People

Born near Guntown, Itawamba County, Mississippi, Cornelius H. Hankins was the sixth of eight children of Reverend Edward Locke Hankins and Annie Mary McFadden Hankins. He contracted smallpox after his mother cared for Confederate soldiers. As a result, he was…

Influential and respected Tennessee Supreme Court justice William J. Harbison was born in Columbia, the son of William Joshua Harbison and Eunice Elizabeth Kinzer Harbison. Harbison (B.A, magna cum laude, Vanderbilt University, 1947; J.D., Vanderbilt University School of Law, 1950)…

Leading Tennessee agriculturist and nationally acclaimed stock breeder William G. Harding was born in 1808 near Nashville. Harding was educated at the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy in Middletown, Connecticut. Two years after his first wife, Mary Selena McNairy,…

"Big" and "Little" Harpe were notorious outlaws on the frontier of the Old Southwest. The two committed murder and highway robbery indiscriminately around the frontier town of Knoxville and in other parts of East Tennessee and Kentucky. The legend of…

Managing director of the East Tennessee Land Company, Walter C. Harriman was born in New Hampshire, the second of the three children of Walter and Almire Harriman. During the Civil War, Colonel (later General) Walter Harriman led his Eleventh New…

George Washington Harris, seminal southwestern humorist, was a Democrat and a Presbyterian, in that order. He was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in Knoxville. Although involved in many aspects of East Tennessee frontier development ranging from surveying to river…

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…

Beth Halteman Harwell is the state representative for Tennessee’s 56th district, located in Metro Nashville Davidson County. She has served in this post since 1988 and was elected Speaker of the House by her legislative peers in 2011. She has…

Author of stories of mountain life, Mildred E. Haun was born in Hamblen County, on January 6, 1911, to James Enzor and Margaret Ellen Haun, but was raised in Haun Hollow in the Hoot Owl District of Cocke County in…

Reconstruction judge and governor Alvin Hawkins was seven years old when his family moved to Carroll County. After attending McLemoresville Academy and Bethel College, he tried his hand as a farmer, blacksmith, and teacher before determining to become a lawyer.…

Born August 20, 1942, in Covington, Tennessee, Isaac Hayes has received countless awards for a forty-plus-year career in music, film, television, and radio. His music has influenced funk, soul, and disco, and many artists, rappers included, have emulated his smooth…

Roland Hayes was one of the most popular opera singers of his generation and an important supporter and mentor to such significant African American artists as Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson. Born in Curryville in northern Georgia to former slaves…

Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, George E. Haynes was the only child of Louis and Mattie Sloan Haynes. At a young age he moved with his parents to New York, where he spent his youth. In 1903 he received his…

John Haywood, pioneer jurist and historian of early Tennessee history, was born in Halifax County, North Carolina in 1762, the son of prosperous tobacco producer Egbert Haywood. Despite limited educational opportunities on the colonial frontier, Haywood taught himself law and…

Alexander Heard, chancellor of Vanderbilt University during the tumultuous years from 1963 to 1972, was committed to pluralism, freedom of expression, and self-government. His views helped to open up the staid campus, which avoided many of the painful and divisive…

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…

Whig Party leader and Confederate senator Gustavus A. Henry was born in Scott County, Kentucky, on October 8, 1804, to William Henry and Elizabeth Flournoy Henry. He graduated from Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1835 and soon thereafter was…

Painter of portraits and still lifes, Ella S. Hergesheimer was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Elamanda Ritter and Charles Patterson Hergesheimer. Hergesheimer was the direct descendant of Charles Willson Peale, artist and founder of Peale's Museum, part of…

Internationally known researcher in cotton fibers Kenneth L. Hertel was born in Van Wert, Ohio. In 1920 Hertel received a bachelor's degree in engineering from Ohio State University and completed his Ph.D. in physics in 1926 at University of Chicago.…

Henry C. Hibbs, designer of academic and medical architecture, influenced the institutional landscape of Tennessee in the twentieth century. Born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1882, Hibbs received his education at the University of Pennsylvania. He worked in Philadelphia and…