Tennessee: A Historical Timeline

PRIOR TO 1750 PRE-EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT
9000– 3000 BCE	Native Americans begin cultivating edible plants such as squash and gourds. Populations expand and villages form along the banks of most major rivers.
900 CE	Groups of Native Americans begin to battle for territory and develop tribal identities.
1540	Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto visits the Tennessee Valley in search of gold and silver. The dominant tribes living in the area are the Cherokee, Shawnee, and Chickasaw.
1567	Spanish explorer Juan Pardo introduces firearms and deadly European diseases to the native populations. Guns change the way Native Americans hunt and battle and make them dependent upon the colonial fur trade. The tribes supply deer and beaver hides to the European traders in return for guns, rum, and manufactured articles.
1673	English colonists James Needham and Gabriel Arthur explore the Tennessee River Valley to establish trade with the Cherokee before returning to Virginia.
1714	Charles Charleville sets up a French trading post at French Lick near present-day Nashville.
1750–1774 EARLY EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT
1760	William Johnson, the northern Indian Commissioner, signs a treaty with the Iroquois Native Americans to acquire much of the land between the Tennessee and Ohio rivers for future settlement.
1763	In the Treaty of Paris, the French surrender all claims to land east of the Mississippi River to the British.
1769	William Bean, the first permanent settler of European descent, builds a cabin on the Wautauga River in northeast Tennessee. New settlers begin to come into the area from Virginia and North Carolina.
1772	A group of settlers forms their own government called the Watauga Association. The Watauga Association at Sycamore Shoals drafts a constitution patterned after the constitution of the Iroquois League of Nations. It is one of the first written constitutions in North America.
1775–1799 REVOLUTIONARY TENNESSEE
1775	The Transylvania Company’s Richard Henderson buys a large piece of land from the Cherokees forming the colony of Transylvania. Henderson hires Daniel Boone to blaze a trail from Virginia across the mountain at Cumberland Gap and open the land to settlement. His trail is called the Wilderness Road and becomes the main route to the new settlements. Virginia invalidates Henderson’s purchase in 1776 and Transylvania ceases to exist.
1779	Colonists settle around the Big Salt Lick on the Cumberland River. They build Fort Nashborough and draw up the Cumberland Compact, signed by 256 colonists to establish a representative government and create a court system. The Cumberland Compact is a forerunner of the Tennessee State Constitution.
1780	(September 25) "Over-mountain" men gather at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River to march over the Great Smokey Mountains. They help to defeat the British at the Battle of King’s Mountain on October 7; the Patriot victory is a major turning point in the Revolutionary War.
1784	The autonomous, secessionist territory the State of Franklin forms out of part of North Carolina now located in Tennessee. The secessionists claim their demands for protection from Native Americans are being ignored and their right to navigate the Mississippi River is being obstructed. The state exists for four years but is never recognized by the Continental Congress.
1789	North Carolina cedes the Tennessee region to the Federal government, and becomes the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio.
1796	(February 6) Andrew Jackson helps draw up a state constitution in preparation of Tennessee joining the Union. (June 1) Tennessee becomes the 16th state.
1797	The U.S. House of Representatives impeaches Tennessee Senator William Blount. Blount’s financial problems led him to conspire with British officers to enlist frontiersmen and Native Americans to assist the British in conquering Spanish Florida and Louisiana. He becomes the first U.S. Senator to be expelled from the Senate.
1800–1849 STATE OF TENNESSEE
1800s	Planters and horse breeders bring slaves from Kentucky and Virginia to middle Tennessee.
1812	The War of 1812. Tennessee earns its nickname "The Volunteer State" when volunteer soldiers from the state display courage and valor in the Battle of New Orleans, the final battle of the war. General Andrew Jackson leads American forces to defeat the British Army, which is intent on seizing New Orleans and the vast territory the U.S. acquired with the Louisiana Purchase. (February 7) Part of the New Madrid Earthquakes, the worst earthquake in recorded U.S. history hits northwestern Tennessee. A vast land area drops several feet and tidal waves are created on the Mississippi River. The river flows backward, creating the state’s Reelfoot Lake.
1817	The Tennessee legislature enacts laws that define the common boundary with Georgia and create a boundary commission to jointly survey and mark the state border.
1818	The Chickasaw Native Americans cede their land, encompassing nearly all of western Tennessee, to the federal government.
1826	Frances "Fanny" Wright establishes the Nashoba Commune near Memphis with the goal of creating a place to educate slaves and prepare them for freedom and colonization in Haiti or Liberia. After four years of problems with administration and disease, the plan fails and Wright charters a ship to take the remaining slaves to Haiti.
1834	The state constitution is amended, removing free African Americans’ right to vote from.
1838	Tennessee becomes the first state to pass a temperance law prohibiting alcohol. The U.S. government forces Cherokee Native Americans to leave the eastern United States. Nearly 17,000 are forced to march from eastern Tennessee to territory west of Arkansas in what becomes known as the Trail of Tears. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees die along the way.
1850–1899 THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION ERAS
1861	(May 6) Tennessee becomes the 10th state to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy. Only the state of Virginia sees more Civil War battles than Tennessee. Union efforts focus on securing control of Tennessee rivers for their transportation routes into the Deep South.
1862	(February 6) The Battle of Fort Henry, fought in western Tennessee, begins the Mississippi Valley campaign. It is the first important victory for the Union, and the Confederate surrender of the fort opens the Tennessee River to Union traffic. (February 25) Confederate troops abandon Nashville as General Grant’s Union troops advance. (April 6) The Battle of Shiloh begins as Confederates launch a surprise attack on Union forces. The Confederates are successful the first day, but are defeated on the second. The battle results in 24,000 casualties and secures the West for the Union. (June 6) The city of Memphis surrenders to the Union Navy after an intense naval battle on the Mississippi River. The capture of Nashville and Memphis gives the Union control of the western and middle sections of the state. The Rhea County Spartans, an all-female cavalry company from Tennessee, begins as a lark but soon attracts the attention of Union officers, who are not amused. Created by young women in their teens and early twenties who desire to be part of the war for Southern independence, the unit is never officially recognized.
