Institution

Published by Elihu Embree at Jonesborough in 1820, the Emancipator was the first newspaper in the United States solely devoted to the abolition of slavery. Embree had previously published a weekly newspaper, the Manumission Intelligencer, in 1819, and it was…

An intentional community occupying some 1,750 acres in southeastern Lewis County, The Farm is located near Summertown. In 1971 San Francisco resident and New Age religious leader, Stephen Gaskin, and his followers founded The Farm as a spiritual community. The…

This Nashville landmark is the world's only exact-size replica of the original temple in Athens, Greece. For the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville drew upon its nickname "Athens of the South" and built the art building as a copy of the…

The Patrons of Husbandry, or Grange, was the first general farm organization in the United States. Established by the Minnesota agricultural reformer Oliver H. Kelly in December 1867, it briefly flourished in Tennessee during the 1870s, providing Tennessee's small farmers…

The Sewanee Review, founded by William Peterfield Trent in 1892 at the University of the South in Sewanee, is the nation's oldest continuously published quarterly. It changed from a general journal devoted to the humanities to a literary and critical…

Recognized as the oldest door-to-door sales company in the United States, the Southwestern Company publishes Bibles and educational reference books that college students sell over summer vacation. The Reverend James R. Graves, a prominent Baptist minister, began publishing religious tracts…

The history of theater runs throughout the Tennessee past. Early touring theater groups performed in the larger towns, with plays such as Child of Nature, or Virtue Rewarded presented in Nashville in 1807. Nashville residents established their first theater in…

In the early 1950s, a young immigrant named Sam Moore arrived in New York and launched his own business by selling Bibles door-to-door. His success in this endeavor provided Moore with the funds to establish the National Book Company, which…

Tims Ford State Park is a 431-acre park adjacent to a 10,700-acre lake, the Tims Ford Reservoir, in Franklin County. In 1970 the Tennessee Valley Authority finished the Tims Ford Dam to provide recreational opportunities and to control repeated flooding…

This Memphis company was the first insurance agency in the United States to be owned and managed by women. In 1910 Mary Harry Treadwell and her sister, Georgia Harry, founded the company after the death of Treadwell's husband. At the…

Trevecca Nazarene University began in 1901. The Reverend J. O. McClurkan, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, established the institution dedicated to training Christian workers for the United States and foreign countries as the Pentecostal Literary and Bible Training School for Christian…

One of the largest black-owned businesses in the state, Tri-State Bank was founded in 1946 by Dr. J. E. Walker (founder of Universal Life Insurance) and his son A. Maceo Walker. The original headquarters site at the corner of Beale…

Tusculum College is the oldest college in Tennessee, having been chartered on September 9, 1794, by the legislature of the Southwest Territory. It was founded as Greeneville College by the Reverend Hezekiah Balch and Reverend Charles Coffin and later merged…

This Chattanooga-based trucking firm, in business since 1985, has grown to be the fifth largest publicly owned truckload carrier in the United States. U.S. Xpress is also the ninth largest private employer in Tennessee, with an estimated 7,300 employers. The…

Located in Jackson, Union University is a private institution of higher learning affiliated with the Tennessee Baptist Convention and traces its lineage through two earlier institutions. Jackson Male Academy opened in 1823 and was chartered by the state in 1825.…

In 1888 Baton Rouge druggist Leon Jastremski returned from a visit to the annual reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) with an idea to form a similar fraternal organization for Confederate veterans. Simultaneously, a Chattanooga businessman, J.…

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…

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…