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Anna Rorex Stokely established one of the nation's major canning companies. She was the daughter of James Addison and Rebecca Badgett Rorex, born in 1852 on a farm along the French Broad River in Cocke County. In 1872 she married…

Barton W. Stone, minister and key figure in Tennessee and Kentucky frontier revivalism of the early 1800s, established a "Christian" movement that later became part of the Disciples of Christ. Born in Port Tobacco, Maryland, Stone grew up in southern…

By the last days of December 1862, the Civil War was more than halfway through its second year, and certainly its course had turned against the Confederacy. The fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the loss of New Orleans,…

Samuel H. Stout was the son of Nashville carriage-maker and city councilman Samuel Van Dyke Stout and Catherine Tannehill Stout. Educated at Moses Stevens's Classical and Mathematical Seminary and the University of Nashville, Stout taught school and apprenticed in medicine…

Beginning in the late 1870s Tennessee's four major metropolitan areas entered the so-called streetcar era. At first these interurban railways were powered by mules, and ran a very short distance, usually in the downtown area. Soon, because of the availability…

Self-taught sculptor Vannoy Streeter was known as “Wireman” because of the fanciful creations he fashioned from coat hangers and metal wire. Best known for his depictions of the Tennessee Walking Horse, Streeter also created scores of other images using wrapped…

Novelist and short story writer Thomas S. Stribling became the first Tennessean to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Stribling was born in Clifton on March 4, 1881, the son of Christopher and Amelia Waits Stribling. After abandoning teaching and…

Master architect and designer of the Tennessee State Capitol, William F. Strickland was born in 1788 in Navesink, New Jersey. When he was two years old, his parents, John and Elizabeth Strickland, moved the family to Philadelphia. In 1803 William…

Samuel A. Stritch, Roman Catholic prelate, was born in Nashville on August 17, 1887, the son of Irish immigrants. Having chosen to enter the priesthood, Stritch was ordained in Rome on May 21, 1910, at the age of nineteen. Returning…

Established in 1780, Sullivan County was one of the earliest settled areas in Tennessee. In 1761 troops on their way to aid besieged Fort Loudoun passed through this area of northeast Tennessee, built the Island Road, and constructed Fort Robinson…

This historic professional baseball park in Nashville once stood between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, North and Jackson and Summer Streets. Union troops introduced baseball to the city in 1862, when they played in a low-lying area north of the statehouse…

At 2:00 a.m. on April 27, 1865, the magnificent side-wheeler riverboat Sultana was struggling against the surging current of the Mississippi River eight miles north of Memphis. The weather was rainy and chilly, and the boat was grossly overloaded. Suddenly…

From its inception in 1902 to its demise in 1918, the Summer School of the South was a major instrument of regional educational improvement, instructing some thirty-two thousand teachers in the art of education. The Summer School was born from…

Pat Summitt, women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has produced an enviable record of success both on and off the court. Born in Henrietta on June 14, 1952, she attended and graduated from Cheatham County High School…

Archaeological evidence in Sumner County indicates occupation by Paleoindian, Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian cultures in the deep past. Two easily accessible prehistoric mounds stand at Castalian Springs, where Native Americans for centuries came to hunt the game which gathered at…

Sun Records burst onto the post-World War II American scene suddenly, a force that few would forget. At the helm was Sam Phillips, an eccentric radio engineer willing to put black and white sharecroppers, truck-drivers, dishwashers, and factory workers in…

Governor of Tennessee since 1995, Don Sundquist was born March 15, 1936, and was the first member of his family to finish high school and attend college. He graduated from Augustana College and then served two years in the U.S.…

A professor of physiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center from 1963 to 1973, Earl W. Sutherland Jr. was the first scientist from a southern university to win a Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine. Many observers considered the conferring of…

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.…

Swift Memorial College was a historically black college that operated in East Tennessee from 1883 to 1952. It was founded in Rogersville by the Reverend William H. Franklin, a graduate of Maryville College and the African American pastor of a…