People

Dorothy Lavinia Brown, surgeon, legislator, and teacher, rose from humble beginnings in Troy, New York, to become the first female African American surgeon in the Southeast and the first African American woman to serve in the Tennessee General Assembly. She…

John Calvin Brown, Confederate general and governor, was born in Giles County on January 6, 1827, to Duncan and Margaret (Smith) Brown. He was the younger brother of former governor Neill S. Brown. After graduating from Jackson College in Columbia,…

Lizinka Campbell Brown, a founder of a prominent late nineteenth-century stock farm, was the daughter of former U.S. Senator George W. Campbell of Tennessee, who also served as secretary of the treasury in the administration of James Madison and Minister…

Milton Brown, chancellor, congressman, and railroad president, migrated to Nashville from his home in Ohio in 1823 and studied law in the office of Felix Grundy. Upon admission to the bar, he practiced law in Paris, Tennessee, and in 1832…

Neill S. Brown, governor, was born in Giles County on April 18, 1810, to Duncan and Margaret Smith Brown. He received his early education through self study and briefly attended a neighboring academy. To finance his college education, he taught…

Gordon W. Browning, three-term governor and U.S. congressman, was born in Carroll County in 1895. He attended local schools and opened a law practice in Huntingdon in 1915. He served in the National Guard in World War I. In 1922…

Parson Brownlow, minister, journalist, and governor, was one of those unique individuals who influenced Tennessee culture, politics, and government during the middle half of the nineteenth century. Born in Wythe County, Virginia, orphaned at age eleven and possessing limited formal…

Charles Faulkner Bryan was one of Tennessee's greatest composers, musicians, and collectors of folk music. Bryan was born on July 26, 1911, in McMinnville, the second of Clarence Justus and Allie May Bryan's five children. At the age of nineteen…

Andrew H. Buchanan, early professor of mathematics and civil engineering and topographer-surveyor, was born in Boonsboro, Arkansas, on June 28, 1828. He attended Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, and received the A.B. degree in 1853. The following year, Buchanan accepted…

James M. Buchanan received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics for "his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision making." In its announcement of the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences…

Governor and president of the Tennessee Farmers' Alliance, John P. Buchanan was born in Williamson County, the son of Thomas and Rebecca Jane Shannon Buchanan. He attended common schools and joined the Confederate army late in 1864, serving as a…

Lewis C. Buckner, African American carpenter, cabinetmaker, and house builder in Sevier County, was born and raised as a slave in the Strawberry Plains community of neighboring Jefferson County. Buckner was the son of a white father and an African…

Calvin A. Buehler was head of the Department of Chemistry, University of Tennessee, 1940-62. He received his bachelor's degree in 1918, his master's in 1920, and his Ph.D. in 1922 from Ohio State University. He accepted a position at the…

Medical researcher and immunologist Carroll G. Bull was born in Jefferson County, the fourth of William Gernade and Nancy Emmaline White Bull's 11 children. Bull graduated from Harrison-Chilhowee Academy before enrolling at Carson-Newman College in 1901. He graduated from Peabody…

Lucius E. Burch Jr., attorney, conservationist, and civil rights advocate, was born on a large farm outside Nashville on January 25, 1912, the son of Dr. Lucius E. Burch and Sarah Cooper Burch. He was descended from a long line…

Aaron K. Burrow, whose success in the trading of cotton linters assumed strategic importance during World War I, was born in Carroll County, the son of the Reverend Albert Gibson Burrow and Elizabeth Polk Burrow. From age seventeen, when he…

Ray Bussard, nationally recognized swim coach at the University of Tennessee, was born on August 12, 1928, in Hot Springs, Virginia. After attending Ohio University on a football scholarship, Bussard transferred to Bridgewater College in Virginia, where he received a…

Jake Butcher was a major figure in Tennessee banking and politics in the 1970s and early 1980s and the driving force behind the Knoxville International Energy Exposition (Knoxville World's Fair) of 1982. He also was the subject of a banking…

John W. Butler, state representative from Macon, Trousdale, and Sumner Counties (1923-27), wrote the Tennessee Anti-Evolution Act, better known as the Tennessee Monkey Law. The son of a long-settled farming family in Macon County, as a young man Butler taught…

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Joseph W. Byrns was an important political leader in early twentieth-century Tennessee, serving in the Tennessee General Assembly and then fourteen terms in the U.S. Congress. Born at Cedar Hill in 1869,…