Commerce

East Tennessee businessman and railroad president Campbell Wallace was a native of Sevier County and grew up in Maryville, where he attended Anderson Seminary. At age fourteen he moved to Knoxville, where he was employed by a prominent merchant, Charles…

Last Beloved Woman of the Cherokees, Nancy Ward was born in 1738 at Chota and given the name Nanye-hi, which signified "One who goes about," a name taken from Nunne-hi, the legendary name of the Spirit People of Cherokee mythology.…

Nashville businessman and civic leader Percy Warner followed the lead of his father, James C. Warner, in capitalizing upon the New South exploitation of natural resources with his Warner Iron Corporation in the 1870s and 1880s. While working for the…

By 1853 Jesse Warren (1814-1885) and his partner Joseph Moore (1821-1871) had established a millwork machine shop on Nashville's High Street. Four years later, the nearly fifty employees of Warren & Moore were using the era's most modern steam powered…

In 1948-49 white-owned WDIA in Memphis became the nation's first all-black radio station. Its owners, Bert Ferguson and John R. Pepper, hired Nat D. Williams, the first publicly identified black disc jockey. The station aired black history segments and presented…

Chattanooga attorney and businessman Joseph B. Whitehead, along with Benjamin F. Thomas and J. T. Lupton, pioneered the Coca-Cola bottling industry. Born in Oxford, Mississippi, he received a law degree from the University of Mississippi. In the late 1880s he…

Chattanooga businesswoman Harriet Whiteside was born May 3, 1824, in Wytheville, Virginia, and educated at the Moravian School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to be a teacher. At the age of nineteen she arrived in Chattanooga to teach music to one…

A. N. C. Williams, prominent African American merchant and community leader in Williamson County, was born into slavery in Spring Hill, Tennessee, in 1844. At age six, he was sold to D. R. Crutcher and moved to Franklin, Tennessee, where…

Civil rights lawyer and Memphis businessman A. W. Willis Jr. was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on March 16, 1925. Willis received his B.A. from Talladega College in 1950 and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1953. He…

In 1951 Kemmons Wilson, his wife, and five children drove from Memphis to Washington, D.C., for a vacation. Appalled by the uncomfortable and cramped rooms with no air conditioning in the motels in which they were forced to stay, as…

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…

WLAC is a Nashville radio station established by the Life and Casualty Insurance Company in 1926; it shaped musical tastes in Nashville for over seventy years. Its most significant contribution to Tennessee cultural history came from the mid-1940s to the…

One of the ten oldest radio stations in the United States, WNOX in Knoxville played a significant role in showcasing major talents in the burgeoning hillbilly--or country--music field from the 1930s through the 1950s. The station went on the air…

Home station of the Grand Ole Opry radio show, WSM was an early Nashville radio station, the marketing idea of Edwin Craig of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company. In the early 1920s Craig, son of National Life founding…

Overlooking the sulfur springs at Bledsoe's Lick in the Castalian Springs community, the sprawling log inn Wynnewood was built in 1828 for travelers passing between Knoxville and Nashville. The builders, Alfred R. Wynne, Stephen Roberts, and William Cage, located it…

Harry and Mary Zimmerman founded in 1960 what became within a generation the nation's largest catalog showroom, Service Merchandise. Both grew up in Memphis, and, after graduating from Central High School, they married. Shortly after the birth of Raymond, their…