People

DeFord Bailey, a virtuoso harmonica player who won fame on the early Grand Ole Opry, has a more significant place in history as the first African American to win fame in the field of country music as well as blues.…

Howard H. Baker Jr., U.S. senator, Senate minority leader and majority leader, and White House chief of staff, was born in Huntsville in Scott County on November 15, 1925, the son of future congressman Howard Baker Sr. and his wife…

Republican Congressman Howard H. Baker Sr. was born in Somerset, Kentucky, in 1902, the son of James F. and Helen K. Baker. The Baker family had been prominent in Appalachian history for generations. Baker's grandfather, George Washington Baker, was an…

Edward E. Barnard, astronomer and astronomical photographer, was born in Nashville. To help support his fatherless family, Barnard worked in the photographic gallery of Van Stavoren, where he assisted in the use of a solar camera to make photographic enlargements.…

Paul W. Barret, banker, merchant, planter, businessman, and political and civic leader, was closely connected with the economic progress and government of Shelby County from the 1920s through the 1970s. Paul W. Barret Parkway, a controlled-access highway named for him,…

George W. Barrow, U.S. and Confederate diplomat, editor, soldier, and statesman, was born in Nashville on May 10, 1808, to Wylie Barrow and Ann Beck, his father's second wife. Barrow spent a privileged and comfortable youth at the family home…

William B. Bate, lawyer, Confederate general, governor, and U.S. senator, was born at Castalian Springs in Sumner County on October 7, 1826, the son of James H. Bate and Anna Weathered Bate. His education was limited to a few years…

Few widely recognized, successful women on television and in film have built an acting career without an “ingénue phase,” which fits snuggly between an actress’s late teens and mid-twenties when she must capitalize on her looks before she expires--like a…

Fannie Battle, Confederate spy and social reformer, was born in the Cane Ridge community of Davidson County on her family's plantation. Educated at the Nashville Female Academy, Battle was living at home when the Civil War began. Her father and…

New South railroad entrepreneur Jere Baxter challenged the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad's control over Middle Tennessee commerce by building the Tennessee Central Railroad to connect Nashville and Knoxville. Baxter was born in 1852, the son of a prominent Nashville…

James B. Bean was perhaps the single most important dental surgeon of the Civil War. Born in Washington County, June 19, 1834, James Bean could trace his heritage to the first white settlers of the state. He was the great-grandson…

Originally from Illinois, Hubert Bebb was an innovative architect who worked in Tennessee for the major part of his career. He moved to Gatlinburg in 1950, after having worked for the Chicago firm of Armstrong, Furst and Tilton in the…

John Bell was one of antebellum Tennessee's most prominent politicians and an acknowledged leader of the state's Whig Party. The son of a farmer and blacksmith, Bell was born in Davidson County and graduated from Cumberland College in 1814. After…

Author Madison Smartt Bell was born and raised near Nashville and attended Ensworth School and Montgomery Bell Academy before going to Princeton University, where he studied in the creative writing program, working with, among others, George Garrett and William Goyen.…

Montgomery Bell, early Tennessee industrialist and ironmaster, was born in West Fellowfield Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, the youngest of ten children, to John Bell and Mary Patterson (spelled by some members of the family as "Pattison"). Too young for active…

Oak Ridge scientist P. R. Bell advanced the art of scintillation spectrometry, using radioactive tracers scanned with a scintillator and collimator for medical diagnosis. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1913, Bell attended Howard College and the University of Chicago,…

Thomas Hart Benton, the famous Missouri senator, spent fifteen of his most formative years as a resident of Williamson County. It was here that he was admitted to the bar and elected to his first political office. Benton was born…

George L. Berry was president of the Tennessee-based International Pressmen's and Assistants Union (1907-48), a prominent labor leader and advisor who served on several New Deal labor committees during the 1930s, and U.S. senator from Tennessee (1937-38). Born in Lee…

Mary Frances Berry, a leading historian, civil rights advocate, legal scholar, and human rights advocate, was born in Nashville. After enduring an impoverished childhood, Berry received a Ph.D. and J.D. from the University of Michigan. During the 1960s and 1970s…

Born in Iredell County, North Carolina, John H. Bills was one of the founders of Bolivar, in Hardeman County, and a leader of the Tennessee Democratic Party in the nineteenth century. He came to the West Tennessee area in 1818…