Entries

The first Methodist publishing efforts began as the Methodist Book Concern in Philadelphia in 1789 with a loan of $600. Its publications were delivered by traveling preachers known as circuit riders. The Concern later relocated to New York City and…

The United Sons and Daughters of Charity Lodge Hall in Bolivar, Hardeman County, is one of the oldest African American lodge buildings in West Tennessee. Listed in the National Register of Historic Buildings, its unassuming architecture reflects the types of…

First established as an arm of the Continental Army, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has both military and civil missions. Since the Revolutionary War, it has provided topographic reconnaissance and mapping, fortification design and construction, and related services for…

During the Civil War, Union forces in Tennessee were part of several different federal armies, primarily the Army of the Cumberland, the Army of the Ohio, and the Army of the Tennessee. An army from the early Department of the…

The United States Christian Commission, a project of the Young Men's Christian Association, sent almost five thousand volunteers to the battlefields and military hospitals of the Civil War. Their purpose was to care for the spiritual and physical needs of…

The United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.) in Tennessee experienced every facet of war between 1863 and 1865. In the spring of 1863 General Lorenzo Thomas was appointed Commissioner for the Organization of Colored Troops for the Union army in Tennessee.…

Established in Marshall County in 1929, the United States Dairy Experiment Station has played a significant role in the improvement of dairy livestock and the dairy industry in Tennessee. Lewisburg civic entrepreneur and cattle auctioneer Jim N. McCord, Jersey cattle…

A significant reminder of the importance of the iron industry to Chattanooga's growth is the United States Pipe and Foundry Company, one of Chattanooga's oldest manufacturing establishments and a familiar landmark on the city's skyline. The company's owners, David Giles…

Memphis-based Universal Life Insurance Company (ULICO), the second African American company in the United States to attain million-dollar-capital status (1947), has been described as one of the "ten top Negro owned and operated business enterprises in the world" and as…

Names reflect an institution's history, and the University of Memphis has undergone several name changes: West Tennessee State Normal School (1912-25), West Tennessee State Teachers College (1925-30), State Teachers College, Memphis (1930-41), Memphis State College (1941-57), Memphis State University (1957-94),…

The University of Tennessee was founded as Blount College, named for Territorial Governor William Blount and chartered on September 10, 1794, by the legislature of the Southwest Territory sitting in Knoxville. Located in a single building in a frontier village…

In 1886 the Methodist Episcopal Church, North founded Chattanooga University. Strife within the church over educational policy in the South soon undermined Chattanooga University and led to its consolidation in 1889 with a rival school, Grant Memorial University in Athens,…

The only public four-year college in West Tennessee outside Memphis, the University of Tennessee at Martin traces its roots to Hall-Moody Institute, founded by local Baptists in 1900. Named for J. N. Hall and J. B. Moody, two prominent Baptist…

Founded in 1911, the UT Health Science Center includes the Colleges of Allied Health Sciences, Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy; the School of Biomedical Engineering; the Bowld Hospital in Memphis; and the Graduate School of Medicine and…

Fifty-four years after the city-owned and -operated Knoxville General Hospital opened in 1902, it was replaced by the University of Tennessee Memorial Research Center and Hospital. A number of forces converged to bring about the culmination of a nearly twelve-year…

In 1857, when it was learned that the dioceses of the Episcopal Church planned to establish an educational center, citizens of Franklin County made common cause with the Sewanee Mining Company to offer a 10,000-acre parcel, half of which was…

Van Buren County encompasses 274 square miles straddling the Cumberland Plateau and the eastern Highland Rim. The western 30 percent of the county stands 960 feet above sea level; its limestone outcroppings have resulted in numerous caves. The best known,…

In 1888 an enterprising student at Fisk University petitioned his fellow senior classmates to join with the fledgling Fisk Alumni Association (organized in 1884) to raise funds for a new multipurpose building for the school's campus. The unwavering dedication and…

James I. Vance, longtime pastor of Nashville's historic First Presbyterian Church, the largest Presbyterian Church in the South in 1914, was voted one of the nation's twenty-five leading pulpit ministers in 1925. A great-grandson of John Sevier, Vance was born…