Preservation

The Stencil House, also known as the Johnson-Dillon House, is a log house featuring an elaborately stenciled interior. Built sometime after 1830, the house was originally located near Hardin Creek and Eagle Creek in rural northwestern Wayne County. To ensure…

The Swaggerty Blockhouse in Cocke County was built ca. 1787 by James Swaggerty on land acquired from the state of North Carolina in 1786 by Abraham Swaggerty. It is the only remaining log blockhouse on its original site in Tennessee.…

This state park in Carter County preserves and interprets the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, a National Historic Landmark that was one of the most significant early settlement areas on the western frontier. Here in 1772 residents established the…

The Tennessee Century Farms Program is a public program that honors family farmers who have kept continuously owned family land in agricultural production for at least the last one hundred years. Established by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture in 1975-76…

The Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area (TCWNHA) tells the story of America’s Greatest Challenge, 1860-1875, through Civil War and Reconstruction sites and resources across the state. The only national heritage area to encompass an entire state, the TCWNHA is…

The Tennessee Civil War Veterans' Questionnaires form an extensive collection of documents housed in the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville and are a useful tool for the study of the state's nineteenth-century social conditions. The questionnaire's 1,650 respondents…

A joint resolution of the general assembly established the Tennessee Historical Commission on January 23, 1919. The resolution defined the duties of the committee to collect, compile, index, and arrange all data and information relating to the participation of Tennessee…

Early histories of the Tennessee Historical Society (THS) place its origins in the Tennessee Antiquarian Society organized in Nashville in 1820. The purpose of the society, chaired by John Haywood, was the collection and preservation of important events in the…

The Tennessee Main Street Program grew out of a late-1970s national effort to revitalize historic business districts in American small towns and cities. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private nonprofit membership organization, pioneered the downtown revitalization approach upon…

The Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA) collects and preserves books and records of historical, documentary, and reference value and encourages and promotes library development throughout the state. It is the state agency responsible for preserving materials which document Tennessee's…

The Tennessee State Museum is devoted to collecting, preserving, and interpreting objects related to the history and culture of Tennessee. These items generally are conserved and displayed at the museum's main facility at the James K. Polk Center in downtown…

An archive is a repository for an organized body of records produced or received by a public, semipublic, institutional, or business entity in the transaction of its affairs and preserved by it, or its successors. The development of the archives…

The home of Andrew Jackson, now a public museum, is eleven miles east of Nashville. Andrew Jackson bought the Hermitage farm in 1804, and it was his home for the remainder of his life. The Jacksons had lived on two…

The Tipton-Haynes Historic Site in Johnson City represents several eras of early Tennessee history. Woodland Period Indians and later the Cherokees frequented the area, hunting the buffalo that traveled to its natural spring. In later years, that buffalo trail became…

Travellers Rest was the Nashville home of Judge John and Mary Overton and their descendants for 150 years. In 1954 the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in Tennessee rescued the house from threatened demolition by the Louisville…

Tusculum College is the oldest college in Tennessee, having been chartered on September 9, 1794, by the legislature of the Southwest Territory. It was founded as Greeneville College by the Reverend Hezekiah Balch and Reverend Charles Coffin and later merged…

Located near Cedar Hill, Robertson County, Wessyngton Plantation specialized in dark-fired tobacco from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Joseph Washington, a native of Virginia, established Wessyngton in 1796, the year of statehood, when he acquired property along…

The site of Wiley Memorial United Methodist Church, formerly Wiley Memorial Methodist Episcopal, at 500 Lookout Street has been significant throughout the history of Chattanooga. The site served as the center of community life for Ross's Landing before the name…

Overlooking the sulfur springs at Bledsoe's Lick in the Castalian Springs community, the sprawling log inn Wynnewood was built in 1828 for travelers passing between Knoxville and Nashville. The builders, Alfred R. Wynne, Stephen Roberts, and William Cage, located it…