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Located in northern Dickson County is the historic village of Cumberland Furnace, the site of the first ironworks in the region which later became Middle Tennessee. The village is the oldest community south of the Cumberland River between Nashville and…

Few areas in the United States symbolize the American pioneer spirit more than Cumberland Gap. Crossing the gap meant encountering America's first western frontier and symbolically severing European ties. Between 1760 and 1850 more than 300,000 people walked, rode, or…

A rural resettlement community established during the Great Depression, Cumberland Homesteads is located in Cumberland County. This homestead community currently encompasses approximately 10,250 acres, less than half of the original total of 27,802 acres held by the cooperative association in…

The 1,720 acres of Cumberland Mountain State Park once served as the outdoor recreational center for the massive Cumberland Homesteads project of the Resettlement Administration (RA). From 1935 to 1938 Company 3464 of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built a…

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church grew out of the revivals on the Tennessee-Kentucky frontier in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The formation of the independent Cumberland Presbytery on February 4, 1810, at Dickson, Tennessee, by ministers Finis Ewing, Samuel…

From its headwaters in Lechter County, Kentucky, to its mouth at Smithland on the Ohio River, the Cumberland River travels almost 700 miles and drains a watershed of 18,000 square miles. Over 300 miles of the river flow through Tennessee,…

Established in June 1998, Cumberland Trail State Park is the state's first and only linear park, running for 230 miles through ten Tennessee counties and connecting the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park to Signal Mountain in Chattanooga. The park will…

Established as Cumberland College at Lebanon in 1842 under the patronage of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Cumberland University received a charter as a university in 1843. Except for the period from 1962 to 1982, when the name was officially Cumberland…

The "Lebanon Law School" opened its first term in October 1847 as the first school of law in the Old Southwest. Professor Abraham Caruthers was soon joined by state Supreme Court Justice Nathan Green Sr., his son Nathan Jr., and…

Sumner A. Cunningham was the founder and editor of the Nashville publication Confederate Veteran. The magazine was one of the New South's most influential monthlies and made Cunningham a central figure in the "Lost Cause" movement of the late nineteenth…

Richard O. Currey, the first person with an earned doctorate to teach science at what is now the University of Tennessee, was a prolific author, an innovative educator, and a newsworthy minister. A Nashville native, Currey graduated from the University…

Nancy Cox McCormack Cushman, internationally recognized sculptor, was born in Nashville August 15, 1885, to Nannie Morgan Cox and Herschel McCullough Cox. After the deaths of her parents, she attended an Arkansas boarding school but soon returned to Nashville, entered…

Charles W. Dabney Jr., proponent of New South scientific agriculture and respected president of the University of Tennessee from 1887 to 1899, was born in Hampden-Sydney, Virginia, to Robert Lewis and Lavinia Morrison Dabney. Dabney received his early education from…

For more than fifty years, dance companies have encouraged and supported the development of a high quality of dance throughout Tennessee. Through professional, civic, and educational affiliations, these ballet, jazz, tap, modern, and contemporary dance companies provide excellent opportunities for…

The traditional dances of clogging and buckdancing are popular forms of percussive dancing that originated in the southern Appalachian mountains. Though the eighteenth-century Scottish and Irish settlers brought with them the clog, a step dance characterized by a very erect…

The engagement at Dandridge occurred when Federal troops, commanded by Maj. Gen. John Parke, moved toward Dandridge in East Tennessee on January 14 in search of forage. Upon receiving reports of the Federal move, Confederate Lieut. Gen. James Longstreet ordered…

Rollin A. Daniel Jr., a pioneer in cardiac and thoracic surgery, was born June 14, 1908, in Georgia. Shortly thereafter, his parents moved to the Nashville area, and he grew up in Middle Tennessee. Daniel graduated from Goodlettsville High School…

Hoping for relief from economic hardship, tobacco growers in western Kentucky and northern Middle Tennessee formed the Dark Tobacco District Planters' Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee (PPA) on September 24, 1904. A steady decline in dark-fired tobacco prices since…

Martha Craig Daughtrey, attorney, law professor, and judge, was born on July 21, 1942, in Covington, Kentucky. She received a B.A. (cum laude) from Vanderbilt University in 1964 and graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1968. Her academic…

With sixty-six acres situated along the scenic Nolichucky River valley in Greene County, the David Crockett Birthplace State Park features a reproduction of the log cabin where Crockett was born near the confluence of the Big Limestone Creek and the…