Thematic Essay

When the early settlers came to Tennessee and began to till the soil, the production of tobacco was one of the first crops. Since those early days, dollars received for tobacco crops have paid for farms and homes, provided money…

Relationships between Tennessee's Native Americans and the Europeans who came to settle most of the state were regulated by various treaties negotiated between 1770 and 1835. A series of ten treaties defined the areas assigned to both groups and the…

The majority of Tennessee residences were neither designed nor built by architects or master craftsmen. Nor were they designed with one particular architectural style in mind. They do, however, fall under the rubric of "vernacular architecture." This term is used…

The log house is perhaps the most enduring architectural icon associated with Tennessee. Scholars continue to debate how the knowledge of log construction was diffused through the cultural patterns of the colonial South, but it is generally agreed that Scandinavian…

A wide variety of terms have been used to describe American vernacular religious music: religious ballads, hymns, spiritual songs, folk hymns, revival religious songs, gospel songs, folk tunes, and fuguing tunes. Overwhelmingly revivalistic, nineteenth-century vernacular religious music began to express…

Included in this category are all flowering plants (botanically, Angiosperms) that grow naturally without cultivation. Although most wildflowers are herbaceous (non-woody), flowering vines, shrubs, and trees may also be included. Most Tennessee wildflowers are native; however, many, perhaps one-fourth, are…

European settlers brought grape growing and winemaking to Tennessee in the mid-1800s. After the Civil War, the production of wine became a thriving business. J. A. Killebrew devoted an entire chapter to grape cultivation in his 1874 book, Introduction to…

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex"--Nineteenth Amendment, U.S. Constitution. In August 1920 the Tennessee General Assembly ratified the Nineteenth…

Two of Tennessee's best known prehistoric sites, Pinson Mounds in Madison County and the Old Stone Fort in Coffee County, date to the Woodland Period (300 B.C. to A.D. 900). Anthropologist Charles Hudson concluded that the Woodland tradition represented "probably…