People

Last Beloved Woman of the Cherokees, Nancy Ward was born in 1738 at Chota and given the name Nanye-hi, which signified "One who goes about," a name taken from Nunne-hi, the legendary name of the Spirit People of Cherokee mythology.…

J. Howard Warf, Tennessee commissioner of education (1963-71), was born in Lewis County in 1904 and rose to political power in the rough-and-tumble world of Democratic politics in the mid-twentieth century. Warf dominated Lewis County politics in a style that…

Suffragist Katherine Burch Warner was born in Chattanooga, raised in Nashville, and educated at Vassar. The well-traveled Kate learned about politics through her father, John C. Burch, editor and publisher of the Nashville American and secretary of the U.S. Senate.…

Nashville businessman and civic leader Percy Warner followed the lead of his father, James C. Warner, in capitalizing upon the New South exploitation of natural resources with his Warner Iron Corporation in the 1870s and 1880s. While working for the…

Acclaimed modern American writer Robert Penn Warren was at home in all the major genres--poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism--though poetry was his dominant mode. Warren was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, a number unmatched by any other writer: one for his…

Joseph E. Washington, congressman, state legislator, tobacco planter, and a founder of the Tobacco Protective Association, was born November 10, 1851, at Wessyngton in Robertson County, the son of George Augustine and Jane Smith Washington. In 1873 he graduated from…

Henry Watterson, journalist and proponent of the New South ideology, was among the last great voices in the era of personal journalism. Watterson played several journalistic roles in Tennessee before moving to Kentucky, where he would gain national recognition as…

Sawney Webb was born in a North Carolina farmhouse on November 11, 1842. His father, Alexander Webb, died when he was six years old, leaving most of his rearing to his mother. She taught Sawney the value of hard work…

P. V. H. Weems, internationally known air navigator, was born March 29, 1889, at Turbine, the son of Joseph Burch and May Elizabeth Rye Weems. He attended Walnut Grove Country School in Montgomery County and Branham and Hughes School in…

Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) from 1955 to 1973, Alvin Weinberg became as well known for his ability to communicate the intricacies of science as for his research efforts. The son of Russian emigrants, Weinberg trained in mathematical…

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, journalist, feminist, and civil rights activist, launched an antilynching campaign in the 1890s that made her one of the most outstanding African American women of the nineteenth century. The eldest of eight children born to James "Jim"…

Kitty Wells, pioneering female country music vocalist, was born Muriel Deason in Nashville on August 30, 1919. She learned to sing and play guitar at an early age and was performing with Johnny Wright and the Harmony Girls by 1936.…

Industrialist and philanthropist Joe Werthan entered the modest family business, Werthan and Company, in 1908. It dealt in scrap metal and the accumulation, reconditioning, and distribution of burlap bags to grain elevators and feed mills. In 1911 Werthan married Sadie…

Ben West, mayor of Nashville (1951-63), was born in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1911. West came to Nashville as a boy and grew up with his parents in a working-class neighborhood in the Woodbine district. He worked his way through school…

May C. Wharton, early twentieth-century medical pioneer on the Cumberland Plateau, was born on a Minnesota farm. A sickly child, she was inspired and encouraged by a family friend and physician who gave her the Home Doctor Book. She attended…

Confederate cavalry commander Joe Wheeler rose from lieutenant to major general in the Army of Tennessee in less than two years. He is best known for daring raids behind Union lines in Middle Tennessee that were sensationalized at the time…

Andrew Nathaniel White III, the only child of Reverend Doctor and Mrs. Andrew White, was born in Washington, D.C. In 1946 the family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where Rev. White was the president of a local chapter of the National…

Hugh Lawson White was a U.S. senator whose 1836 presidential candidacy helped to establish the Whig Party both in Tennessee and in the South. The son of General James White, the founder of Knoxville, White briefly served as private secretary…

James White, statesman, military figure, and philanthropist, was born in 1747 in Rowan County, North Carolina. He married Mary Lawson in 1770, and the Whites had seven children; their oldest son, Hugh Lawson White, achieved national prominence as a presidential…

The first woman basketball player inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame (in 1992), Nera White of Macon County has become a legendary figure in the annals of women's basketball. Born in Macon County on November 15, 1935, she…