Photography

Within 20 years of the end of the Civil War, Chattanooga was becoming the "Dynamo of Dixie." Entrepreneurs and capital from the North were welcomed to the city. New railroads made the area a transportation hub. Fortunes were made in finance, industry, and tourism. Located at the foot of Lookout Mountain, St. Elmo was Chattanooga's first suburb. The founder of the then-independent town, A. M. Johnson and other community leaders chartered the Forest Hills Cemetery in the late 1870s. Many Chattanooga-area families obtained sites within the cemetery, now on the National Register of Historic Places. A rarity for the Reconstruction South, these families included a number of African Americans. From the famous to the infamous, from the remembered to the nearly forgotten, Images of America: Chattanooga's Forest Hills Cemetery highlights a number of Chattanoogans interred in this picturesque historic cemetery.

Like many Southern cities, Nashville has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past two centuries, evolving from a simple
pioneering crossroads into a large cosmopolitan center with its citizens representing every nationality, race, and creed. The latter years of the nineteenth century proved especially momentous in the city's growth and development, and two visionary Nashvillians, Carl and Otto Giers, documented the many different elements of city life through their photographic talent.
In Nashville: From the Collection of Carl and Otto Giers Volume II, readers will journey to the Nashville of old and see the city through the artistry of the Giers' studio: a time when the city hosted some of the most recognizable and celebrated Confederate and Union officers, such as Nathan Bedford Forrest and Ulysses S. Grant, who both sat for studio portraits. Enduring the ravages of the Civil War, Nashville rebuilt itself and the Giers were there to record its rebirth, photographing everyday life against many different settings: from the city's graveyards, such as Calvary, Mount Olivet, and National Cemetery, to its poverty-stricken neighborhoods, to the elegant homes of the affluent, to the flourishing business district. Not just concerned with the routine, the Giers focused on capturing Nashville's history in the making, including portraits of state governors, such as William Gannaway Brownlow, Albert Smith Marks, and Robert Love Taylor, scenes of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition and the Tennessee Industrial Exposition, and the city's most-famous attractions, Belmont and the Hermitage.

Park City was incorporated in 1907 as a Tennessee municipality. From its inception in the 1890s, Park City became a melting pot of Greek, Swiss, Jewish, African American, German, Italian, and Scotch-Irish entrepreneurs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Cal Johnson, a former slave and resident of Park City, became one of the wealthiest men in Tennessee. Johnson invested in race horses, taverns, and real estate, and he operated a race track in Burlington on the eastern edge of Park City. The half-mile track is still intact as a city street known as Speedway Circle. Today, Park City is a virtual museum of Victorian homes designed by mail-order architect and Park City resident George F. Barber. The residence he designed and built for himself still stands on Washington Avenue. Other highlights include Park City's pre-Civil War history and important trade expositions of national significance hosted in Park City from 1910 to 1913. In 1917, Park City was annexed into the city of Knoxville, but the community retained its cultural and historical identity for many years around Chilhowee Park. Once a privately owned estate and lake, Chilhowee Park became Park City's social center, welcoming such notable figures as Teddy Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and Louis Armstrong.

As Tennessee grew into a modern state, it found itself increasingly beset by crime. In 1831, the legislature approved the construction of the first penitentiary. The pen world was violent and dark, with several major riots, fires, and escape attempts throughout the years. However, the prison also gave birth to a culture of creativity born from despair, with entertainment shows often featuring the biggest names in country music sharing the stage with inmate bands. The best-known pen, the Castle, has become a familiar icon to filmgoers, being used in productions like The Last Castle and The Green Mile. Today, the building sits abandoned, facing an uncertain future.

A center of New South industry and expansion, Nashville has enjoyed a long and unusual history, from its time as a budding pioneer community to its development as the Volunteer State's capital city. The prolific work of two visionary nineteenth-century photographers, a father and his adopted son,
has truly captured a Nashville of bygone times, when the city was the home of presidents, a site for both Confederate and Union occupation, and a place of
flourishing architectural tastes and cultures. Nashville: From the Collection of Carl and Otto Giers chronicles the work and talent of Carl and Otto Giers, two photographers who enjoyed a long-lasting love affair with their hometown. Both were interested in recording their personal Nashville, which was constantly changing due to the pressures of
their times: war, Reconstruction, urban development, and many community "improvements," which tore down historic buildings for new businesses and buildings. This volume, with over 200 striking images, showcases their combined work in preserving Nashville's unique heritage from 1855 to the turn of the century. A fascinating visual history, Nashville: From the Collection of Carl and Otto Giers takes you on an incredible tour through the city's many historic landmarks, such as The Hermitage, Belle Meade mansion, Belmont plantation, and the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, and allows you to experience first-hand the street scenes, the different fashions of the nineteenth century, and the cityscapes and landscapes from Union occupation to the late 1890s.

