Ethel Taylor Maxwell was born in Memphis in 1915 and enjoyed a long and prominent career as a musical singing star and later as a teacher of music. She credited her parents with encouraging her early interest in music and supporting her artistic...
The firm of S.B. Williamson and A.S. Hancock, Grocers and Commission Merchants, was established at 49 Front in Memphis around 1850. Like similar businesses of their day, they sold a variety of items including groceries and farm supplies, and also...
Gideon Johnson Pillow was born in 1806 near Columbia, Tennessee. He attended the University of Nashville and went on to practice law in Columbia with his good friend James K. Polk. Pillow and his wife Mary Martin Pillow had 14 children. -- Pillow...
Berl Olswanger, known as “Mr. Music,” was a highly talented and popular musician and civil leader in Memphis from the 1940s through the 1970s. During his career he worked as a performer, composer, band leader and music teacher. -- Olswanger...
clubs; education; entertainment; Farrow family; neighborhoods; philanthropy; public service; recreation; social life; social organizations; study clubs; volunteerism; Whitehaven; women;
Whitehaven in the early 1900s was a small community with two churches, a school with some forty pupils, two stores and about twenty homes. Each afternoon a group of young ladies who called themselves the Whitehaven Walking Club took a walk...
Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, or Freedmen’s Bureau as it was commonly known, in March 1865 as the end of the Civil War drew near. An agency of the War Department, the Freedmen’s Bureau had two main...
business; corrections; criminals; employment; entertainment; immigrants; Jews; labor; law enforcement; parole; prisons; public service; television; volunteers;
Leo M. Seligman, who committed himself to helping men and women lead responsible and productive lives after prison, grew up in Germany in the early decades of the 20th Century. He was born in 1900 in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany and served in the...
arts; business; entertainment; family; music; personal finance;
Jerry Lee Lewis was born to Elmo and Mary Ethel Lewis in Ferriday, Louisiana in 1935. Lewis sang and learned to play the piano in the local Assembly of God church, while also listening to Country music on the radio and Blues music in the African...
art education; arts; clubs; historic preservation; museums; neighborhoods; public service; women;
Florence Makin McIntyre is remembered as the First Lady of Memphis Art. She was born in Memphis in 1878 and grew up in her family home, the Pillow-McIntyre House, at 707 Adams Avenue in the historic Victorian Village neighborhood. As a child she...
This collection was donated to the Memphis Public Library and Information Center by Miriam DeCosta-Willis. It chronicles a record of her achievements as a student, teacher, scholar, writer, world traveler, and community activist over a span of...
agriculture; authors; Bartlett, Tennessee; Bond family; business; Cordova; cotton; family; farming; government; medicine; politics; public service; railroads; slavery; writers;
Among the most prominent citizens of early Shelby County were three brothers, Samuel, John and Washington Bond. Samuel, born in 1804, was a practicing physician. During the late 1840s or early 1850s, he and his wife, Mary Lucy, built a splendid...
activism; African Americans; authors; Beale Street; business; civil rights; desegregation; education; Elks; insurance; military; politics; post office; public service; public speaking; race; Republican Party; writers;
The George W. Lee Collection was given to the library by his daughter Gilda Lee Robinson in 1985. The large collection includes extensive and wide-ranging correspondence, copies of many of Lee’s speeches, hundreds of newspaper and magazine...
David Skypeck and Richard Cushing were playing with The Midnight Syncopators every Wednesday night at Lafayette’s Corner in August of 1986, but by November the horn players had left the band. They played on even though members continued to leave...
drama; entertainment; Memphis Little Theatre; military; public service; radio; television; theater; WMC;
Earl Moreland, a popular figure in Memphis radio and television, was born in Decatur County, Tennessee, and attended grammar school in Collierville, Tennessee. His family then moved to Memphis, where Moreland attended Snowden Junior High and...
Sara Beaumont Cannon, a descendant of several prominent Revolutionary War soldiers, was born in Somerville, Tennessee in 1859. She was educated at St. Mary’s Hall in Raleigh, North Carolina, and began writing poetry while still a school girl. --...
Henry Loeb, III was born into a wealthy and prominent family in Memphis in 1920. After graduating from Brown University and serving as a Naval lieutenant World War II, he returned to civilian life in Memphis. As Secretary of Loeb’s...
The Civil War Letters and Documents Collection is a compilation of several small groups of papers acquired by the Memphis and Shelby County Room at different times and from various sources. The collection includes correspondence, business...
Henry A. Montgomery was born in Fermanagh County, Ireland in 1829. At fifteen he began an apprenticeship with Thos. Karnahan & Sons, a timber, slate and iron dealership. He immigrated to Canada in the spring of 1848 and moved later that year...
annexation; arts; city council; crime; development; economics; farm marketing; government; law enforcement; municipal government; painting; politics; public service; sanitation workers strike; social issues; tourism;
Robert B. James served on the Memphis City Council from 1968 to 1988. During his twenty years as councilman, he accumulated many documents related to council business, as well as material from other organizations and events with which he was...
activism; Burson, Josephine Wainman; Democratic Party; employment; family; government; Hadassah; Jews; labor; minorities; public relations; public service; social justice; social life; state government; volunteerism; women
Josephine Wainman Burson, community leader and social activist, was dedicated to significantly improving the quality of life for women, underserved individuals and minority populations. Her career focused on community service and political...
