Military

The first permanent Anglo settlement of Nashville dates to 1770 when two parties of settlers led by John Donelson and James Robertson, respectively, established a fort enclosing two acres along the banks of the Cumberland River. The present Fort Nashborough…

Fort Negley was a Federal Civil War fortification built largely by African American labor in 1862 and garrisoned in part by African American soldiers during the battle of Nashville in December 1864. Located in Nashville, Fort Negley represented the first…

This Revolutionary War-era fort was located on the north side of the South Fork of the Holston River near the upper end of Long Island at present-day Kingsport. Its predecessor was a fort constructed in the winter of 1760-61 by…

This Civil War earthwork and battleground occupies a Mississippi River bluff in Lauderdale County. Late in the spring of 1861 Confederate troops from Arkansas built a battery at the site to control a bend in the river. Major General Gideon…

Constructed in 1797, Fort Southwest Point stands on a high knoll overlooking the mouth of the Clinch River where it enters the Tennessee River just within the boundaries of the Cherokee territory of the Territory South of the River Ohio.…

In April 1861 Governor Isham G. Harris ordered Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Wright, 154th Militia Regiment at Memphis, to proceed north and occupy a defensive position on the Mississippi River. Wright and a battalion of men and artillery established camp at…

Woman aviator Cornelia Fort was a Nashville debutante whose love of flying led her to become a pioneer in women's military aviation as a member of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, which later became part of the Women's Air Force…

Located in Murfreesboro, Fortress Rosecrans was the largest fort built during the Civil War; portions of the huge fortification remain intact today. Constructed between January and June 1863 after the battle of Stones River, the project was the responsibility of…

Following the evacuation of Atlanta, Confederate General John Bell Hood formulated an elaborate plan to draw General William T. Sherman away from that city and place his own army in position to recapture Middle Tennessee. Hood planned to march his…

On the Tennessee frontier before 1796 the terms "station" and "fort" were used interchangeably to mean a structure, or adjacent structures, that could temporarily house more than one family and provide protection from Native American attacks. The traditional meaning of…

Frank P. Gaines, chief of the Engineering Division of Nashville District Corps of Engineers, directed the planning and design of seven multipurpose projects in the Cumberland River Basin, numerous local flood protection projects in the Cumberland and Tennessee River valleys,…

U.S. Navy Admiral Albert Gleaves was born in Nashville on January 1, 1858, the only son of Henry Albert and Eliza Tannehill Gleaves. Entering the Naval Academy in 1873, Gleaves graduated four years later, and for the first eight years…

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was the preeminent national organization for Union veterans. Founded in Springfield, Illinois, by physician Benjamin F. Stephenson in the spring of 1866, the GAR quickly organized posts within ten states and the District…

Governor and U.S. Senator Isham G. Harris was born near Tullahoma, Franklin County, on February 10, 1818, the son of Isham and Lucy Davidson Harris. Raised on his father's farm, where a small number of slaves worked the land, Harris…

After the Confederate retreat from Perryville, Kentucky, Confederate General Braxton Bragg withdrew from the Bluegrass State toward Middle Tennessee. Confederate Colonel John Hunt Morgan and his Kentucky cavalry, after raiding Union supply lines in their native state, were called to…

Adolphus Heiman, engineer, stonecutter, and architect, was born in Potsdam, Prussia. Trained as a stonecutter, Heiman came to the United States in 1834. He was in Nashville perhaps as early as 1837. Heiman worked in Nashville from his arrival until…

Holston Ordnance Works (HOW) sprawled over 6,000 acres along the Holston River in Sullivan and Hawkins Counties around Kingsport, manufactured a powerful explosive for the military during World War II. Construction of the munitions plant, at an original estimated cost…

John Bell Hood, commanding general of the Army of Tennessee, was born June 1, 1831, at Owingsville, Kentucky. The son of a physician-planter, Hood grew up in the comfortable life his family's position offered. After private schooling, Hood's congressman uncle…

Following the Battle of Stone’s River, at the end of 1862, Union forces under General William Rosecrans went into winter quarters at Murfreesboro, and Confederate forces, under General Braxton Bragg, headquartered at Tullahoma in Middle Tennessee. The two forces were…

Tennessee governor and Texas hero Sam Houston was born to Samuel and Elizabeth Houston in 1793 near Lexington, Virginia, and raised with five brothers and three sisters. His father, a militia colonel, died in 1806. The following year, his mother…