Warren County, Tennessee, was founded in 1807 and named after Dr. Joseph Warren, who fought in the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Throughout its history, much has changed.

Missy Tipton Green and Paulette Ledbetter recall the rich past in this fascinating pictorial history.

Situated in Tuckaleechee Cove, one of several ""limestone windows"" on the northern base of the Smoky Mountains, is Townsend, Tennessee, also known as the ""Peaceful Side of the Smokies."" Native Americans were the first inhabitants of Tuckaleechee Cove. By the time the first Europeans arrived in the late 18th century, the Cherokee villages had been abandoned. In the 1880s, the lumber industry was in full swing thanks to two key innovations: the band saw and the logging railroad. With the coming of industrialization, the isolated farming community of Tuckaleechee Cove was transformed in the bustling mill town of Townsend. In 1894, E.J. Kinzel started a mountain retreat in Tuckaleechee Cove, which in later years turned into a mountain hotel with two healing mineral springs.

It is the home of one of the most famous railways in American history, the site of a historically vital trade route along the Tennessee River and the gateway to the Deep South.

Chattanooga has a storied past, a past that still lives through the spirits that haunt the city. Whether it is the ghost of the Delta Queen still lingering from the days of the river trade, the porter who forever roams the grounds of the historic Terminal Station or the restless souls that haunt from beneath the city in its elaborate underground tunnel system, the specter of Chattanooga's past is everywhere. Join authors Jessica Penot and Amy Petulla as they survey the most historically haunted places in and around the Scenic City.

Beneath Music City's welcoming exterior lies a ghoulish and ghastly past....
Nashville is one of the South's truly haunted cities. From the bloodshed between the Cherokee and the white settlers to the slaughter of soldiers on Civil War battlefields, Nashville's murderous past has given rise to an extraordinarily haunted present.
Authors Ken Traylor and Delas House Jr. use their years of experience as ghost tour guides and owners of Haunted Ghost Tours of America to steer readers on a journey through Nashville's eeriest sites, from the steps of the state capitol to the halls of Ryman Auditorium. Revealing the chilling secrets of the city's spookiest honky tonk haunts, Traylor and House share the gruesome details of Nashville's wicked past in their unique collection of shocking stories.

The Volunteer State has been a pioneer in southern literature for generations, giving us such literary stars as Robert Penn Warren and Cormac McCarthy. But Tennessee's literary legacy also involves authors such as Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor, who delayed writing his first novel but won the Pulitzer Prize upon completing it. Join author Sue Freeman Culverhouse as she explores the rich literary heritage of Tennessee through engaging profiles of its most revered citizens of letters.

Author Laura Cunningham expertly blends fright with history and presents the ghostly legends of haunted Memphis.

Much like its muddy riverbanks, the mid-South is flooded with tales of shadowy spirits lurking among us. Beyond the rhythm of the blues and tapping of blue suede shoes is a history steeped in horror. From the restless souls of Elmwood Cemetery to the voodoo vices of Beale Street, phantom hymns of the Orpheum Theatre and Civil War soldiers still looking for a fight, peer beyond the shadows of the city's most historic sites. Author and lifelong resident Laura Cunningham expertly blends fright with history and presents the ghostly legends from Beale to Bartlett, Germantown to Collierville, in this one-of-a-kind volume no resident or visitor should be without.

Early African Americans in Sumner County, both slaves and free, left a legacy not only of beautiful brick buildings and sturdy stone fences, but also a social history as rich and varied as the many tribes they represented. This exciting book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the immeasurable contributions, undeniable services, and the devotion of black Americans to the evolution of Sumner County's communities. Many of the sienna-hued photographs and Civil War-era tintypes presented here were taken when folks wore their Sunday best and didn't smile for the camera. These images, many never before published, capture everything from a "creek baptism" and bonnet worn by a local slave, to views of families and schoolchildren. The volume covers most of the early settlements in Sumner County where African Americans largely resided, from
Rockland and Avondale to Scattersville, Parker's Chapel, and Gallatin.

Learn and discover how African-Americans have held a prominent place in the history of Chattanooga dating back to the 16th century.

Did you know that Chattanooga is the hometown of the first African-American appointed to lead counsel on a Supreme Court case? The home of the nation's oldest student, who learned to read at age 116? The home of the African-American blacksmith who put shackles on the "Andrew's Raiders" after the Great Locomotive Chase? The site of one of the first integrated police departments in the South? Author Rita Lorraine Hubbard chronicles the ways African-Americans have shaped Chattanooga, and presents inspirational achievements that have gone largely unheralded over the years - and so much more!

