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Blount County is one of the oldest counties in Tennessee. Established in 1795 before statehood, it was named in honor of Territorial Governor William Blount. Prior to white settlement the area was home to the Cherokee Indians, who established their…

Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, Blount Mansion was constructed between 1792 and 1830, with the first period of construction occurring between 1792 and 1796. As the home and office of William Blount, the governor of the Southwest Territory, Blount Mansion…

Territorial Governor and U.S. Senator William Blount was born on Easter Sunday (March 26) 1749, the eldest child of Jacob and Barbara Gray Blount of Bertie County, North Carolina. As a lad, Blount received informal training in commerce at the…

Governor Willie Blount was born in Bertie County, North Carolina, to Jacob Blount and his second wife, Hannah (Salter) Baker Blount. He was half-brother to Tennessee's territorial governor William Blount. Willie (pronounced Wiley) Blount studied law at Princeton and Columbia…

Located on the Tennessee River between Meigs and Rhea Counties, Blythe Ferry dates to about 1809 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Its original owner and operator was William Blythe, a mixed-ancestry Native American with both…

James Lafayette Bomar Jr., a lawyer from Bedford County, Tennessee, served his state as a congressman, senator, and lieutenant governor; he then extended his commitment to service to the global community through his involvement in Rotary International. Bomar was a…

Bon Aqua Springs Resort, once the largest health spa and summer retreat in Middle Tennessee, was known as the “Queen of the Southern Spas” during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the western Highland Rim, the Hickman County…

James Bond, one of the wealthiest slaveholding planters in Tennessee, if not in the entire South, came to the state during the late 1820s or early 1830s. Bond and two brothers moved from Bertie County, North Carolina, to the Forked…

Samuel Bond, cotton planter, physician, and Tennessee legislator, was born in Knox County on December 10, 1804. Bond's family moved to northern Alabama before locating in Shelby County in 1831. After a brief period of economic struggle, the family prospered,…

Derived from a 1974 phonograph album entitled Desitively Bonnaroo by the colorful and charismatic New Orleans performer Dr. John (Malcolm John Rebennack Jr.), the word Bonnaroo is Creole slang for “having a good time.” It also is short for “The…

Harlem Renaissance writer and Fisk University librarian Arnaud W. Bontemps was born in Louisiana in 1902 but grew up in Los Angeles after his family moved to California when he was three. In 1923 Bontemps graduated from Pacific Union College;…

The Booker T. Washington State Park is located on Chickamauga Reservoir northeast of downtown Chattanooga. The park, established as a state recreation area in 1938, was the state's second African American recreation area, preceded only by T. O. Fuller State…

Daniel Boone is perhaps the best known of the early "long hunters" who ventured across the Appalachian Mountains to hunt and explore in the area of present-day Tennessee and Kentucky. Born on November 2, 1734, in Oley, Berks County, Pennsylvania,…

Former Tennessee State University track star and medalist in the 1960, 1964, and 1968 Olympic games, Ralph Boston was born in Laurel, Mississippi, on May 9, 1939. Boston attended Tennessee State University, where in 1960 he won the national collegiate…

Elias Boudinot, Cherokee publisher and signer of the removal treaty, was born around 1802 in what is now North Georgia and given the name Buck Oo-watie Galagina, or Stag. In 1818 he went to mission school in Cornwall, Connecticut, where…

George T. Bowen was the first prominent scientist recruited to teach in a Tennessee college. A Rhode Island native, he was admitted to Yale in 1819 with sophomore standing. He graduated in 1822, then went to the University of Pennsylvania,…

Captain William Bowen brought his family to what is now Sumner County in 1784. He first built a double log cabin on the bank of Mansker's Creek before erecting a brick home in 1787. Now within the present limits of…

Cumberland pioneer William Bowen was born in 1742 in Fincastle County, Virginia, and migrated to the Cumberland Valley in 1784. He and his family first lived at Mansker's Station, and next they lived in a log house nearby the station.…

Duke C. Bowers was a Memphis businessman, philanthropist, and fervent opponent of the death penalty. Bowers was born in 1874 in Mobile, Alabama; his family moved to Kentucky when he was a young child. After a failed attempt in the…

African American business leader in cosmetology and civil rights activist Eva Lowery Bowman was born to William and Alice Lowery in Nashville on April 25, 1899. She attended Pearl High School, Walden University, and Tennessee A&I State Normal College. Her…