1864	Fifteen hundred Confederate cavalry overwhelm Fort Pillow, garrisoned with 500 Union troops. After their surrender, many of the African-American Union troops, as well as some white soldiers, are murdered. For African-American soldiers, "Remember Fort Pillow!" becomes a rallying cry.
1865	The steamer Sultana catches fire and burns after one of its boilers explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killing more than 1,400 paroled Union prisoners on their way home.
1866	Several veterans of the Confederate Army form a private social club in Pulaski they call the Ku Klux Klan. By 1869 the Tennessee governor declares martial law to combat increasing Klan violence. (July 24) Tennessee is the first state readmitted to the Union.
1878	A yellow fever epidemic kills 5,200 Memphis residents.
1886	Two brothers, Robert Love Taylor and Alfred Alexander Taylor, compete in the gubernatorial election, which is deemed the "War of the Roses." Robert, the Democrat, wins.
1900–1929 EARLY 20TH CENTURY
1918	(July 9) One of the worst train wrecks in U.S. history kills 101 people and injures 171 when an inbound local train collides with an outbound express train in Nashville.
1920	(August 18) Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing the right of all American women to vote. This completes the three-quarters necessary to put the amendment into effect.
1925	The Tennessee State Legislature passes the Butler Bill, making Tennessee the first state to prohibit teaching evolution in public schools. On May 25, John Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in school. The subsequent Scopes "Monkey Trial" attracts worldwide attention. Scopes is convicted of violating state law and fined $100, but his conviction is later overturned on a technicality. The trial is the first to be broadcast by radio. The "Grand Ole Opry" is the first broadcast on Nashville network radio. Today it is the longest continuously running live radio program in the world, having been broadcast every weekend since 1925.
1930–1949 THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND WORLD WAR II
1931	Pitcher Virne "Jackie" Mitchell becomes the second woman to play for an all-male professional baseball team when she signs with the Chattanooga Lookouts. In an April 1 exhibition game in Chattanooga against the New York Yankees, she strikes out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
1933	The Tennessee Valley Authority is created out of need to create work for the unemployed and a desire to provide navigation, flood control, manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly impacted by the Great Depression. It is the first large regional planning agency of the federal government and remains the largest. The TVA becomes a model for U.S. government efforts to modernize Third World agrarian societies.
1941–45	World War II brings some economic relief to Tennessee by employing 10 percent of the state’s populace in the armed services. War-based industries, such as shell-loading plants and aircraft manufacturers, hummed with a workforce that was one-third women by the end of the war.
1942	As part of the Manhattan Project, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is established in order to begin research and production work for the first atomic bombs. The United States Army Corps of Engineers also build the nearby "secret city" of Oak Ridge on isolated farmland in less than a year, reaching a population of more than 75,000 within two years.
1950–PRESENT MODERN TENNESSEE
1956	(September 2–3) The National Guard halts rioters protesting the admission of 12 African-American children to schools in Clinton. Two years later, an early morning bombing levels the racially desegregated Clinton High School.
1960	An organized group of Nashville college students leads non-violent protests through a series of sit-ins in an effort to desegregate downtown lunch counters. Although many students are harassed and beaten by vigilantes or arrested by the Nashville police, none of them retaliate with violence. The lunch counters eventually desegregate, and the sit-ins are one of the first successful uses of nonviolence protest in the nation.
1962	Entertainer Danny Thomas founds St. Jude’s Research Hospital, a leading pediatric treatment and research facility focused on children’s catastrophic diseases, in Memphis.
1967	Governor Buford Ellington repeals the "Monkey Law," used to prosecute John Scopes in 1925, against teaching evolution.
1968	Race riots erupt during a Memphis protest march led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in support of striking sanitation workers. King urges calm as National Guard troops arrive to restore order, and he promises to return to Memphis on April 4 to attend another march. (April 4) After purchasing a rifle in a Birmingham sporting goods store, James Earl Ray assassinates civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. at a Memphis motel. The death shocks the nation. Riots erupt in African-American areas of cities across the country, resulting in injuries and millions of dollars in damages.
1971	Stephen Gaskin and 300 hundred San Francisco hippies start the Tennessee rural commune called The Farm, an "intentional community" based not on rules but on agreement. The commune is founded on principles of nonviolence and respect for the Earth. The Farm exists to this day, although its numbers have dwindled to about 175.
1982	Five years after his death, Elvis Presley’s Memphis mansion Graceland is opened to the public as a museum. It becomes one of the state’s most popular tourist attractions, and is declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.
1986	Dollywood, a theme park owned by country singer and Tennessee native Dolly Parton, opens in Pigeon Forge. Hosting nearly 2.5 million visitors annually, it is the town’s largest employer.
1987	General Motors opens its new Saturn Corporation auto plant in Spring Hill as a response to the success of Japanese and German small-car imports in the U.S.
2009	(June 4) State legislators vote to override Governor Phil Bredesen’s veto and pass a new law allowing handguns in bars and restaurants, although restaurant owners can still opt to ban weapons from their establishments.
2011	(March) Severe tornadoes sweep through the southern and midwestern United States, causing damage and deaths in several states, including Tennesee. Two hundred tornadoes were reported in six states. At least 340 deaths in the region are attributed to the storms.
2011	(May) The Mississippi River floods near Memphis, and floodwaters in the region reach heights not seen since the 1930s.