Entries

One of the most influential figures in Tennessee politics and law during the first half of the nineteenth century, Pleasant M. Miller was born the son of a tavern owner in Lynchburg, Virginia. Miller studied law under Judge Archibald Stewart…

Randolph Miller, former slave and newspaper editor, was emancipated with hundreds of other African Americans on June 9, 1864, in Newton County, Georgia, as General William T. Sherman's army swept through the region. Miller came to Chattanooga in October of…

Milligan College is located in Carter County in East Tennessee. Its origins go back to a Buffalo Male and Female Institute (1866) chartered by a small Christian (Disciples of Christ) congregation. In 1882 Josephus Hopwood upgraded it to a college…

Woman suffrage leader Abby Crawford Milton became involved in the suffrage movement after marrying newspaper publisher George Fort Milton, moving from Georgia to Chattanooga, and giving birth to three daughters. Milton received a law degree from the Chattanooga College of…

George F. Milton, Chattanooga newspaper publisher and Democratic political activist, was born in Macon, Georgia, and educated in Chattanooga. After attending the University of the South at Sewanee, Milton entered the banking business in Chattanooga. He left banking to become…

Tennessee has a long, rich, and varied mining history. Although the industry today accounts for only about three-tenths of a percent of the state's gross products and two-tenths of a percent of nonagricultural jobs, Tennessee remains among the national leaders…

Although Memphis fielded a professional baseball team in 1877, organized minor league baseball in Tennessee dates to 1885 and the founding of the Southern League of Professional Clubs (SL), a circuit that lasted through 1899. From 1885 to the present,…

There are five bridges that span the Mississippi River from Tennessee. A “Hands Across the River” Committee was formed in 1946 to discuss the construction of a bridge linking West Tennessee to Missouri. The U.S. Department of Commerce and Bureau…

Dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the natural and cultural history of the Lower Mississippi River Valley, a region that stretches from Cairo, Illinois, to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River Museum is situated on a fifty-two-acre park…

The 3,658 miles of the Mississippi River makes it one of the longest rivers in the world. Its drainage basin covers two-fifths of the continental United States, extending from western Pennsylvania to Idaho and from Canada to the Gulf of…

The late prehistoric cultures of the southeastern United States dating from ca. A.D. 900 to 1600 comprise the Mississippian culture. In general, Mississippian culture is divided chronologically into emergent, early, and late periods. Based on differences in culture traits, particularly…

Harry L. Mitchell, one of the founders of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union and president of the National Farm Labor Union, was born near Halls, the son of James Y. Mitchell, a tenant farmer and Baptist preacher. Mitchell graduated from…

Named in honor of President James Monroe, Monroe County is located along the North Carolina border in the southeastern corner of Tennessee. Its beautiful landscape includes the Appalachian Mountains, approximately 145,380 acres of Cherokee National Forest, the Bald River Falls…

In 1882 a group of Tennessee Sunday school workers organized an assembly patterned after that in Chautauqua, New York, which had been founded in 1873 to train Sunday School teachers during the summer. That fall, a site selection committee accepted…

Of the more than one dozen boys' schools established in Middle Tennessee at the turn of the nineteenth century, only Montgomery Bell Academy (MBA) remains in operation one hundred years later. Founded in 1867 as the preparatory department of the…

Located along U.S. Highway 70 in Dickson County, Montgomery Bell State Park is approximately thirty miles west of Nashville. This 3,782-acre recreational area bears the name of the wealthy industrialist who established the first major iron furnace west of the…

Long before the dawn of written history, humans inhabited the lands along the Cumberland and Red Rivers. In successive order Paleoindian, Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian Indians left evidence of their occupancy in this area. In the eighteenth century John Donelson…

Confederate spy and, later, Memphis philanthropist, Virginia Bethel Moon was a student at an Ohio girls' school when the Civil War began. After initial resistance, school officials finally acquiesced to her demands and allowed her to leave school and join…

Simply stated, "moonshine" is untaxed liquor, furtively produced quite often by the light of the moon, or at least out of the immediate reach and oversight of law enforcement. Nicknamed "corn likker," "white lightening," "white mule," "mountain dew," and numerous…

With a total area of only 129 square miles, Moore County is the second smallest county in the state. Set in the heart of agrarian Middle Tennessee, Moore County contains a diverse landscape, with nearly one half of the county…