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Corn
Corn was the chief agricultural product almost from the beginning of human settlement in Tennessee. Referred to as "Indian corn" throughout the 1800s, the cereal was widely cultivated by the Cherokees... Continue Reading »
Cotton
Cotton was not an aboriginal crop in Tennessee, nor was it widely cultivated by the earliest settlers in mountainous East Tennessee. Gins for separating cotton seed from fiber were brought into Middle... Continue Reading »
Cotton Gins
Without the cotton gin Tennessee never would have evolved into a major antebellum cotton market; the cotton fibers produced here were too short for hand ginning or roller ginning, which could be perfo... Continue Reading »
Cox Mound Gorget
The Cox Mound, or Woodpecker, gorget style is a particularly beautiful and enduring symbol of Tennessee's prehistoric inhabitants. A gorget was a pendant, or personal adornment, worn around the n... Continue Reading »
Crab Orchard Stone
Crab Orchard stone is a rare sandstone quarried from the Crab Orchard Mountain of the Cumberland Plateau. Predominately rose in color, this mottled stone is streaked in irregular patterns by different... Continue Reading »
Dance: Clogging and Buckdancing
The traditional dances of clogging and buckdancing are popular forms of percussive dancing that originated in the southern Appalachian mountains. Though the eighteenth-century Scottish and Irish settl... Continue Reading »
Decorative Interior Murals and Interior Painting
There are many historic examples of decoratively painted interiors across the state of Tennessee. While some of the paintings have been lost, many works from the late eighteenth century to the New Dea... Continue Reading »
Disasters
A number of natural and technological tragedies, as well as epidemics, have shaped the Tennessee experience. Many resulted in massive property damage and/or loss of life and immeasurable human sufferi... Continue Reading »
Disfranchising Laws
In 1889 the Tennessee General Assembly passed four acts of self-described electoral reform that resulted in the disfranchisement of a significant portion of African American voters as well as many poo... Continue Reading »
Dueling
Dueling, defined as private combat governed by formal rules, was a manifestation of the romantic spirit that once existed in the South. A relic of feudalism, the duel was popularized among rank-consci... Continue Reading »
Early Exploration
The first explorations by Europeans in what is now Tennessee took place in 1540, when a Spanish expedition under the command of Hernando de Soto entered the region from the southeast. Soto had set out... Continue Reading »
Early Horse Racing Tracks
Long before Tennessee became famous for the Tennessee Walking Horse in the mid-1900s, the state was known throughout the country as the center for thoroughbred horses. For most of the nineteenth centu... Continue Reading »
Early Vernacular Plan Houses
For early houses in Tennessee, three house plans were common: the central passage plan, the hall-parlor plan, and the Penn-plan. The central passage plan, also called an I-house by cultural geographer... Continue Reading »
Ecological Systems
Tennessee is an Upper South state approximately 432 miles long and 112 miles wide, constituting 42,244 square miles, with elevations ranging from peaks of over 6,000 feet to sea level, containing a wi... Continue Reading »
Elementary and Secondary Education
From Tennessee's earliest beginnings, the state's inhabitants have expressed concern about the education of their children. In fact, even before Tennessee became a state, residents establish... Continue Reading »
Ferries
Tennessee contains 19,200 miles of streams, including 1,062 miles of navigable waterways. These streams initially served as a major means of transportation that allowed early settlers access to market... Continue Reading »
Fiddle and Old-time Music Contests
Tennessee towns host over thirty fiddle and old-time music contests every year. Many of these current music festivals date only to the 1970s as Tennesseans rediscovered their local musical and folklor... Continue Reading »
Fishing
Tennessee boasts 649,000 acres of productive fishing waters--the finest anywhere. Twenty-nine major reservoirs, nineteen thousand miles of warm and cold water streams, and thousands of smaller lakes a... Continue Reading »
Frontier Stations
On the Tennessee frontier before 1796 the terms "station" and "fort" were used interchangeably to mean a structure, or adjacent structures, that could temporarily house more than one family and provid... Continue Reading »
Geologic Zones
Tennessee is a narrow state over 500 miles long, with its long axis running east-west across the grain of the geology. Most of the geological provinces of the east-central United States are represente... Continue Reading »