People

Isaac Franklin, slave trader and planter, was born in Sumner County, the son of a Revolutionary War soldier who had received a military land warrant in Tennessee. Franklin served in the War of 1812, and at age eighteen, while working…

Tennessee Governor James B. Frazier was born at Pikeville in Bledsoe County, the son of Thomas Neil and Margaret M. Frazier. His great-grandfather, Samuel Frazier, and grandfather, Abner Frazier, fought at the battle of Kings Mountain during the American Revolution.…

Julius Freed was an important post-Civil War German Jewish merchant in Trenton, Gibson County. A native of Prussia, Freed immigrated in 1854 to Columbus, Georgia, where he worked as a peddler. Three years later he moved to Memphis and established…

Lizzie Crozier French, organizer of the Knoxville Equal Suffrage Association, president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association and the Tennessee Federation of Women's Clubs, and state chair of the National Woman's Party, was one of five daughters born to John…

Lucy Virginia French, poet and novelist, was born in Accomac County, Virginia, to a family of wealth and culture. Her parents were Mease W. Smith, an educator and lawyer, and Elizabeth Parker Smith, daughter of a wealthy merchant. She graduated…

William H. “Bill” Frist represented Tennessee in the U.S. Senate from 1995 to 2007 and served as Senate Majority Leader during the last four of those years. Born on February 22, 1952, into a prominent Nashville family, Frist graduated from…

Thomas O. Fuller, prominent African American church and civic leader and author in early twentieth-century Memphis, was born in Franklinton, North Carolina, on October 25, 1867. His father, J. Henderson Fuller, was a carpenter who bought his freedom from slavery…

Episcopal bishop Thomas F. Gailor was born at Jackson, Mississippi, the son of Frank Marion Gailor and Charlotte Moffett. He graduated from Racine College, Wisconsin, in 1876, and then entered the General Theological Seminary, New York City. Gailor received his…

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,…

Edwin M. Gardner, illustrator, portraitist, and cartographer, was born near Pulaski in Giles County, but while still a young boy, he moved with his family to Mississippi, where he probably had some formal training in art. While in his teens,…

Bud Garrett, traditional blues musician and marble maker, was born January 28, 1916, to John Tom Garrett and Adeline Hamilton Garrett in Free Hill, a small African American settlement in Clay County established by freed slaves prior to the Civil…

Gilbert Gaul, late nineteenth-century artist, is best known for his depictions of military topics, particularly scenes of the Civil War. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, he entered the National Academy of Design in New York City at age seventeen…

Violinist Noel A. Gilbert was born in Scott's Hill, where he learned the fundamentals of the violin. In 1925 he moved to Memphis and began studies with Joseph Henkel, teacher and conductor of the Memphis Philharmonic. After joining the Memphis…

Writer Nikki Giovanni expresses her version of the late twentieth-century African American experience through poetry and essays. Though her parents left Knoxville after her birth, Giovanni returned for summers with her grandparents and graduated from Knoxville's Austin High School before…

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…

Jacob Goldsmith and his older brother, Isaac, were significant Memphis merchants in post-Reconstruction Memphis. Jacob Goldsmith established one of the state’s best-known department stores, Goldsmith’s, which operated in downtown Memphis until 1990. Goldsmith’s was a family-controlled business until 1959, when…

Albert V. Goodpasture, writer, editor, and Tennessee historian, was born on November 19, 1855, in Overton County. He attended school in Cookeville and New Middleton, and received his B.A. from East Tennessee University in 1875, having absorbed the view of…

Ernest W. Goodpasture was a distinguished figure in pathology and a pioneer in modern virological research. He contributed significantly to the advance of knowledge in many fields, particularly the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, the problems of parasitism, the laboratory cultivation…

Twentieth-century novelist Caroline Gordon was born into the Kentucky line of the extensive Meriwether family in 1895. Exploration of the family's past and its evolution is a major theme of her fiction. She grew up at Merry Mont in Todd…

Francis H. Gordon, pioneer in scientific agriculture, was born in Gordonsville, Smith County, on August 6, 1804. Though he rarely left Smith County, he exerted a lasting influence on Tennessee antebellum agriculture. In 1830 he joined a group that organized…