Tennessee River in what is now Monroe County. The son of Nathaniel Gist (or Guess), a Virginia fur trader, and…

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…