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The Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at East Tennessee State University is a Distinguished Center of Excellence, established in 1984 during the administration of Governor Lamar Alexander. The center’s mission is to document and showcase Appalachia’s past, celebrate its…

East Tennessee State University's Center for Appalachian Studies and Services is a Tennessee Center of Excellence established in 1984 during the administration of Governor Lamar Alexander. The center supports research and artistic endeavors focusing on the Appalachian region, improves resources…

In 1984 the Tennessee General Assembly and Governor Lamar Alexander, as part of a comprehensive statewide education reform program, proposed a special project to recognize Tennessee's national leadership in higher education through a competition to create specialized research centers involving…

The Center for Popular Music was established at Middle Tennessee State University in 1985. Its mission is to foster research and scholarship in American popular music and to promote an awareness of and appreciation for America's diverse musical culture. The…

The Center for Southern Folklore, located in Memphis, is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to documenting and presenting the people and traditions of the South. Through films, video tapes, records, books, exhibits, and festivals, the center presents the life of indigenous…

By the end of the twentieth century, many Tennesseans were used to seeing the Central Parking logo hanging about urban parking lots; few realized it was the largest parking company in the world. It was originally founded as a side…

Hiram S. Chamberlain, a founder of the modern iron industry in the South, was born in Franklin, Ohio, on August 6, 1835, to Vermont natives Leander and Susanna Chamberlain. The fourth of eight children, Chamberlain attended the Eclectic Institute (later…

Tennessee's fourth largest city, Chattanooga enjoys a rich and often contentious past. The city lies on a bend in the Tennessee River near a natural opening in the southern Appalachians. Surrounded by mountains and ridges, the river's banks formed a…

Founded in 1903, Chattanooga Bakery Company is best known for the production of a single product--Moon Pies. The company began operations as an attempt at vertical integration by Chattanooga's Mountain City Flour Mill in an attempt to take advantage of…

The city's leading African American newspaper in the late 1800s, the Chattanooga Blade was recognized for its rare quality as a publication edited and produced by African Americans. The Blade was published weekly by Randolph Miller, one of the few…

This landmark Chattanooga hotel located on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga initially served as the Southern Railway Terminal. Designed by Beaux-Arts-trained architect Donn Barber of New York City, this magnificent architectural gateway to the Deep South opened during the Christmas…

This significant Chattanooga business was founded in 1901 by Charles Rief to provide glass bottles for his brewery. Soon the company also began producing bottles for the infant Coca-Cola bottling industry, established in the city in 1899. With the advent…

In 1879 Chattanooga businessman Zeboim Cartter Patten and a group of friends established the Chattanooga Medicine Company. Its first two products, Black-Draught and Wine of Cardui, were so successful that they were sold well into the twentieth century. Patten procured…

The Chattanooga Plow Company was once the largest factory in Chattanooga and an international leader in plow design and production. The company dates to the business activities of Newell Sanders, who arrived in Chattanooga in 1877 from Bloomington, Indiana, where…

In a lavishly paneled executive board room on the fourteenth floor of the New York Times Building on West Forty-third Street in Manhattan, the home of the nation's most influential daily newspaper, stands a bust of Adolph S. Ochs, the…

Roy McDonald was the founder and longtime publisher of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Originally a grocer, McDonald began the Free Press in 1933 as a small flyer to promote his chain of Home Stores. It proved popular and quickly…

The Tennessee General Assembly created Cheatham County on February 28, 1856, from parts of Davidson, Robertson, Montgomery, and Dickson Counties. The county name honors Edward Saunders Cheatham, Speaker of the state Senate. At the first county court meeting at Sycamore…

Confederate General Benjamin F. Cheatham was born on a plantation near Nashville on October 20, 1820. His maternal ancestors included James Robertson, the founder of Nashville. Cheatham served in the Mexican War as a captain in the First Tennessee Regiment…

Early twentieth-century singer, actress, and children’s entertainer, Kitty Cheatham was born and raised in Nashville. She was the daughter of Colonel Richard Boone and Frances Bugge Cheatham and had a colorful genealogy, including ties to early Virginia and Tennessee settlers…

Antebellum medical reformer William A. Cheatham was born in Springfield in 1820, the second son of Robertson County's General Richard Cheatham (1799-1845) and Susan Saunders (1801-1864). He received his medical degree in March 1843 from the University of Pennsylvania Medical…