Encyclopedia

Owen Bradley, musician and producer, was one of the pioneers of the Nashville recording industry and a developer of the Nashville Sound. Born in Westmoreland, Sumner County, Bradley began his musical career early by assembling musical groups to play at…

Braxton Bragg, controversial commander of the Army of Tennessee from June 1862 to December 1863, was born in Warrenton, North Carolina, on March 21, 1817. He attended West Point and graduated fifth in the class of 1837. Bragg fought against…

John Thomas Bragg, long-time member of the Tennessee House of Representatives and chair of its powerful Finance, Ways and Means Committee, was born in Woodbury on May 9, 1918, to Minor Elam and Callie Luree Bragg. In his early teens,…

Brainerd Mission was a multi-acre mission school situated on Chickamauga Creek near present-day Chattanooga. Named for eighteenth-century missionary David Brainerd, it was the largest institution of its type among the Eastern Cherokees. The Boston-based American Board of Commissioners for Foreign…

Artist Lloyd Branson was born in Union County in 1854 and spent his life in the Knoxville area. In 1871, at age seventeen, he exhibited at the East Tennessee Division Fair and received favorable notice. As a result, Branson moved…

The Russells, husband and wife, were leaders of mammalian genetics studies at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Liane Brauch was born in Austria in 1923. She immigrated to the United States, enrolled in Hunter College, and earned her Ph.D. in zoology…

Phil Bredesen, the forty-eighth governor of Tennessee, built a reputation for effective leadership in business and government as a private businessman and as mayor of Nashville/Davidson County from 1991 to 1999. He campaigned for governor in 2002 on a platform…

Brentwood Academy v. TSSAA is a nationally significant court case that answers the question as to whether or not a high school athletic association can prohibit recruiting without violating a school’s First Amendment rights. Located just south of Nashville, Brentwood Academy,…

The village of Brentwood, situated between Nashville and Franklin on the Nashville & Decatur (also called the Tennessee & Alabama) Railroad, was a strategic supply depot and source of food and livestock for the Union army during its operations in…

Carson Brewer, journalist and conservationist, was born in Hancock County, the son of a rural postmaster. Brewer attended Maryville College (1939-41) before entering military service during World War II. He served in the European Theater and returned to college at…

Born July 2, 1897, on a farm near Somerville, William H. Brewster was the oldest of sharecroppers William and Callie Polk Brewster’s eight children. In 1915 Brewster entered Memphis’s Howe Collegiate Institute and studied under the Reverends T. O. Fuller…

Beverly Briley, first mayor of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County (1963-75), was born in Nashville in 1914. Briley grew up in East Nashville, attended Vanderbilt University and Cumberland Law School, and in 1932 became the youngest Tennessean…

A favorite track of NASCAR fans across the nation is the Bristol Motor Speedway. Its two annual Winston Cup events (currently the Food City 500 in April and the Goody's 500 in August) attract the largest crowds of any sporting…

The term Bristol Sessions is the common name now given one of the most famous events in American popular music history. In July 1927 producer Ralph Peer recorded the Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers in a makeshift recording studio in…

The Brock Candy Company dates to 1906, when William Emerson Brock, a traveling sales representative with the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, purchased the Trigg Candy Company of Chattanooga. Three years later, he reincorporated the company as Brock Candy Company.…

Bill Brock, Chattanooga businessman, Republican congressman and senator, GOP National Party chairman, U.S. trade representative, and secretary of labor, was born in Chattanooga on November 23, 1930, to William E. Brock Jr. and Myra Kruesi Brock, heirs to a prosperous…