Giles County was founded on November 14, 1809, and is known as the land of milk and honey. The county is home to over 30 National Register properties, Civil War skirmish sites, a varied cultural heritage, and intersecting Trail of Tears routes (Benge's and Bell's). It is also the beginning place for many well-known African Americans, such as noted architect Moses McKissack, founder of McKissack and McKissack. Giles County is a place where many ancestral lineages return home to their roots for research or to discover their rich African American history and heritage.

It was the summer of 1863 at the height of the U.S. Civil War. Federal troops fanned across Tennessee, the final state to secede from the Union, and emancipated its slaves. By July they reached Giles County and the slaves belonging to the extended family of the Abernathys, Easons, Rivers, and Tarpleys. While some chose to remain on those plantations, at least 59 of their slave men enlisted to the Union Army. They were divided among 6 colored regiments, provided essential services, participated in 12 battles and skirmishes, and were mistreated by Confederates for 9 months as prisoners of war. Many of their stories are told in their own words. It is from their military service records and pension files that their stories of slavery, family, bravery, suffering, love, and loss are revealed. This book honors their lives and is dedicated to their descendants. This book is intended to be a tool to help African-Americans break through the genealogical brick wall of slavery. ISBN 978-0-9772822-8-9

The first comprehensive examination of the nineteenth-century Ku Klux Klan since the 1970s, Ku-Klux pinpoints the group's rise with startling acuity. Historians have traced the origins of the Klan to Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866, but the details behind the group's emergence have long remained shadowy. By parsing the earliest descriptions of the Klan, Elaine Frantz Parsons reveals that it was only as reports of the Tennessee Klan's mysterious and menacing activities began circulating in northern newspapers that whites enthusiastically formed their own Klan groups throughout the South. The spread of the Klan was thus intimately connected with the politics and mass media of the North. Shedding new light on the ideas that motivated the Klan, Parsons explores Klansmen's appropriation of images and language from northern urban forms such as minstrelsy, burlesque, and business culture. While the Klan sought to retain the prewar racial order, the figure of the Ku-Klux became a joint creation of northern popular cultural entrepreneurs and southern whites seeking, perversely and violently, to modernize the South. Innovative and packed with fresh insight, Parsons' book offers the definitive account of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.

Many biographical and genealogical sketches of Giles County ancestors have been collected and presented here. They derive from a great variety of sources, such as books, periodicals, vital records, war records, etc. Combined, these sketches reveal the history of Giles County, Tennessee. This edition has been revised with new content added. I hope this publication is valuable to all of those with roots connected to Giles County.

Tennessee has never had so complete a place-names volume as this. With over 1,900 entries, this volume covers virtually all the cities, towns, villages, hamlets, and communities of Tennessee. Here you can learn when and how towns got their names. Although current names are the primary focus, previous names are also provided and discussed when information is available, and many interesting stories attached to a place have also been included. This is an essential and fascinating reference book for scholars, teachers, students, and any individual interested in the history of Tennessee.

First published in 1930, the essays in this manifesto constitute one of the outstanding cultural documents in the history of the South. In it, twelve southerners-Donald Davidson, John Gould Fletcher, Henry Blue Kline, Lyle H. Lanier, Stark Young, Allen Tate, Andrew Nelson Lytle, Herman Clarence Nixon, Frank Lawrence Owsley, John Crowe Ransom, John Donald Wade, and Robert Penn Warren-defended individualism against the trend of baseless conformity in an increasingly mechanized and dehumanized society.

This fabulous work is a county-by-county guide to the genealogical records and resources at the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville. Based largely on the Tennessee county records microfilmed by the LDS Genealogical Library, it is an inventory of extant county records and their dates of coverage. For each county the following data is given: formation, county seat, names and addresses of libraries and genealogical societies, published records (alphabetical by author), W.P.A. typescript records, microfilmed records (LDS), manuscripts, and church records. The LDS microfilm covers almost every record that could be used by the genealogist, from vital records to optometry registers, from wills and inventories to school board minutes. There also is a comprehensive list of statewide reference works.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"Milky Way Farms-The Way It Was" is a history of a most incredible farm operation when candy legend, Franklin C. Mars, came to Giles County, Tennessee. The Southern estate was built by the success of the Mars' Milky Way Candy Bar that lead the world in sales in 1930. The writer chronicles the farm operation from 1931 until it was sold in 1945. The reader will see what took place on a daily basis from the letters, documents, and photographs of the farm manager. Milky Way Farms was of utmost importance to Giles County during the "Depression." This Tennessee estate produced prize winning show horses, the 1940 Kentucky Derby Winner, Gallahadion, and world renowned Horned Hereford cattle. The 1930's Clubhouse is still in very good condition and remains today a showplace of the South.