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A major contributor to the arts in Memphis from the 1950s until his death in 1985, Edward Spencer Faiers was significant as a teacher and an artist. He moved to Memphis in 1952 and joined the faculty of the Memphis…

Fairvue was the home of Isaac Franklin and his young bride, Adelicia Hayes Franklin. Built in 1832, the property was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1977, but lost the designation in 2005. Historically, the house had identical facades…

Randall M. Falk has advanced Jewish-Christian relations and understanding as an author, professor, and rabbi of The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Sholom in Nashville. Born in Little Rock and educated at the University of Cincinnati and the Hebrew Union College, Falk…

Tennessee's second largest park is Fall Creek Falls State Park, which covers a total of 19,684 acres. The park is located between Spencer and Pikeville along the border of Van Buren and Bledsoe Counties. Located near the upper Cane Creek…

Tolbert Fanning, early leader of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Tennessee and the South, was born in rural Middle Tennessee in an area that later became Cannon County. Converted to the Disciples in Alabama in 1827, Fanning attended and graduated from…

The Farmers' Alliance made its first appearance in Tennessee in the winter of 1887, when J. T. Alsup, a national lecturer, organized the first Alliance in Wilson County. Perhaps Alsup selected Middle Tennessee for his first attempts because West Tennessee…

Farms and farming in Tennessee have experienced great changes during two centuries of statehood. For example, the number of farms in Tennessee ranged from 72,735 in 1850 to 273,783 in 1935, before sliding to just under 80,000 in 1997. The…

David G. Farragut, the first U.S. admiral, was born James Glasgow Farragut in 1801 and raised in Stoney Point, near Knoxville. In 1806 his father received a navy commission and moved his family to New Orleans. In 1808, when a…

Oscar L. Farris spent almost forty years with the University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service. While serving in Maury County, he was responsible for the first "test and slaughter" attempt to control cattle brucellosis in Tennessee four years before the…

The Tennessee General Assembly established Fayette County on September 29, 1824, and named it in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, French general and statesman. The county seat, Somerville, was named to honor Lieutenant Robert Somerville, hero of the battle…

The largest express transportation company in the world is FedEx, headquartered in Memphis. Frederick W. Smith, a Memphis businessman and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, began a company named Federal Express in April 1973 with fourteen small aircraft flying from the…

In 1858 John O'Mahony established the Fenian Brotherhood of America to provide money, arms, and military leadership for an anticipated rising against England by the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. An odd twist in this story of nineteenth-century Irish nationalism was the…

The Tennessee General Assembly created Fentress County from parts of Overton and Morgan Counties on November 28, 1823. The county was named in honor of James Fentress, the Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, who had assisted in passing…

Samuel “Champ” Ferguson was one of the most notorious guerilla fighters on either side of the Civil War. His partisan career is a prominent example of how personal revenge, criminal actions, and political allegiance all overlapped to motivate guerilla warfare…

Tennessee contains 19,200 miles of streams, including 1,062 miles of navigable waterways. These streams initially served as a major means of transportation that allowed early settlers access to markets and permitted travel between isolated communities. Future urban centers such as…

Tennessee towns host over thirty fiddle and old-time music contests every year. Many of these current music festivals date only to the 1970s as Tennesseans rediscovered their local musical and folklore traditions, but fiddle contests have a long history in…

Nashville’s Afro-Baptists began their religious journey of faith within a spectacular local history. Negroes were among 200 residents in the settlement of Fort Nashborough in 1780. By 1787, they represented 22 percent of 477 settlers; by 1820, their number grew…

First Tennessee Bank was founded in 1864 as the First National Bank of Memphis. Today, First Tennessee is part of First Horizon National Corporation, which sits at number 575 on the Fortune 1000 and is the nation’s twenty-fourth largest commercial…