Tennessee Trivia & Tidbits - Page 16

Looking for Tennessee trivia? Try our list Tennessee little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Davy Crockett was not born on a mountaintop, as the song has it. He was born Aug. 17, 1786, in a cabin on the banks of the Nolichucky River near Limestone (pop. 550).

first appeared: 5/27/2001

Country singer Loretta Lynn owns the entire village of Hurricane Mills in Humphreys County (pop. 17,100). The 3,500-acre, pre-Civil War farm consisted of the antebellum farmhouse, a general store, post office, blacksmith shop, flour mill, school, and a church meeting house. Many buildings remain intact and are open to visitors.

first appeared: 5/20/2001

Beth Slater Whitson, who wrote the lyrics for the classic Let Me Call You Sweetheart in 1910 and Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland in 1907, was born in Hickman County (pop.19,700).

first appeared: 5/13/2001

VIRGINIA—Blandford Church in Petersburg (pop. 37,800) is a memorial to Southern soldiers who died in the Civil War—about 30,000 of whom are buried in nearby Blandford Cemetery.

first appeared: 5/13/2001

Shelbyville (pop. 14,049) was established in 1809 to serve as the Bedford County seat after the county’s southern half—including the county seat of Mulberry—was used to create Moore and Lincoln counties.

first appeared: 5/6/2001

Muddy Pond, in Overton County (pop. 18,900), was settled in 1964 and 1965 by Mennonites who relocated from Pennsylvania. Many settlers moved away, but those remaining have retained their Mennonite/Amish roots.

first appeared: 4/29/2001

Thomas Sharpe Spenser journeyed to Middle Tennessee in 1776 with a group of hunters. While the others returned to East Tennessee and North Carolina, Spenser chose to remain, becoming the region’s first white settler.

first appeared: 4/22/2001

The John and Landon Carter Mansion in Elizabethton (pop. 13,289) is the oldest frame house in Tennessee. It was built between 1775 and 1780 on lands bought from the Cherokee.

first appeared: 4/15/2001

Cotton made Memphis a major port on the Mississippi River, and the Memphis Cotton Exchange still handles about one-third of the entire American cotton crop each year.

first appeared: 4/8/2001

In the spring of 1931, Joe Engel, owner of the Southern Association’s AA baseball team, the Chattanooga Lookouts, signed 17-year-old pitcher Jackie Mitchell, the first woman in organized baseball.

first appeared: 4/1/2001

Sgt. Alvin C. York, a backwoods marksman who became one of the most decorated soldiers of World War I, was born and raised in Pall Mall, a hamlet in Fentress County (pop. 16,100).

first appeared: 3/25/2001

Nearly half of Tennessee’s land area, or 11.9 million acres, is farmland, according to the state department of agriculture.

first appeared: 3/18/2001

The Bureau of Agriculture, as the Tennessee Department of Agriculture was once known, was the first state agency formed by Gov. Andrew Johnson in 1854, eight years before the federal government formed the USDA.

first appeared: 3/11/2001

Gruetli-Laager (pop. 1,810) was formed in 1980 when two Swiss communities—Gruetli and Laager—voted to combine. Their common heritage dates back to the 1860s.

first appeared: 3/4/2001

Tennessee has the largest 4-H Club membership in the United States. Its clubs boast more than 186,000 members.

first appeared: 2/25/2001

Dr. Jerome Cochrane, born in Tennessee in 1831, became Alabama’s first state health officer in 1879 after proposing a new law creating the Alabama State Board of Health.

first appeared: 2/18/2001

The Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga features 300 species of fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals, making it the largest facility of its kind focusing on freshwater habitat.

first appeared: 2/11/2001

James Knox Polk established his first law office in his parents’ home in Columbia (pop. 33,200) before becoming the 11th U.S. president. The Polk Home is now a National Historic Landmark.

first appeared: 2/4/2001

—Founded in 1793, Dandridge (pop. 1,540) is the only town in the nation named for Martha Dandridge Washington, wife of George Washington.

first appeared: 1/28/2001

Rockwood (pop. 5,348) was founded when John T. Wilder, a geologist, discovered the area’s iron abundance and set up the Roane Iron Co. in 1868. The town was named for the company’s first president, William O. Rockwood.

first appeared: 1/21/2001

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