Entries

David G. Farragut, the first U.S. admiral, was born James Glasgow Farragut in 1801 and raised in Stoney Point, near Knoxville. In 1806 his father received a navy commission and moved his family to New Orleans. In 1808, when a…

Oscar L. Farris spent almost forty years with the University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service. While serving in Maury County, he was responsible for the first "test and slaughter" attempt to control cattle brucellosis in Tennessee four years before the…

The Tennessee General Assembly established Fayette County on September 29, 1824, and named it in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, French general and statesman. The county seat, Somerville, was named to honor Lieutenant Robert Somerville, hero of the battle…

The largest express transportation company in the world is FedEx, headquartered in Memphis. Frederick W. Smith, a Memphis businessman and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, began a company named Federal Express in April 1973 with fourteen small aircraft flying from the…

In 1858 John O'Mahony established the Fenian Brotherhood of America to provide money, arms, and military leadership for an anticipated rising against England by the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. An odd twist in this story of nineteenth-century Irish nationalism was the…

The Tennessee General Assembly created Fentress County from parts of Overton and Morgan Counties on November 28, 1823. The county was named in honor of James Fentress, the Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, who had assisted in passing…

Samuel “Champ” Ferguson was one of the most notorious guerilla fighters on either side of the Civil War. His partisan career is a prominent example of how personal revenge, criminal actions, and political allegiance all overlapped to motivate guerilla warfare…

Tennessee contains 19,200 miles of streams, including 1,062 miles of navigable waterways. These streams initially served as a major means of transportation that allowed early settlers access to markets and permitted travel between isolated communities. Future urban centers such as…

Tennessee towns host over thirty fiddle and old-time music contests every year. Many of these current music festivals date only to the 1970s as Tennesseans rediscovered their local musical and folklore traditions, but fiddle contests have a long history in…

Nashville’s Afro-Baptists began their religious journey of faith within a spectacular local history. Negroes were among 200 residents in the settlement of Fort Nashborough in 1780. By 1787, they represented 22 percent of 477 settlers; by 1820, their number grew…

First Tennessee Bank was founded in 1864 as the First National Bank of Memphis. Today, First Tennessee is part of First Horizon National Corporation, which sits at number 575 on the Fortune 1000 and is the nation’s twenty-fourth largest commercial…

Headquartered in Memphis, First Tennessee National Corporation was founded as the First National Bank of Memphis on March 10, 1864. During the Federal occupation of Memphis in the Civil War, Franklin S. Davis and his associates recognized the city's need…

Situated on the public square in Clarksville in the Arlington Hotel, the First Woman's Bank began operations on October 6, 1919. As a financial institution created, directed, and staffed entirely by women, its opening produced something of a sensation, and…

Tennessee boasts 649,000 acres of productive fishing waters--the finest anywhere. Twenty-nine major reservoirs, nineteen thousand miles of warm and cold water streams, and thousands of smaller lakes and ponds provide unlimited fishing opportunity and variety year-round. Fish stories told in…

Fisk Free Colored School, predecessor of Fisk University, was established on January 9, 1866, in Nashville to offer education--as a means of building better lives--to formerly enslaved African Americans. African Americans, both slave and free, exhibited two related overriding concerns…

When the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was established under the U.S. War Department by the Congress in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln proposed General Clinton B. Fisk as an appointee. The appointment was not made prior to Lincoln's…

Tenor and guitarist Lester Flatt is best know as half of the famous duo Flatt and Scruggs, credited for pioneering and popularizing bluegrass music. Born in rural Overton County, Flatt moved with his family to Sparta in White County when…

Moderate to heavy rainfall in December 1936 was no harbinger of disaster. However, as the rain, snow, and sleet continued through most of January 1937, soils became saturated, and the Mississippi, Cumberland, and Tennessee Rivers and their tributaries overflowed into…

The Fly Manufacturing Company in Shelbyville, which operated from 1916 to 1985, is representative of many other small textile mills that once were commonplace in Tennessee's small towns and county seats. Like many small southern towns, Shelbyville's economy benefited from…

Mary Rutledge Fogg, writer and leader in Nashville civic affairs, was a member of one of Nashville's early families, the Rutledges, and the granddaughter of two of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Fogg was an active member of…