James B. Jones, Jr.

Arthur S. Colyar, attorney, political leader, newspaper editor, and industrialist, was born in Jonesborough, one of thirteen children of Alexander and Katherine Sevier Sherrill Colyar. Colyar received his education in the Washington County common schools, and in 1828 he moved…

From 1866 to 1896 Tennessee state government adopted the widely used convict lease system to make prisons self-supporting and provide revenue to fund the state debt. Under this system, the state leased prisoners to private companies and made them responsible…

Joseph Jones, Nashville's first health officer, was born in Liberty County, Georgia, the son of Charles Colcock Jones. Educated at Princeton University, he received his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1856. A fierce proponent of secession, Jones…

In its broadest context, "labor" refers to a very diverse set of conditions: slave and free labor; craft and industrial labor; farm and factory labor; and blue, pink, and white collar labor. Because there are few theses, dissertations, or secondary…

The Nashville Trades and Labor Council, organized in 1890, was most responsible for the passage of the Tennessee child labor law and the local barber's Sunday closing law. Composed of three delegates from the different unions in Nashville, the Council…

Beginning in the late 1870s Tennessee's four major metropolitan areas entered the so-called streetcar era. At first these interurban railways were powered by mules, and ran a very short distance, usually in the downtown area. Soon, because of the availability…

Tennessee's first anti-narcotic law was largely the work of Dr. Lucius Polk Brown, Tennessee's food and drug commissioner. It went into effect on January 1, 1914, and reflected the moral reform atmosphere of the Progressive era. The law went further…

The Tennessee Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was the largest private-sector electrical power monopoly in Tennessee's early twentieth-century history. It was formed on May 27, 1922, when the Tennessee Power Company, Chattanooga Railway & Light, and the Chattanooga, and Tennessee River…