Memphis is a city founded on some of the great vestiges of our past. City staples such as steamboats, cotton plantations and exchange centers, relics symbolic of the city's rich industrial and agrarian legacy, have either been forgotten or completely lost. Every city, especially one as thoroughly modern as Memphis, naturally loses even the more recent aspects of its past through growth and expansion. Join Memphian and library historian Laura Cunningham as she unearths the lost hallmarks of Memphis, from the city's earliest beginnings to the present. Filled with rare and archival images that range from whimsical to haunting, Lost Memphis provides a glimpse into the vanished landmarks and bygone ways of life that once defined the city. Though the people and places featured in Lost Memphis are gone, this collection of compelling photos ensures that they will never be truly lost to history.

The fertile agricultural lands and majestic Cumberland Mountain wilderness that constitute Warren County belonged to the Cherokee Indians until the signing of the Third Treaty of Tellico on October 25, 1805, which officially opened up the region to pioneer settlers. Records show that a hunting party of white explorers made its way into the area from North Carolina and Virginia in 1769, and there is evidence that some families had settled in the territory as early as 1800. One of the earliest land grants is dated 1785 and was issued to Samson Collins in the vicinity of Rock Island. Warren County was officially established on November 26, 1807, by an act of the Tennessee General Assembly when the recently established county of White was divided. Within a decade, the population numbered almost 20,000. The authors present this book in celebration of Warren County's bicentennial in 2007, with its population currently numbering well over 40,000.

In this 150th anniversary edition of Meharry history, Parham documents graduating classes since 1877. This second volume is a must-have for Meharrians past, present, and future.

Since 1876, Meharry Medical College has been a beacon of light to a people of color who were determined to obtain an education to ensure the survival of a race of people who, in the words of the second president of Meharry Medical College, John Mullowney, were “a people brought here without assent or knowledge of being removed from their native land.” Thus began the succession of physicians who have for 150 years marched forth to serve mankind with these words indelibly marked on their hearts and their souls, “the spirit of this place called Meharry.” Over the past 150 years, the departments and programs of Meharry have dramatically changed. The Meharry of today encompasses the future of medical technology the ancestors would have dared to imagine.

Author Sandra Martin Parham was born and raised in Nashville. She currently serves as a commissioner on the Nashville Historical Commission and as executive director of the Meharry Medical College Library and Archives. Her first title for Arcadia Publishing was Campus History Series: Meharry Medical College, a historical chronology dated by each president’s administration. 

Over the past 150 years, the boundaries and demographics of South Nashville have changed dramatically. Starting out as an industrial and blue-collar area comprised of factories, mills, and rail yards, the area quickly grew, drawing thousands looking for employment or more affordable housing. South Nashville has traditionally been the most diverse part of the city, racially and culturally. During the past 30 years, stark changes have transformed the appearance of the southern portion of Nashville and Davidson County. Urban renewal programs and the construction of interstate highways resulted in the removal of thousands of buildings deemed as substandard, further obliterating traditional neighborhoods. Today, the district faces new challenges as many established neighborhoods now cope with gentrification.

In the barbeque joints and plate lunch cafes off Memphis's Front Street, one is easily reminded of the days when cotton was king, of a society of characters and cads; the big time and the small time; the rich and the richer; the hangers-on, anointed, powerful, and busted. Cotton created empires in agriculture, transportation, banking, and warehousing. It also shackled the dreams and lives of those born into slavery and sharecropping. Although many of the day-to-day dealings have moved to manicured office parks and high-rise buildings, cotton's influence still remains at the core of the Southern economy and Southern society. Cotton propelled technological advances that have changed the face and soul of the South. It was the wellspring that gave birth to modern music. Cotton triggered the migrations of millions of blacks and poor whites, shaping the culture of Northern cities. Its allure has called out to writers, artists, and photographers from around the world, attracted by the tragedy, irony, and power of cotton's story. In this book of vivid images and intriguing text, Memphis historian and author William Bearden presents the captivating history of cotton's profound influence on American society.

When describing the Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site in a 1945 interview, Tennessee historian Samuel Cole Williams said, "No other site in Tennessee compares with this in its historic interest." Five original structures, six reconstructed and restored buildings, a limestone cave, and a small family cemetery bear witness today of the rich and diverse history of Tipton-Haynes, which spans the Pleistocene Ice Age, Native American settlement, Tennessee statehood, the American Civil War, and the Great Depression. During the latter half the 20th century, the Tennessee Historical Commission and the nonprofit Tipton-Haynes Historical Association, Inc., worked to establish and preserve the Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site. Collected photographs of these efforts and achievements have been hidden away in the site's archives for decades to only now be viewed by the public.