Encyclopedia

The origins of law in Tennessee can be traced to a variety of sources, notably English common law and colonial North Carolina statutes. The 1796 constitution provided that all laws then in force should continue until replaced by the legislature.…

On October 21, 1817, the Tennessee General Assembly created Lawrence County from territory acquired by treaty with the Chickasaw Indians. A section of Hickman County and a small portion of Giles County were included in its boundaries. Local government was…

This Nashville native rose to the navy's top ranks and received national honor after six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, during which time he wrote "Oh Tennessee, My Tennessee," the official state poem. Lawrence excelled at…

James E. Lawson Jr. made a significant mark on the history of the Civil Rights movement in Tennessee and in the South. He is best known in Tennessee history as the Vanderbilt Divinity School student who was expelled in 1960…

Albert Miller Lea, a prominent chief engineer of the State of Tennessee, was born in Knoxville in 1805. Lea learned his engineering skills in the army. He entered West Point and graduated fifth in a class of thirty-three in 1831.…

A key figure in the reform and prohibition movements and a major player in the early twentieth-century Democratic Party, Luke Lea was prominent in Tennessee history during the early twentieth century. A descendant of the pioneer Overton and Cocke families,…

This organization formed prior to the ratification of the Suffrage Amendment when thirty-five of the required thirty-six states had ratified the amendment. Tennessee suffragists attended the last national suffrage convention in February 1920 and returned home to Tennessee to organize…

On January 1, 1918, 12 students from four states met with Nora Chambers in an upstairs room of the Church of God Publishing House in Cleveland, Tennessee. This first class meeting of the Church of God's Bible Training School (BTS)…

Brenda Mae Tarpley, later known as Brenda Lee, was born in Atlanta's Emory University Hospital charity ward on December 11, 1944. By the age of three she was already showing a remarkable ability to memorize and sing songs she had…

Known on the streets of early twentieth-century Memphis as "Lieutenant Lee," both for his army service as a lieutenant in World War I and as the lieutenant for the powerful African American capitalist and Republican Party leader Robert Church Sr.,…

Memphis's Lemoyne Owen College opened its doors in 1871 as LeMoyne Normal and Commercial School, but it traces its ancestry to the schools for ex-slaves organized by members of the American Missionary Association (AMA) during and after the Civil War.…

Located on ninety-three acres along the Tennessee River in downtown Lenoir City, the Lenoir Car Works was once the largest and most important business in Loudon County. The earliest operation was the Bass Foundry and Machine Company, which produced iron…

The Lenoir Cotton Mill was one of a series of five mills built by the family of General William Lenoir along Town Creek in what is now Lenoir City. In 1810 Major William Ballard Lenoir, son of Revolutionary War General…

Alan LeQuire, the creator of the monumental Athena Parthenos for the Parthenon in Nashville, is one of Tennessee's most accomplished sculptors. He is best known for his public commissions such as the life-size bronze sculptures at Blair School of Music…

Lewis County was established in 1843 from parts of Perry, Hickman, Maury, Lawrence, and Wayne Counties and named in honor of Meriwether Lewis, the famed explorer of the Lewis and Clark expedition, who died within the county's boundaries. The first…

John R. Lewis, now a congressman from Atlanta, was one of the early student leaders in the Civil Rights movement in Tennessee. Lewis was born on February 21, 1940, in Troy, Alabama, to Eddie and Willie Mae Carter Lewis. One…

An associate and advisor of Andrew Jackson, William B. Lewis was born in Virginia, but moved to Nashville in 1809. Little else is known of his earliest years except that he received a good education and developed a strong friendship…

Although Tennessee libraries developed slowly from early statehood until the twentieth century, early Tennesseans placed a high value on their collections of books. Given the demands of frontier life and the relatively high cost of books, it is not surprising…

Established by Andrew M. Burton, Guilford Dudley Sr., Helena Haralson, Dr. J. C. Franklin, and Pat M. Estes in Nashville in 1903, Life and Casualty Insurance Company initially offered industrial (health and accident) insurance to working-class blacks and later concentrated…

Born in Memphis on November 28, 1948, to parents Richard and Jeanne Garretson Lightman, Alan P. Lightman is a distinguished author of scientific writings and critically acclaimed novels. Lightman grew up in Memphis, where he learned a love for both…