Agriculture

Governor, progressive agricultural reformer, publisher, and public official Jim Nance McCord was born in Unionville, Bedford County, in 1879. His parents, Thomas N. and Iva Stelle McCord, were farmers and the young McCord learned the value of hard work on…

John H. McDowell, newspaper editor and leader in the Agricultural Wheel and Farmers' Alliance, was born December 12, 1844, near Trenton in Gibson County, the son of John Davis and Nancy H. Irwin McDowell. Young McDowell attended St. Andrews College…

Following the organization of cotton exchanges in New York (1870) and New Orleans (1871), Memphis cotton buyers pushed for an exchange in Memphis. Initial attempts to organize the institution failed, though, because most of the cotton factors feared that the…

The builder of Milky Way Farm, Franklin C. Mars, was the founder of Mars Candies Incorporated, maker of the famous Milky Way candy bar for which the estate was named. Mars and his wife, Ethel V. Mars, came to Tennessee…

Harry L. Mitchell, one of the founders of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and president of the National Farm Labor Union, was born near Halls, the son of James Y. Mitchell, a tenant farmer and Baptist preacher. Mitchell graduated from…

Harcourt Morgan, thirteenth president of the University of Tennessee (1919-34) and second chairman of the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority (1938-41), was born in Kerrwood, Adelaide Township, Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada, the child of a farming family.…

Until the widespread adoption of motor-powered machinery in the mid-twentieth century, mules powered most farm activities in Tennessee. Middle Tennessee was a major mule market. At annual "Mule Days" held at towns such as Columbia and Lynchburg, farmers and breeders…

In 1905 horticulturalists officially established the Tennessee Nursery Association for the advancement of the state's horticulture industry and the professionalization of standards. From its very beginning, the founders recognized the potential impact of the nursery industry on the state's economy.…

The only remaining dairy in Davidson County, Purity Dairy was established in 1926 as Ezell's Dairy by Miles Ezell Sr. with eighty rented cows, a rented farm, and rented equipment. With quality products, hard work, and tenacity, the Ezells transformed…

Rudy's Farm, once home to the Rudy Sausage Company, was a family operation dating back to 1881. Daniel Rudy made and sold his own sausage in Nashville on a farm near the railroad on Lebanon Road. His son, Jacob Ludwig,…

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…

A significant figure in Tennessee’s early medical history, John Shelby submitted a medical dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania “On Gunshot Wounds,” the interest of a true frontiersman. Shelby was the first Caucasian child born in what became Sumner County.…

For a short time in the antebellum period, many Tennessee farmers pursued what they thought would be a promising commercial opportunity in the production of silk. Fueling their optimism were discoveries in the 1830s that silkworms thrived on the native…

In the 1760s Anglo-American frontiersmen, determined to settle the land, planted slavery firmly within the borders of what would become Tennessee. Over time, East Tennessee, hilly and dominated by small farms, retained the fewest number of slaves. Middle Tennessee, where…

The common term for sorghum syrup in Tennessee is "molasses" or "sorghum molasses," though educated agriculturists have unsuccessfully campaigned against the use of these vernacular synonyms. Molasses is a by-product of sugar making and may derive from sugar cane or…

Soybeans have become one of the most important cash crops in post-World War II Tennessee, ranking as the third highest cash crop in the state in 1999. The first record of soybeans in the United States dates to 1804, but…

Chartered by the general assembly in 1957, the Tennessee Agricultural Museum is located at Ellington Agricultural Center in south Nashville. The museum is housed in a former horse barn which was once part of the Brentwood Hall estate of financier…

The Tennessee Century Farms Program is a public program that honors family farmers who have kept continuously owned family land in agricultural production for at least the last one hundred years. Established by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture in 1975-76…

Although recommended as early as the 1870s, a state forest system received its first impetus in 1900 when President William McKinley asked for a report on the natural resources of the Southern Appalachians, including Tennessee. In response to the report's…

An intentional community occupying some 1,750 acres in southeastern Lewis County, The Farm is located near Summertown. In 1971 San Francisco resident and New Age religious leader, Stephen Gaskin, and his followers founded The Farm as a spiritual community. The…