Objects

Few issues have dominated an era of Tennessee politics like the debate over the state debt which raged for six years (1877-83) as a predominant political issue. Having first been incurred in support of antebellum railroad construction, the debt dramatically…

A short-lived attempt to create a new state in the trans-Appalachian settlement of present-day East Tennessee, the State of Franklin arose from the general unsettled state of national, regional, and local politics at the end of the Revolutionary War. Under…

Peter Staub, a prominent figure in late nineteenth-century Knoxville business, culture, and politics, was born in Switzerland on February 22, 1827. Orphaned at eight years old, Staub immigrated to the United States when he was twenty-seven. He finally settled in…

Memphis's great soul music recording company was founded in 1960 by siblings Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. Aspiring to break into the music business, Stewart, a bond salesman, convinced his schoolteacher sister to mortgage her home for $2,500. Their company,…

In 1811 the voyage of the steamboat New Orleans ended the silent world of pre-steam Tennessee riverboatmen. When Nicholas J. Roosevelt successfully sailed his wood-fired steam craft down the Mississippi past the Chickasaw Bluffs, the "Steamboat Age" officially began in…

With the end of the Civil War and restoration of communications and travel, investors identified and then developed many of the resources of the South. A land agent for the Stearns Salt and Lumber Company of Ludington, Michigan, traveling through…

Almira S. Steele, teacher and missionary, founded the South's first African American orphanage in Chattanooga. Born of Puritan forebears in Chelsea, Massachusetts, (neighboring Boston) on July 23, 1842, the daughter of Benjamin H. and Almira Sylvester Dewing, she was reared…

The Stencil House, also known as the Johnson-Dillon House, is a log house featuring an elaborately stenciled interior. Built sometime after 1830, the house was originally located near Hardin Creek and Eagle Creek in rural northwestern Wayne County. To ensure…

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…

Created in 1803 from Montgomery County, Stewart County is named for an early pioneer and speculator, Duncan Stewart. Originally inhabited by nomadic hunters and mound builders, the area received white settlers in the 1780s, as Revolutionary War veterans arrived to…

Alexander P. Stewart, educator and Confederate general, was born in Rogersville on October 2, 1821. Known among his men as "Old Straight," Stewart graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1842. Three years later, he resigned his…

Writer and editor Randall Stewart was born in Fayetteville in 1896. In 1898 his family moved to Nashville, where he grew up and was educated through his undergraduate years at Vanderbilt, from which he was graduated in 1917 as the…

Kate Bradford Stockton, a socialist and the first woman to run for governor in Tennessee, was born in Stockton, California, in 1880. She was a direct descendant of William Bradford, second governor of Plymouth Plantation. Her grandfather, Arthur Bradford of…

Tracy Caulkins Stockwell ranks among Tennessee's most successful Olympians. She began swimming at age eight and, under the aegis of the Nashville Aquatic club, qualified for the Olympic Trials five years later. At fourteen, Caulkins won her first national title,…

Anna Rorex Stokely established one of the nation's major canning companies. She was the daughter of James Addison and Rebecca Badgett Rorex, born in 1852 on a farm along the French Broad River in Cocke County. In 1872 she married…

Barton W. Stone, minister and key figure in Tennessee and Kentucky frontier revivalism of the early 1800s, established a "Christian" movement that later became part of the Disciples of Christ. Born in Port Tobacco, Maryland, Stone grew up in southern…

By the last days of December 1862, the Civil War was more than halfway through its second year, and certainly its course had turned against the Confederacy. The fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the loss of New Orleans,…

Samuel H. Stout was the son of Nashville carriage-maker and city councilman Samuel Van Dyke Stout and Catherine Tannehill Stout. Educated at Moses Stevens's Classical and Mathematical Seminary and the University of Nashville, Stout taught school and apprenticed in medicine…

Beginning in the late 1870s Tennessee's four major metropolitan areas entered the so-called streetcar era. At first these interurban railways were powered by mules, and ran a very short distance, usually in the downtown area. Soon, because of the availability…

Self-taught sculptor Vannoy Streeter was known as “Wireman” because of the fanciful creations he fashioned from coat hangers and metal wire. Best known for his depictions of the Tennessee Walking Horse, Streeter also created scores of other images using wrapped…