Caneta Skelley Hankins

Bradley Academy is a historic African American school in Murfreesboro that now serves as a community heritage center. The name Bradley Academy was given to the first school in Murfreesboro and to subsequent school buildings located on property donated by…

Grand Ole Opry star Uncle Dave Macon was born in Warren County in 1870. He learned the craft of entertainment from vaudeville actors and actresses who boarded at his parents' rooming house in Nashville. After traveling the vaudeville circuit for…

Martin Methodist College, located in Pulaski, Tennessee, evolved from the 1870 bequest of Thomas Martin, a prominent business leader known in and beyond Giles County. In his will, he fulfilled a promise made to his daughter, Victoria, to establish a…

The builder of Milky Way Farm, Franklin C. Mars, was the founder of Mars Candies Incorporated, maker of the famous Milky Way candy bar for which the estate was named. Mars and his wife, Ethel V. Mars, came to Tennessee…

John Rhea, pioneer, statesman, and early advocate of higher education, was born in northwest Ireland in 1753. He was the son of Joseph Rhea, a Scottish Presbyterian minister transplanted to Ireland, and Elizabeth McIllwaine, also Scots-Irish. As a child, he…

Sumner County pioneer Hugh Rogan left his native County Donegal, Ireland, and sailed to the American colonies in 1775. Following the pattern of many Irish immigrants, he entered at the Port of Philadelphia, migrated into North Carolina, then moved west…

“Rogana,” the historic name of the stone cottage built around 1800 by Irish immigrant and Tennessee pioneer Hugh Rogan, is located near Bledsoe’s Creek in eastern Sumner County. The building is a rare surviving example of American architecture that is…

Created in 1803, Rutherford County came from sections of Davidson, Wilson, Williamson, and Sumner Counties and is named in honor of Griffith Rutherford, an Irish immigrant who served on the council of the Southwest Territory. The county's 619 square miles…

On July 31, 1985, Governor Lamar Alexander announced that a new General Motors company--Saturn--would build a giant industrial complex in Spring Hill, a small town located thirty miles south of Nashville on U.S. Highway 31 in northern Maury County. Spring…