Encyclopedia

Herman Baggenstoss, conservationist, was a native of Grundy County, the son of Swiss settlers who founded the Dutch-Maid Bakery in Tracy City in 1903. An alumnus of the University of the South, Baggenstoss served as superintendent of the Civilian Conservation…

DeFord Bailey, a virtuoso harmonica player who won fame on the early Grand Ole Opry, has a more significant place in history as the first African American to win fame in the field of country music as well as blues.…

Howard H. Baker Jr., U.S. senator, Senate minority leader and majority leader, and White House chief of staff, was born in Huntsville in Scott County on November 15, 1925, the son of future congressman Howard Baker Sr. and his wife…

Republican Congressman Howard H. Baker Sr. was born in Somerset, Kentucky, in 1902, the son of James F. and Helen K. Baker. The Baker family had been prominent in Appalachian history for generations. Baker's grandfather, George Washington Baker, was an…

This case, filed by urban voters against the Tennessee Secretary of State and Attorney General in the U.S. District Court of Middle Tennessee, was one of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren's most important decisions. After the…

By the middle of the eighteenth century, Baptists had begun to settle the mountain valleys of what is now East Tennessee, and by 1786 their small churches were numerous enough to establish what became the second Baptist association west of…

The Knoxville-based architectural firm Barber & McMurry designed landmark residential, civic, and commercial buildings in Knoxville and across the Southeast during the twentieth century. In 1915 Charles Irving Barber joined his cousin, D. West Barber, and Ben McMurry to form…

Edward E. Barnard, astronomer and astronomical photographer, was born in Nashville. To help support his fatherless family, Barnard worked in the photographic gallery of Van Stavoren, where he assisted in the use of a solar camera to make photographic enlargements.…

Paul W. Barret, banker, merchant, planter, businessman, and political and civic leader, was closely connected with the economic progress and government of Shelby County from the 1920s through the 1970s. Paul W. Barret Parkway, a controlled-access highway named for him,…

George W. Barrow, U.S. and Confederate diplomat, editor, soldier, and statesman, was born in Nashville on May 10, 1808, to Wylie Barrow and Ann Beck, his father's second wife. Barrow spent a privileged and comfortable youth at the family home…

Basket weaving is one of the most ancient of all arts, the spontaneous invention of people in all parts of the globe. As white explorers moved into the area that would become Tennessee, they found that Native Americans substituted baskets…

William B. Bate, lawyer, Confederate general, governor, and U.S. senator, was born at Castalian Springs in Sumner County on October 7, 1826, the son of James H. Bate and Anna Weathered Bate. His education was limited to a few years…

Few widely recognized, successful women on television and in film have built an acting career without an “ingénue phase,” which fits snuggly between an actress’s late teens and mid-twenties when she must capitalize on her looks before she expires--like a…

Named for its location on the Franklin Civil War battlefield, Battle Ground Academy (BGA) opened for classes on September 3, 1889. A group of local stockholders organized and chartered the school. The board of directors selected S. V. Wall and…