Women

Maria Thompson Daviess, artist and author, was born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in 1872 to an upper-middle-class family. Before she was eight years old, her sister and her father died, and her mother moved the family to Nashville. Daviess became active…

Anne M. Davis was a native of Louisville, Kentucky, who moved to Knoxville in 1915 with her husband Willis P. Davis, the president of Knoxville Iron Company. She soon developed a lifelong love for the Great Smoky Mountains, and she…

Louise Littleton Davis, historian and journalist, was born in Paris, Tennessee, one of five children of LaRue Lucetta Littleton, a musician, and Grover C. Davis, a career U.S. Army officer. Davis's scholarly bent took her first to Murray State College…

Mary C. C. Dorris, a founder and early leader of the Ladies' Hermitage Association, was born in Nashville on January 28, 1850, to Emily Donelson Martin and George Washington Currey. She graduated from Ward Seminary in 1867 and three years…

Will Allen Dromgoole was born in Murfreesboro, the last child of John Easter and Rebecca Blanche Dromgoole. When she was six, Dromgoole changed her middle name to Allen, and throughout her life was known as Will Allen or "Miss Will."…

Born in Nashville on August 23, 1843, Mary Florence Kirkman Drouillard was the daughter of Hugh Kirkman and Eleanora C. Vanleer and granddaughter of ironmaster Anthony W. Vanleer and Rebecca Brady. Educated in local private schools, she completed her education…

Anne Dallas Dudley, a national and state leader in the woman suffrage movement, was the daughter of a prominent Nashville family. She received her education at Ward Seminary and attended Price's College in Nashville. She married Guilford Dudley, one of…

Wilma Dykeman, novelist, journalist, and state historian, was born in Asheville, North Carolina, on May 20, 1920. In 1940 she married James R. Stokely. They resided in Newport, Tennessee, where they raised two sons. Stokely died in 1977. Dykeman holds…

Born to William O'Neale, the owner of a Washington boarding house and his wife Rhoda, the young Margaret and her five brothers and sisters were well known in political Washington. Leading congressmen and senators stayed at the O'Neale establishment (later…

Belle Edmondson, Confederate smuggler, was born in Mississippi. On the eve of the Civil War her family moved to a Shelby County farm on Holly Ford Road (now Airways Boulevard), about three miles from the Mississippi border and eight miles…

On March 12, 1929, Margaret Bowen, a worker at American Glanzstoff, led a walkout of 523 women operatives. After other shifts joined the walkout the next day, the plant closed on March 14. Four days later Bemberg workers struck in…

Sarah Barnwell Elliott, novelist, short story writer, and advocate of women's rights, was born in Savannah, Georgia, the daughter of Stephen Elliott, a bishop of the Episcopal Church who was a leader in the founding of the University of the…

The first woman to win a statewide election in Tennessee, Jane G. Eskind was raised and educated in Louisville, Kentucky. She attended Brandeis University, married Richard Eskind, completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Louisville, and settled in Nashville…

Situated on the public square in Clarksville in the Arlington Hotel, the First Woman's Bank began operations on October 6, 1919. As a financial institution created, directed, and staffed entirely by women, its opening produced something of a sensation, and…

Mary Rutledge Fogg, writer and leader in Nashville civic affairs, was a member of one of Nashville's early families, the Rutledges, and the granddaughter of two of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Fogg was an active member of…

Woman aviator Cornelia Fort was a Nashville debutante whose love of flying led her to become a pioneer in women's military aviation as a member of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, which later became part of the Women's Air Force…

Lizzie Crozier French, organizer of the Knoxville Equal Suffrage Association, president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association and the Tennessee Federation of Women's Clubs, and state chair of the National Woman's Party, was one of five daughters born to John…

Lucy Virginia French, poet and novelist, was born in Accomac County, Virginia, to a family of wealth and culture. Her parents were Mease W. Smith, an educator and lawyer, and Elizabeth Parker Smith, daughter of a wealthy merchant. She graduated…

Writer Nikki Giovanni expresses her version of the late twentieth-century African American experience through poetry and essays. Though her parents left Knoxville after her birth, Giovanni returned for summers with her grandparents and graduated from Knoxville's Austin High School before…

Twentieth-century novelist Caroline Gordon was born into the Kentucky line of the extensive Meriwether family in 1895. Exploration of the family's past and its evolution is a major theme of her fiction. She grew up at Merry Mont in Todd…