Institution

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…

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,…

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…

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 near the town of Norris in Anderson County, the Museum of Appalachia contains the state's best collection of historic buildings, artifacts, and folk art associated with the diverse cultures of Appalachia. Established by John Rice Irwin, the museum is…

Commonplace but enduring, the wood-cased pencil industry ventured onto the Tennessee industrial landscape in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The industry took advantage of the state's ubiquitous and prolific red cedar and a recycling scheme that exchanged cedar…

The Nashville and Chattanooga (N&C) Railroad created new towns, new wealth, and a new corporate landscape as it brought the industrial age to Middle Tennessee. The railroad was the first complete line to operate in Tennessee in 1854 and was…

The Nashville Banner published its first edition on April 10, 1876. William E. Eastman, one of the founding partners, served as its first president; Thomas Achison, another partner, was its first editor. Other partners included two local newsmen, John J.…

Arthur J. Dyer, an 1891 graduate of the Vanderbilt Engineering School, founded the Nashville Bridge Company, the state's most productive and important bridge building firm. Dyer worked for a variety of bridge companies over in the 1890s before he borrowed…

Founded in 1906, the Nashville Globe promoted self-reliance and racial solidarity as the best means for Nashville's African American community to succeed and prosper within the confines of the Jim Crow South. After an editorial run that lasted more than…

The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) was founded in Nashville on September 10, 1894, and Nashville No. 1 became the first chapter to apply for membership, thus earning the coveted designation of the "mother chapter." The local unit was…

The first professional hockey team in Tennessee to be a member of the National Hockey League (NHL) was the Nashville Predators. Professional ice hockey has been played in Nashville since the early 1960s, when the Nashville Dixie Flyers were members…

The Nashville recording industry actually began after World War II, although there were several earlier events and factors that played a significant role in its success. During the 1920s and 1930s recording executives traveled across the country, making field recordings…

This Nashville newspaper traces its origins to the Nashville Whig, begun by Joseph and Moses Norvell in 1812, when the city had a population of twelve hundred. The Whig survived more than a dozen mergers and consolidations to eventually become…

The Nashville Trades and Labor Council, organized in 1890, was most responsible for the passage of the Tennessee child labor law and the local barber's Sunday closing law. Composed of three delegates from the different unions in Nashville, the Council…

This important national organization for civil rights began in 1909 in protest of violent forms of racism, including lynching; of racial segregation; and of disfranchisement of African American voters. Events and people from Tennessee played a major role in its…

The National Association of Free Will Baptists, an organization of evangelical churches, has maintained its headquarters in Nashville since its formation in 1935. A derivative of Arminian or "general" Baptists, the denomination arose in the United States in the early…

The National Baptist Convention, founded in 1895, has since spawned four different denominations that have roots in the original convention. It formed originally as a combination of three separate organizations--the American National Baptist Convention, the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention, and…

Chartered in 1896 by Richard H. Boyd and a group of black businessmen and fully operational by 1898, the National Baptist Publishing Board grew in the twentieth century to be the largest black publishing enterprise in the United States. Located…