Military

Episcopal bishop and Confederate general Leonidas Polk was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, April 10, 1806. He briefly attended the University of North Carolina before entering the U.S. Military Academy. He graduated eighth in his class in 1827. He became…

Governor and President of Peabody Normal School James D. Porter was born in Paris, Tennessee, on December 7, 1828. An 1846 graduate of the University of Nashville, Porter was admitted to the bar in 1851 and elected to the state…

During the Second World War, Tennessee was home to eleven prisoner-of-war camps. Four were large installations. Camp Crossville was built on the site of an abandoned 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps work camp. Camp Forrest and Camp Campbell were existing army…

Episcopal Bishop Charles T. Quintard was born at Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Isaac Quintard and Clarissa Hoyt. In 1847 he received his M.D. degree from University Medical College, New York University, and worked for a year at Bellevue Hospital.…

In the immediate aftermath of Confederate defeat, northerners and southerners alike widely recognized two clear-cut consequences of the Federal victory in the Civil War. First, the Union had been preserved and the right of secession as a legitimate expression of…

Lee Roy Reeves, designer of the Tennessee State Flag, was born in Johnson City in June 1876, the son of Elbert Clay and Alice D. Robeson Reeves. After graduating from the local high school and normal school, Reeves taught in…

James Robertson, early leader of both the Watauga and Cumberland settlements, has been called the "Father of Middle Tennessee." Born in 1742 in Brunswick County, Virginia, he was the son of John and Mary Gower Robertson. Physically, Robertson stood close…

Naval medical officer associated with the fight against yellow fever, John W. Ross was born January 11, 1843, near Clarksville, the son of educator John Ross and Mary Parker Ross. In 1861 young Ross enlisted in the Confederate cavalry and…

Griffith Rutherford was born in Ireland in 1720. Soon after his birth his parents took voyage to America. Unfortunately, both of his parents died at sea, and Griffith arrived in America a homeless orphan. It is thought that he lived…

John H. Savage, congressman, state legislator, and veteran of three wars, was born at McMinnville on October 9, 1815, the son of George and Elizabeth Kenner Savage. Savage attended common schools and the Carroll Academy at McMinnville before studying law;…

In the autumn of 1942, the War Department decided to resume field maneuvers in Middle Tennessee. Large-scale war games had been conducted in an area around Camp Forrest, near Tullahoma, the previous summer, and General George S. Patton had perfected…

John Sevier, pioneer, soldier, statesman and a founder of the Republic, was Tennessee's first governor and one of its most illustrious citizens. Married and on his own at age sixteen, he was in the vanguard of frontier life and accomplishment…

Isaac Shelby, early Tennessee settler, Revolutionary War veteran, and governor of Kentucky, was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, in 1750 to Evan and Letitia Cox Shelby, who moved their family to Sapling Grove, the present site of Bristol, in 1771. Their…

In February 1862 a Union army-navy offensive succeeded in capturing Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, located respectively on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, near the Tennessee-Kentucky border, and the fall of the two forts initiated a series of Union triumphs…

Brigadier General Austin C. Shofner, retired, a native of Bedford County, was a career Marine Corps officer and soldier in World War II. Shofner's heroic exploits in the Philippines--his escape from a Japanese POW camp and his work in guerrilla…

Daniel Smith, pioneer, surveyor, treaty negotiator, secretary of the Southwest Territory, and U.S. senator, was a native of Stafford County, Virginia, who became infatuated with the trans-Appalachian West while a surveyor on the Virginia frontier. During the early years of…

Edmund Kirby Smith, a native of St. Augustine, Florida, was one of the most despised Civil War commanders in East Tennessee. Smith graduated from West Point in 1845, saw action in the Mexican War, served on the frontier, and taught…

The Spanish Conspiracy of the mid-1780s arose in the aftermath of the American Revolution when the leaders of the Cumberland settlements, which were then still part of North Carolina, courted a possible relationship with the Spanish government in New Orleans.…

Tennesseans participated in virtually every aspect of the Spanish-American War of 1898. Commander Washburn Maynard (a Knoxville native) of the gunboat Nashville is credited with firing the first shot of the war on April 22. The same vessel was assigned…

The foremost promoter of railroads in antebellum Tennessee and the founder and first president of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, Vernon K. Stevenson arrived in Nashville in 1831 and soon opened a dry goods store. Hoping to ensure his financial…